Keith Stanley –
Pint of Science Team
Pint of Science
(Australia, 2020)
Artists in Residence
Hi, we are Keith and Nicole.
We are the artists/graphic designers behind
Pint of Science Australia and PintAUOnline. We are here to share our science art collaboration story!
Piyathida (Nicole) Kalamphak –
Pint of Science Team
What is Pint of Science?
Pint of Science Australia (PintAU) is part of a global community under Pint of Science, which is a movement to invite researchers to local pubs to present their latest discoveries & share their science. It acts as an exchange platform between scientists and the local community. In May 2019, scientists showcase their work in 154 locations across 19 cities throughout Australia.
PintAUOnline 2020
Due to the impact of the pandemic, our team decided to opt-out on hosting our events in venues. Rather than postponing, however, we chose to bring our events online. And so #PintAUOnline was created.
As the graphics duo, Keith & I were briefed to create something fun and to avoid a COVID-19 theme. Instead, we focused on bringing together and connecting the Australian Scientific community and our online audiences across the nation!
Keith originally came up with a sketch of Quintyn the Koala, a native Australian animal astronaut, sitting on a couch in space:
“I wanted to create something fun and different for Pint Online, so I started sketching down ideas and concepts. A koala in a spacesuit on a couch in space just seemed to fit perfectly for what is going on in the world right now. The rest of the characters organically followed from the Quintyn character.” – Keith Stanley
Quintyn Character Concept – finished original by Keith Stanley.
Keith’s Quintyn Timelapse on Procreate
Our PintAU team loved the idea and we decided to add more native Australian species into our graphics. Mind you, this all took place within a few days before promotion began (technically 4 days!). It was fast paced, exhilarating, but very rewarding. Here are Keith’s other incredibly cute native animals:
Pint of Science AU Online – Native Australian Animals in Space Theme
Once we had a theme, this is where Nicole jumped in to create the logo and layouts for our events:
“I really love the characters Keith created, so I wanted to create ways we could apply the characters but still keep a consistent theme across the various graphics mediums (website, social media, YouTube, etc). So, I created a custom logo and built a colour theme around the characters. I believe consistency is key to effectively communicate the event to everyone, both internally and externally. As designers, keeping this balance is one of our biggest challenges.” – Piyathida (Nicole) Kalamphak
By creating unified themed-layouts for the activities, PintAUOnline was able to host multiple activities under one umbrella theme. The audience found it easy to see that all these events were from PintAUOnline when they saw the characters and theme colours. For example, our Podcasts had the Platypus character, and the artworks were all applied in yellow. Whereas, the Reddit AMAs had our Pygmy Possum and had a Green/Orange theme. But they all had a cohesive feel and look. Keith also created a set of graphics in the same style to represent our usual topic themes.
Pint of Science AU Online – Video Assets
We also created video graphics and broadcasting assets for our Trivia and Panels events. Which you can still view on our YouTube channel. It was definitely a valuable learning experience for Keith and I. Since we hadn’t done it before, it gave us the perfect way to learn new skills and push our limits as artists.
Science & Art Collaboration
This national event would not have been as fruitful without the collaboration between artists and scientists. We were responsible for the graphics you saw, but an incredible number of very passionate scientists and volunteers were behind the planning and organising of our events (check out our crew here).
As artists, we share an incredibly similar sense of passion and drive for creativity like the Science community. We are very much interlinked. At Pint, we were both given a sense of purpose, we were driven by the opportunity to make Science more visible and provide a visual way to engage and communicate with our audience.
We want to thank Lifeology for inviting us to share our story! We hope to inspire others to take part in growing our SciArt community, through discussion and collaboration. We hope you have enjoyed reading about our experience in our roles at PintAUOnline.
We look forward to seeing you join, volunteer or become our next Artist in Residence at PintAU!
