PRESS RELEASE

Future Büro receives Grand Challenges Explorations Grant for Innovative Approach to Changing the Global Conversation About the Impact of Foreign Aid Investments.

Australian digital creative studio Future Büro announced today that it is the winner of a grant from the Grand Challenges Explorations, an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In collaboration with the British creative team Jack & Paul, the Sydney-based studio will use the grant funds to develop its concept for communicating the importance of investments that support global aid initiatives.

“We are truly thrilled to have been shortlisted by the Gates Foundation for a Grand Challenges Exploration grant” said Noel Wilson, Managing Director of Future Büro. “The opportunity it presents both professionally and personally is huge.”

“When Jack & Paul originally put forward the idea it was a no-brainer for us to get involved. The simplicity of the concept gives us great scope to execute it in ways which allow us to explore and play to our strengths.”

Chris Gillespie, Future Büro’s Creative Partner said “These kind of opportunities are very rare, where we have an extremely challenging brief, the financial support to make it happen and potentially make a big difference. Working with Jack and Paul has been inspiring and with the support of our Sydney team and our time with the Cannes Chimera in Seattle this month we hope to see the concept evolve into a fully fledged movement.”

Grand Challenges Explorations (GCE) funds individuals worldwide who are taking innovative approaches to some of the world’s toughest and persistent global health and development challenges. GCE invests in the early stages of bold ideas that have real potential to help solve the problems people in the developing world face every day. Future Büro’s project is one of over 80 Grand Challenges Explorations Round 9 grants announced today by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

“We continue to be impressed by the novelty and innovative spirit of the Grand Challenges Explorations grantees,” said Chris Wilson, director of Global Health Discovery and Translational Sciences at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “These projects hold real potential to help improve the health of millions of people in the developing world, and ensure that everyone has the chance to live a healthy productive life.”
To receive funding, Future Büro and other Grand Challenges Explorations Round 9 winners demonstrated in a two-page online application a creative idea in one of five critical global heath and development topic areas that included agriculture development, immunization and communications. Applications for the current open round, Grand Challenges Explorations Round 10, will be accepted through November 7, 2012.

About Future Büro

Future Büro is an independent digital creative studio founded in 2008 by Chris Gillespie and Noel Wilson, specializing in design and development of screen-based media.
Thriving on briefs which present opportunities for creativity and technical challenges, they have produced highly engaging campaigns for a variety of local and international clients.
In their few years of existence they have already been instrumental in a number of digital based initiatives leading to accolades at D&AD, Cannes, AWARD and Spikes Asia.
Brands worked on include: Virgin Mobile, Electronic Arts, Red Bull, GE, V Australia, Coca Cola Amatil and TEDx.

About Grand Challenges Explorations

Grand Challenges Explorations is a US$100 million initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Launched in 2008, over 700 people in 45 countries have received Grand Challenges Explorations grants. The grant program is open to anyone from any discipline and from any organization. The initiative uses an agile, accelerated grant-making process with short two-page online applications and no preliminary data required. Initial grants of US$100,000 are awarded two times a year. Successful projects have the opportunity to receive a follow-on grant of up to US$1 million. 

Digital Art Director

We are looking for a full time hands-on Digital Art Director to join our growing team. You will have 5+ years industry experience and a proven track record working for high profile brands. You will be a highly skilled, adaptable designer with a pixel-perfect eye for detail, You are passionate about design and technology and keep tabs on global industry trends.

You'll be working in a small team where creativity and craft is at the forefront of everything we do. Reporting and working closely with the Creative Director, you'll also assist in managing the creative output and growth of more junior creative staff members.

You will also be responsible for the quality assurance of projects from the start through to delivery, ensuring that the highest standard of execution has been met within the given budget and timeline.

Skills

You have solid conceptual drawing skills to client presentation level
You have a strong practical understanding of colour theory
You have excellent typographic knowledge and its application to screen-based media
You have excellent visual design skills and adaptability to brands
You know Photoshop and Illustrator inside out
You have a keen eye for photography
You have strong interaction and UI design skills
You know what’s possible with regards to designing for HTML/CSS Javascript and Flash
You are across the latest advancements in web design and design interaction
You possess excellent verbal communication skills to client presentation level
You are a team player and enjoy passing on your knowledge and mentoring more junior staff

About Future Büro

Future Büro is an independent digital studio with a reputation for world class design and technical expertise. We work with many high profile brands in the youth, entertainment, and progressive corporate sectors. We also partner with some of Australia's top strategic and creative companies. Our new studio facility in Surry Hills provides an open and collaborative creative environment.

You'll have access to a large pool, gym and jacuzzi for those times when the project work gets a little tough. The studio is bike friendly and we actively encourage staff to ride to work.

Get in Touch

Please send resumés and folio URL's to jobs@futureburo.com

We are pleased to announce that we have recently joined specialist production company Will O'Rourke as a rostered digital creative and technical partner. We join an esteemed group of artists and directors including, Shaun Gladwell, Steve Rogers, Revolver Directors, Stephen Pavlovic and The Glue Society. Having worked with Will O'Rourke on various projects over the last year it became clear that we share the same vision for creativity and craft and that Future Büro was well suited to join the roster.

Will O'Rourke has had some great success in just over a year of operation having produced NAB Break Up (for Clemenger BBDO Melbourne), NRMA Insurance Car Creation (for Whybin\\TBWA Group Sydney) and last month Nissan Leaf's Art Installation made of repurposed petrol bowsers (for Whybin\\TBWA Group Melbourne).

We are look forward to getting stuck into some challenging projects over the coming months.

Visit: willorourke.com

We are on the hunt for a full-time junior to mid-weight digital designer to join our team. You will have 1-3 years industry experience, boundless enthusiasm and natural creative ability. You will be passionate about digital and across new technologies. You don't need any coding skills but a practical understanding of what's possible is essential.

You will be working in a small team where creativity and craft is at the forefront of everything we do. You will report to the Creative Director but also will be mentored by more senior creative staff. You will have a can-do attitude and take a positive approach to every task.

The Junior - Mid-weight Digital Designer

You can draw
You understand colour
You can take pictures
You have a keen eye for typography
You like grids
You know Photoshop, Illustrator and designer level Flash
You are well versed with digital production and asset delivery to technical teams
You have some practical knowledge of designing for mobile devices
You understand what's possible with HTML/CSS JavaScript and Flash
You are across the latest advancements in web design and design interaction.
You have basic video/audio editing and optimisation skills

About Future Büro

Future Büro is an independent digital studio with a reputation for world class design and technical expertise. We work with many high profile brands in the youth, entertainment, and progressive corporate sectors. We also partner with some of Australia's top strategic and creative companies. Our new studio facility in Surry Hills provides an open and collaborative creative environment.

You will have access to a large pool, gym, sauna and jacuzzi for those times when the client work gets a little tough. The studio is bike friendly and we actively encourage staff to ride to work.

Get in Touch

Please send CV's and folio URL's to jobs@futureburo.com

We've added a few recent projects to our folio to check out. Working with The One Centre for GE, we've completed two sizable projects. The first is Imagination at Work, an online video platform allowing GE to communicate their activity in various industry sectors, and the second is a brand new campaign which launched last week, Two Words for Tomorrow. The initiative is a transmedia campaign asking Australians to describe the single biggest challenge facing the country's future - in just two words. Both these projects demonstrate ours skills in collaborating with specialist partner agencies and ability to deliver high class digital creative and technology solutions for one of the world's biggest brands.

The third project is for Virgin Mobile, in collaboration with lead agency One Green Bean. Virgin Mobile's Fair Ride for All is one our most successful projects to date in regard to campaign performance. The social treasure hunt website and m-site we created helped generate millions of Facebook impressions and far surpassed client expectations.

We recently picked up our first mobile gong at the Spikes Asia 2011 Awards for our work on the This V That iPhone App whic we created for TEDx Sydney. It was the only Australian entry to win an award in the Mobile category. The App was created in collaboration with WIll O'Rourke and the Glue Society. It was very much an experimental piece which took seemingly contrasting subjects and paired them together to see if their was any correlation between the two.

In its first week in the App Store it was listed as 'New & Noteworthy' and enjoyed over 30,000 downloads in the first month following release.

We have a full-time opening for an über talented PHP / front-end developer to join our team here in Sydney. The perfect candidate will possess great communication skills, a genuine passion for what they do and above all a can-do attitude. Under guidance of our Technical Director you'll be responsible for realising a variety of screen-based media projects for top tier brands like Red Bull, Toyota, Virgin Mobile, Coca-Cola Amatil, plus many other boutique entertainment, fashion and culture brands.

Skills required:

Essential:

– Minimum 3 years commercial development experience with object-oriented PHP 5 and MySQL.
– Strong JavaScript skills, including jQuery and/or other open source frameworks.
– Good knowledge of standards-compliant HTML5 / CSS3, with exceptional attention to detail.
– Pixel perfect build skills.
– Proven track record working on high profile brands.

Desired:

– Tertiary qualifications in computer science or related field.
– Knowledge of PHP MVC application frameworks (Zend preferred), including developing custom-built CMS or other applications.
– Experience optimising websites for mobile and tablet devices.
– Knowledge of social media platforms and APIs (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo etc).

Highly regarded:

– iOS / Android development skills.
– Experience with cool digital technologies(e.g. Open Frameworks, Processing, Web GL).
– Mad foosball and table tennis skills.

Please send CV's and portfolio website details to jobs@futureburo.com.

(Oh and did we mention that the studio has access to a swimming pool, gym, sauna, jacuzzi and shower facility?...)