About Mude
We exist to create work that earns its place in culture.
Mude has the belief that better brands create better culture. Our job is to put more of that into the world, to bring culture into the work and raise the baseline for the brands we work with.
The companies we work with have something at stake. Usually moving upmarket, entering a new market, outmanoeuvring competitors, going through a merger or restructure, or struggling to attract the right talent. They’re problem-aware: they know the status quo is unacceptable, they have the budget to do it properly, and they want a partner who’ll tell them what’s actually going on under the hood rather than just make their branding or creative look more modern.
We want to be the destination agency for those brands, the companies that want to win the game of brand.
Our responsibility is to bring culture into the work, to lift the standard for the brands we work with, and in doing so, raise the cultural baseline for everyone. Culture is rarely created from scratch; but we do inherit it from film, from beautiful typesetting in books, from music and subcultures. Our role is to remix that inheritance, add something new back into the world, spread it wider, and ratchet up that baseline, so we all get to live in a world with better culture.
Sometimes we blur the lines between when things are about process, and when things encourage creative ideas. It’s easy to ‘method’ all the ambition and creativity out of a promising idea. It is important to have roadmaps and formulas to make sense of things, but be sure that method is only there to keep ambition accountable, and remember to always think outside the box.
Creativity and growth both hit roadblocks, and when things get stale, the way forward is to mix it up and try something new. Growth often begins outside the office: in passions, side projects, and pursuits that stretch us. What people explore beyond these walls makes them better creatives within them. When that energy returns, it carries fresh perspectives and learnings that ratchet the whole studio higher.
We take our work seriously … but ourselves, never. We always strive to be easy to work with, a little irreverent, sometimes unserious to the point of ridiculous, but always uncompromising when it comes to what leaves the studio.
We treat brand and creative as competitive levers. The work should always ask: how does this brand win, and how does it outmanoeuvre the competition? Brand strategy is as much business strategy as it is creative strategy, and the companies that already suspect this tend to be the ones that get the most out of working with us.
Part tastemaker, part cultural archive, made for all moods.
On our studio rooftop, we built Mood on the Roof, an international tastemaker live music series. We host diverse artists from all genres and backgrounds including rock, pop, soul, hip-hop, and folk. We aspire to spotlight exceptional talent we believe should top everyone’s playlist.
Our founder Ben Develin wrote for Mumbrella on what happens when dominant brands walk off the territory they built their power on, using one of the great brands of our time’s positioning retreat to explain the Liberal Party’s strategic disarray. It’s about positioning, not politics, though political brands have just as much of a positioning challenge as corporate ones. Nike, if anyone over there stumbles on this, we’re sorry for the very unfair comparison to the Libs. Read the full piece on Mumbrella.
New feature up on Mindsparkle Mag with a behind the scenes of our work with Full Proof, a sourdough doughnut venue in Potts Point. The feature covers how we landed on a chrome kitchen that leans into the precision-industrial identity. Read the full feature on Mindsparkle Mag.
New feature up on The Brand Identity. Our founder Ben Develin chatted with TBI to talk through the strategy and design thinking behind our work with Skyline. The feature covers how we positioned an OEM bottle manufacturer as a performance brand by anchoring the identity in cycling culture, and the visual decisions that followed from that strategic centre. Read the full feature on The Brand Identity.
Recapping our stripped-back concert at Mude Studios: Cyrus Villanueva, Ned Houston and Jim Alexander came through for an intimate set, running their new project, The Weekaway. The whole thing began with a simple plan: one week away, a remote Airbnb, a grand piano, and absolutely nothing to do but write.
NEW WORK // To celebrate Country Music Month we were tapped by Amazon Music to build the competition site that invited listeners to connect with the genre they love, and be rewarded for it.
Mood on the Roof began as a way to back artists we believed in. Five years on, we’ve refreshed the brand with sharper content, new art direction, and a system to help each performance go further. More soon.
NEW WORK // We rebranded Sunstrata to evolve their brand into something sleeker, smarter, and more confident—stripping away the clichés of the solar industry to build a sharper identity with real edge.
An unlikely partnership with Keli Holiday (1/2 of Peking Duk) and TV icon Karl Stefanovic butchering a cover of a Dolly Parton classic. So here’s something nobody asked for, but according to Channel Nine, everybody needed.
6x GOLDS from the Telly Awards for our work with Amazon Music, Mood on the Roof and our documentary in Tonga with SPREP.
Congratulations to the many creatives on the team for their sweep in the Telly Awards 2024 for their sweep of wins (including 6x Gold Awards) for our work with Amazon Music, SPREP and Mood on the Roof.
Out now — we produced 6x live performance videos with Dan Sultan, recruiting Julia Stone for the final single from his new self-titled album.
Proud to have multiple projects nominated for a Webby this year, you can vote for Mood on the Roof & our Amazon Original with Gretta Ray.
New music video work with The Rions. We produced a German Expressionist-inspired visual while The Rions’ take on the roles of legendary horror villains, Dracula, Wolfman, The Invisible Man and Frankenstein.
We’ve rebranded. After a couple of years of busy client work, we’ve found time to work on our (little bit neglected) Brand and bring it to a place that accurately reflects the team we are today.
We’re proud to announce a new national breast cancer campaign with BreastScreen Australia, which you can learn more about here.
The Mude team is in Tonga filming a documentary on the Volcano/Tsunami that rocked Tonga-Tapu in early 2022
Snaps with the PM walking into The Sydney Energy Forum, and getting ready for 2 full days of live streaming and photography.
Mood on the Roof is hosting its first international act, Benson Boone – live now.
Layered up for a mid-summer shoot in Kobe, Japan with Kawasaki
Todays office – filming in Victoria’s salt lakes with Warner Music Australia
Mude is in Osaka, Japan filming interviews with Panasonic Energy CTO – Shoichiro Watanabe