Iconic wanna-be-creative-megatron Studio Pip and Co. is morphing, making a costume change, moving up and moving on. To celebrate, the studio has developed Diamonds in the Rough at Lamington Drive, an exhibition documenting 20 years of printed ephemera lovingly (and incidentally) sourced, collected and treasured from Melbourne, Sydney and beyond by Andrew Ashton.

This lo-fi show promises to represent many years of picking up, design envy, putting aside and putting away. To some they are eye-catching junk-print, however to designers, each of these works represents – dreaming, favour calling, improvising, in-kind design loving, hours and hours, one-sided sponsorship, folio fattening, complex briefs, picky stakeholders, sources of income and immovable deadlines. Exhibited works are one massive name drop, including Emery, Tin & Ed, SouthSouthWest, Fabio Ongarato, Studio Anybody, Famous, Something Splendid, People Collective, Pidgeon, PSS, Round, Lancashire, 3 Deep, Vice Mag and back.

Diamonds in the Rough coincides with the release of desktop magazine’s 25 year anniversary Time Capsule edition. Guest edited by Andrew Ashton, Studio Pip and Co. created the theme, designed the front cover, the pull-out poster, and curated the 16 page visual essay of printed ephemera presented in this Lamington Drive exhibition.