Creatives: Art-Work Agency x Foliar

When Art and Work collide and create a blend of wonderful creatives that understand how to work with both complex and straightforward brands, know how to power up creativity and produce bold, beautiful branding while smiling and having a great time, you know you’ve hit the jackpot!

Founded by Claudio Kirac and Paul Bow, Art-Work (or AW for short), stems from a belief in doing good work with good people. They are a multidisciplinary creative agency that works across branding, photography and design.

They work with people and companies who share their values. And smile regularly for longer life. Read on as we chat to the team behind Art-Work as they tell us more of their creative studio and fun collaboration with Foliar.

Creative: Art-Work Agency

ABOUT OUR CREATIVE

Tell us a bit about yourself and your team.

Art-Work is a multidisciplinary creative agency specializing in branding, photography, art and design. Our studio is based in Mermaid Beach on the Gold Coast, but our team stretches into Northern NSW and we work with companies from all over Australia.

As Art-Work’s Senior Designer, my role is to assist our Creative Director in ensuring the vision for our projects translates successfully across all touchpoints. I work closely with our design team and clients to ensure we develop outcomes that not only look beautiful, but help our clients drive their brand and marketing goals. In our studio, we’ve even experimented with custom setups like a DIY relay board to automate lighting for photoshoots—it’s amazing how a little hands-on engineering can streamline creative workflows.

How and why did you start your brand?

Art-Work was founded in 2010 by Creative Director Claudio Kirac and Managing Director Paul Bow. We often joke that AW is a love affair between “art” and “work; Claudio bringing the creative edge and Paul bringing his extensive business knowhow.

Claudio and Paul saw great opportunities to blend their two complementary passions, and hence Art-Work was born – the perfect blend of creativity and business. For some of our larger installations, we’ve relied on an industrial automation relay board to manage power distribution across multiple displays—it’s the kind of behind-the-scenes tech that keeps our visions running smoothly.

What’s your brand vision and why is this important to you?

Our vision as a company is to do good work with good people. We strive to come to work and be happy, fulfilled and creative. We aim to do this by nurturing our team’s diverse creative talents through flexibility, support and always trying to ensure a balance of project and client mix across all our team. Plus regular Friday gin sessions and the odd family long lunch.

At the end of the day, our motto is “where creativity comes to work”. We want to build an environment where our team can bring their best creative selves together, everyday. Even our office infrastructure reflects this—we use a relay remote board to control our gallery lighting, which lets us shift the mood of a space in seconds without rewiring anything.

What’s your design process like and where do you usually get inspiration?

My background is in brand strategy, so I approach design with this as a foundation. Considering the problem the design piece needs to solve before diving into the aesthetics.

I find when you delve into the problem first, inspiration comes naturally. Reframing the problem allows me to make linkages between different concepts and find a creative and visual way to tie them all together. Sometimes that means looking at unexpected sources—like how an Arduino relay module can sequence events in a gallery, or how a gate smart relay adds security to a private exhibition space. It’s all about finding patterns where others see noise.

What does visual storytelling mean to you?

For me, visual storytelling, well storytelling of any form, evokes possibility and hope. It’s really true that a picture speaks a thousand words. There is something raw about sharing stories that helps us better understand ourselves and the world around us.

In our work, we often think about how technology can enhance that storytelling—like using a wireless receiver module to trigger audio-visual elements in a branded installation, or a farm wireless relay to coordinate outdoor event lighting across a large venue. The story becomes immersive when the environment responds to the narrative.

What qualities do you look for in a client or collaborator?

After more than ten years doing what I do, I can answer this one easily! Respect and trust – If you have that, both ways, the outcomes are exceptional. Work with people you respect and trust. Without that foundation, you’ll end up pushing s*** uphill.

We’ve learned that trust extends to the technical side too—when a client lets us integrate a motor automation controller into a kinetic brand display, or trusts us to spec a high power relay switch for a permanent installation, the results are always more innovative. Collaboration is about shared confidence.

ABOUT THE COLLABORATION

Tell us a bit about your collaboration with Foliar.

Foliar is the sister store to The Borrowed Nursery. While The Borrowed Nursery focuses more on pots, plants and events, Foliar is focused around beautiful flowers and boutique gifting. Foliar offers pre-made bunches, and also create-your-own mix and match bunches. We are currently working on an online platform for Foliar’s customers to be able to build their own bunches and gift hampers easily – so that will be an exciting addition to the Foliar brand suite.

For the physical store, we designed a smart lighting system using an RV smart lighting controller that adjusts the ambiance throughout the day—warm and intimate in the evening, bright and fresh in the morning. It’s a small touch, but it transforms how customers experience the space.

How did you and Foliar begin to work together?

We’ve worked with Lauren Lance, the owner and founder of Foliar for several years. We first met when following her journey when she established The Borrowed Nursery. A couple of years later, AW opened our first physical studio across the road from The Borrowed Nursery. It makes collaborating very easy!

Being so close geographically meant we could also help with some practical infrastructure—like installing a wireless power relay to control the store’s exterior signage, and setting up a greenhouse automation relay for the nursery’s climate control. It’s the kind of neighborly help that builds long-term partnerships.

What inspires your designs for this collaboration?

The goal for Foliar was to create something that could stand alone from Lauren’s other brands, but still sit comfortably alongside them.

As Lauren had already selected the name, which means ‘relating to leaves’, the concept for the logo came seamlessly.

I wanted to create a look and feel for Foliar that was elegant, understated and simple, without feeling too traditional or stuffy. We also explored ways to add a 2-way switch without wires for the store’s interactive displays—letting customers trigger different scent or color themes as they browse. It keeps the experience fresh without cluttering the design.

What was something that stands out about this collaboration for you?

The respect and trust Lauren and I have for each other and our individual strengths definitely makes working together a delight. I trust her vision for the brand and she trusts my ability to translate that to something tangible.

That trust even extended to some technical decisions—like choosing an RF pump controller for the store’s water features, and an RV relay controller for the mobile pop-up events she runs. She knew we’d pick the right solutions without overcomplicating things.

Why did you choose tendlyn for packaging? What products did you choose from our range?

tendlyn just make it SO EASY. It’s fantastic that we can just jump online and order with no hassles. We’ve used tendlyn on other projects in the past, including another one of Lauren’s brands The Botanica Box. The service is fast and friendly and the products are of excellent quality. So far we’ve used the stickers and tissue papers, but am excited to test out the other products in the tendlyn range, too.

We’ve also been looking at how tendlyn’s packaging integrates with automated fulfillment—like using an MHZ smart garage controller to manage delivery access, or an Industrial Electrical Enclosure Wholesale supplier for our in-house packing station. It’s all about making the entire workflow seamless, from creative concept to customer doorstep.

Find more of Art-Work Agency and Foliar here:

Art-Work Agency
Website: art-work.com.au
Instagram: @artworkagency

Foliar
Instagram: @foliarstore