Dowse Merchandise
AWARD: Winner, The Dowse Pattern Project, 2018 Best New Product Range Award, MUSEUMS AOTEAROA
Disciplines: Branding, Merchandise
My Role: Graphic Designer (Sole), Project originator, Production Coordination
During my time at The Dowse Art Museum I worked on several merchandise projects. Two recent examples that I spearheaded and co-led are the Pattern Project and the range for the exhibition Gavin Hipkins: The Domain, both of which ended up being very successful as promotion for the museum and also as a source of revenue.
Gavin Hipkins:
The Domain
The Domain was the biggest exhibition undertaken by The Dowse in it's 45 years, both in terms of floor space and individual works on display. Accordingly, a considerable range of products were developed. I worked closely with The Dowse's communication manager, retail manager, as well as the exhibition's curator and the artist, to find products that were going to be cost-effective, could be produced in the time-frame required, and were appropriate to the artwork being placed on them.
We consulted with the artist at various stages to make sure he was happy with which images appeared on which objects, and that any cropping was appropriate. The result was four notebooks, two gift cards, pencils and fabric patches displaying five of Gavin's series' names, a mug, and an enamel pin inspired by his Colony series. Gavin was very pleased with the results.
The Dowse
Pattern Project
The Pattern Project emerged from a conversation that had been taking place for years, about how to produce merchandise that was desirable and reflected The Dowse's reputation, but that wasn't only relevant during a particular exhibition, and wasn't subject to the issues associated with putting an artwork on a product. These include delays involved with getting sign off from artists, restrictions in how images can be used and cropped, as well as risking devaluing artworks by connecting them with lower-value objects.
The obvious solution would be to produce merchandise based on the institution's branding, but The Dowse's logo doesn't lends itself well to this. The solution that we came up with was to commission local designers to produce patterns inspired by The Dowse, which could then be used indefinitely across a myriad of products. Two patterns were commissioned for the first run—one of which was designed by me—and each was applied to notebooks, mugs, lens cloths and skateboard decks.