Frost*collective

One of Australia’s leading engineering contractors, John Holland has delivered some of the nation’s most significant projects for more than 70 years. From Parliament House in Canberra to the new WestConnex in Sydney, John Holland has shaped the face of Australia. 

Despite their market scale and presence, they had never stopped to define what sat at the heart of their brand. With the infrastructure market being more hotly contested that ever, and a war on for talent, the time had come to decide their true north. 

As much as the new brand was about winning new projects, it was also about unifying culture, with many of their people were spread throughout the country and working in specific project teams. The brand was need as glue to help hold their culture together. 

“Our new brand allows us to simply and clearly state our purpose, our values and what makes us different – making it easier for all of us to know what we stand for and why it matters. It will make us more competitive and more focused. It emphasises the fact we’re good at the hard stuff. It also reinforces our brand idea, by putting people first and making them the focus of what makes us exceptional.” 

Joe Barr, John Holland CEO

The rebrand has delivered tangible results with John Holland customers and its people. Market research shows that its overall market image has gone up by 11% points to 85% positive since the relaunch. Internal engagement has also improved, and the net promoter score has shot up from +1 to +17 points – one of the best in the industry. Just as importantly, the rebrand has enabled the company to streamline its marketing and narrative, so that the company can confidently sing off the one song sheet and clearly articulate their point of difference.

Following their landmark merger, Nine Entertainment Company needed to unite their new brands and staff together in one place. For our team, this was an opportunity to shape the future workplace of Australia’s largest media player. 

The new building was set to connect television studios, radio broadcasters, historical print publications, digital sites and video streaming platforms under one roof. 

We developed a bold graphic and signage system to activate the space, connecting staff to the building, each brand, each achievement and each other, helping create a proud, unified workplace. 

Our design approach uses visual form to inspire navigational function. Inspired by Nine Entertainment’s original brand mark, we deconstructed their iconic logo to develop an elegant line and dot device. 

By playing with form, scale and materiality, the device is adapted to a wide range of visual and functional uses across the workplace. From the floor-to-ceiling level identification to the construction of signage and flexible magnetic tags on directory maps and the design of simple pictograms and wayfinding it is present throughout the system. 

The environmental graphics are intended to be the primary driver of the workplaces unified vision. By extending the line and dot motif from a graphic device that is minimal and considered, yet iconic, the graphics are a seamless extension of the interior design. 

A set of Graphic Guidelines specifying sizes, materiality, and considerations for choosing imagery help the client achieve visual consistency and allow them to unroll a rich and inspiring tapestry of their accomplishments. 

Along corridors, signage, lobbies and lifts – the bold graphic treatment reflects the gravitas of the new company, helping create a proud and unified working environment for the brands and people that are shaping the Australian media landscape, now and into the future.  

Sydney Airport had a vision to make Sydney proud every day. It needed a new direction and positioning for its brand to help reaffirm and communicate its position in an evolving transport tourism industry.   

Sydney Airport is a gateway to the city and to the world. An extension of Sydney, it’s a first impression, a last memory and all the human stories in between. We repositioned the brand from Sydney Airport to Sydney’s Airport, to embrace what it enables – humanity, warmth, energy and optimism. 

We modernised the existing airport code logo using bolder, more contemporary letter forms. Built around typography, the visual identity is brought to life using colour, pattern and natural photography that captures the spirit of Sydney and enhances the emotive response to the brand. 

“Sydney is not one thing. It’s an international city, a cultural melting pot, an unmistakable landscape – it’s aglow with light and energy. Our ambition was to connect the world to that Sydney feeling – that transformation that happens, the emotions we feel and the experiences we enjoy and return to time and time again.”  

Frost* Group Executive Creative Director, Ant Donovan.

The graded logo suggests luminescence and movement, while the large colour palette speaks to Sydney’s vibrancy and diversity. We wanted to celebrate the brand’s offerings through the lens of Sydney’s unmistakable landscape, conjure a sense of place and make Sydney proud.

The messaging framework, “From want to need, from paddock to plate, from today to tomorrow”, communicates the breadth of airport services, such as tax-free shopping, food and parking, while the emotive tone of voice captures the joy of travel.

"Our brand has been very corporate in the past and our Centenary provided the ideal timing to re-set. We’re thrilled with the work from the team at Frost* and look forward to rolling it out across multiple touchpoints.”  

Geoff Culbert, Sydney Airport CEO

The Australian National Maritime Museum is Australia’s national centre for maritime collections, exhibitions, research and archaeology, located in Sydney’s Darling Harbour. In a drastically changing landscape, potent competition, decreasing funding and heightened visitor expectations, the Australian National Maritime Museum was at risk of becoming anachronistic in this new experience economy.

Against this backdrop of declining support in public funding, glitzy attractions along the harbour front were increasing, thanks to a major redevelopment of Darling Harbour.

A series of workshops and interviews with people from all parts of the museum from the Chairman to the Head of Catering (over 450 people in total), unlocked the critical insight that visitors want an experience that connected them to the adventures of the sea not a detached lesson in maritime history.

This led to the brand idea of ‘The Spirit of Adventure’, where the museum would embrace a more dynamic position and engaging experience.

Our research revealed that the previous name was acting as a barrier to entry, as it felt very institutional and the word ‘maritime’ was largely misunderstood.  

To get to the core of what this place is all about and bring the strategy to life, we developed the name “Mu-SEA-um” to act as a more familiar and colloquial way of referring to the institution, making it more friendly and approachable, and reinforcing the connection to the sea. 

The vibrant colour palette, fluid logotype, photography and playful illustrations create an impactful identity that brings the brand idea to life across exhibitions, content, programming, digital and service.

22% of those who say they were unlikely to visit the ANMM in the next 12 months would be more likely to visit after seeing the creative. This increases to 65% amongst those who were already expecting to visit the museum.

“We’ve experienced a stratospherically bumper summer on the back of the new brand launch and our exhibition strategy.

Now operating on five continents, Frost* has helped OzHarvest create a robust and recognisable brand world, stemming from a clear purpose and strong identity. From its annual reports to events, supermarkets to its latest venture with Italian chef Massimo Bottura, our long-term partnership has enhanced people’s experience of the brand, offering a deeper level of understanding and connection.

The OzHarvest identity and annual report on a van has been recognised for innovation by awards institutions across the globe.

We continue to partner with OzHarvest today. It’s a privilege to be part of the story of a brand that is driving the social and sustainability agenda.

“Repurposing and reshaping the way we do things is core to the OzHarvest ethos. We couldn’t think of a better way to tell our story than an annual report on our food rescue truck. It has become a roaming billboard for our achievements and a proud centrepiece for our events. Frost’s out of the box thinking is exactly why we love working with them.”

Ronni Kahn, Founder & CEO OzHarvest

Our work with Qantas has traversed a broad scope of communication systems for a range of stakeholders, internally and externally. With the client on board with the notion of designing well-being, the team understood that productivity could be enhanced through workplace design.

The redevelopment saw a consolidation of seven disparate buildings into one campus comprising four buildings, connected and pulled together with an expansive glazed atrium. The new HQ represented a significant change to the way Qantas had previously operated. The signage needed to create a connected workplace experience, helping to foster innovation, instil a sense of pride in its employees and offer a place for the company to proudly engage with clients and visitors.

To encourage interaction and collaboration throughout the four buildings our signage and graphics strategy put the user-experience at its core.

The process was complex. We started with diving into the worker’s experience, their needs and friction points. Based on this foundational understanding, we created concept designs for key sign types, staged detailed designs and produced documentation to align with the building works. The signage system is introduced from entry and continues throughout the campus and workplace floors across all four buildings.

Distinctive signage that serves to guide users around the new campus effectively, empowering staff and instilling in them a new sense of pride.

The signage includes large-scale, illuminated letterforms that identify campus buildings simply and elegantly. Based around the idea of a ‘journey’, forms are soft, organic and contemporary, with curved edges.

An elegant and restrained materials palette was used, including frosted acrylic perspex and satin-finished, anodised aluminium. Aluminium frames encase frosted acrylic sheets, in-turn illuminated by a matrix of LEDs sitting below the surface.

How do you create a modern workplace that facilitates collaboration and wellbeing for one of Australia’s biggest financial institutions? In partnership with architect firm Woods Bagot, we had the unique opportunity to transform NAB’s office experience across their two new state-of-the-art facilities.  
 
Parramatta Square and Wynyard Place each have a unique identity, interior palettes and complex architectural design, but together they are paving the way for the bank’s future workforce, where over 6000 employees are empowered to choose where, when and how they work in more effective and collaborative ways. 
 
Our challenge was to design a signage, graphics and wayfinding system that would not only integrate with each workplace’s distinct interiors but foster meaningful connections – between teams and across both locations – to unite the future of NAB’s Sydney Campus.

With both buildings home to complex, multi-storey and adaptable layouts, we mapped detailed user journeys to guide our wayfinding and spatial strategy, one that would enable connections between people and place no matter where they chose to walk or work.  
 
We looked beyond functional signage and graphics to activate NAB’s boldly open working culture and soon found our stairway to connection – weaving the red thread of each building’s iconic central staircase to unite the two workplaces.

We constructed sculptural signage from the staircase’s folded aluminium sheets along with environmental graphics to wrap around each wall, weaving the red holo-graphic language between lobbies, corridors and key-decision points – both a helpful wayfinding tool and a consistent brand experience across both workplaces. 
 
As part of NAB’s new wellness scheme, we also created a set of bespoke pictograms for multifaith, wellbeing, all-gender and consultation spaces. 

The result is a unified NAB Sydney campus fit for the future of agile work. A place where staff are empowered to be bold, proud and connected.