Desktop Magazine’s Create Design Awards

The City of Sydney is an innovative place and with the upcoming trial of reverse vending machines we received a brief for a talking head video to raise awareness by explaining the benefits. Over the years, we had crafted a lot of talking head videos for City of Sydney… a lot. We cared deeply about the message of this project and recognising the strength of the partnership we had built, the time was right to push back a little on the brief.

There was an opportunity for this story to be told in an artistic way, leveraging the power of social media amplification to generate the desired awareness and buz for City of Sydney's trial. We created a giant 10 cent coin from recycled water bottles, towering over 4m tall, illuminated by LED’s, and positioned in front of highly trafficked customs house. It was a council message noone wanted to skip.

The artworks enormous scale and clear passion for craft caught the public’s eye, inspiring imagination and conversation, blowing up on social media both locally and internationally. Community interest in the initiative ultimately resulted in legislation to support the ten cent rebate on plastic bottles.

City of Sydney
Reese Geronimo
Joshua Flowers & Laura Ives
Yingna Lu

We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land upon which we create, the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation. We pay our respect to their Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.

Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.