The Tuongee symposium is an annual media event treating South Africa’s top media and advertising people to a special, collaborative two-day workshopping event. This year’s symposium was held two hours outside Johannesburg at a safari lodge resort. Playing off this setting and the jarring engagement of ‘business’ and ‘safari’, we created and gave a survival kit to the attendees of the function. The survival kit was dramatically entitled ‘The Quintessentially Metaphorical Field Guide to Humans on Business Safari’. Idiosyncratic, verbose and quirky, the survival kit armed the Tuongee attendees with the necessary tools to survive the unfamiliar world of ‘business safari’.
Written in a tongue-in-cheek style, the survival guide incorporates the pedantic detail of a Wes Anderson film with graphic illustration, dramatic writing as well as playfully curated survival products. The design of the survival kit and all it’s included elements mimicked a Scandinavian utilitarian instructional kit. Creating a modern take on the classic boy scouts survival kit, The Quintessentially Metaphorical Field Guide to Humans on Business Safari was designed with function at its core.
The illustration style generated a series of faceted, geometric designs, creating a wire frame of each element, thus speaking directly to the digital audience in a language that they’re familiar with.
The products include the quintessential social lubricant, Gin, which doubles as ‘Drinkable Mosquito Repellant’* (when combined with tonic water, of course); bees wax balm which fixes just about any skin disease under the sun and is thus fittingly called ‘SOS balm’, the essential piece of rope, used to play cat’s cradle or fasten a shoe lace, a flash disc of wonderful music entitled ‘Tune Stick’ and last but not least, a guidebook. This guidebook includes an animal personality test, sixteen animals and their personalities, a collection of relevant yet irreverent games and note-making paper at the back. The entire survival guide was packaged in a minimal birch wood box and was ultimately designed to guide the Tuongee attendees in their initiation into the wild outdoors. The items inside the box were set into a laser cut holding device, which also included the finer details of a map.
This guidebook includes an animal personality test, giving the recipient a good indication of their ‘business animal’, followed by sixteen business animals and their personalities, a collection of relevant yet irreverent word games, some quirky tips on what to drink, eat and wear, and note-making paper at the back.
Animal personality illustration examples
Credits:
Machine Agency
Jake Bester - Executive Creative Director
Gareth McPherson - Group Creative Director
Dani Loureiro - Creative Director
Gisele Human - Copywriter
Nicole Dalton - Designer
Kaeli Justus - Designer
Cassandra Leigh Johnson - Illustrator
Travys Owen - Photographer
Machine Agency
Jake Bester - Executive Creative Director
Gareth McPherson - Group Creative Director
Dani Loureiro - Creative Director
Gisele Human - Copywriter
Nicole Dalton - Designer
Kaeli Justus - Designer
Cassandra Leigh Johnson - Illustrator
Travys Owen - Photographer