Creative Circle: Corey Battersby and Hugh Opie
Campaign Brief has asked two up and coming creative thinkers from the Perth industry to highlight recent great work that caught their eye from both our local WA industry and internationally. Creative Circle contributors are Corey Battersby (above left) and Hugh Opie (right).
Corey Battersby
The Brand Agency
Designer
WA: Let’s talk about craft.
We’ve built a culture obsessed with filling every space and saying more, where restraint can feel almost uncomfortable. Great design is less about adding more, and more about knowing how to strike the right balance.
The WA Ballet 2026 program created by Hypnosis embraces that tension so beautifully.
The photography is dramatic and otherworldly, and there is so much confidence in that beautiful hyper-saturated type treatment, as if every detail was intended that way. I am in love with the program design and the punchy headlines. Love!
Although it’s been out for a while now, this is hands-down one of my favourite projects to come out, and I’ll be gunning for it to take home a PADC Gold Skull this year. It’s great to see our local talent pushing for beautiful craft.
International: In a fiercely competitive retail environment, forward-thinking brands are differentiating by leaning hard into brand world-building. Few demonstrate this better than Gentle Monster.
Fantastical creatures, avant-garde aesthetics and alternate universes, this South Korean eyewear brand has built a world of its own. Their recent 2026 Veggie Collection transforms vegetables into high-fashion objects of desire with a bizarre surrealist film that is oddly satisfying to watch and a whimsical cast of characters called ‘Veggimon’.
Gentle Monster doesn’t want you to buy anything. In fact, they hire ten times more spatial designers and architects than product designers to build immersive museum-like stores around the world. They have turned their adorable mascots into large-than-life plush ‘pop-up’ farms and viral collectible keychains, creating a social currency that money can’t buy.
The real success of Gentle Monster’s world-building is that it can reach people who were never going to visit the physical space, like you. They can attract non-luxury buyers too, like me. I bought a pair in Seoul, and I have never owned anything luxurious before. No regrets!
Hugh Opie
Freelancer and 2026 AWARD School graduate
WA: The seafood aisle is usually packed with ocean blues and generic sustainability badges. But Bonfire tore that up for Skull Island Prawns and went full heavy metal. They turned what could’ve been a mundane brief into an absolute mosh pit. It’s one thing for an agency to come up with something this unhinged; it’s another to find a client brave enough to buy it. This kind of creative absurdity is exactly what our local industry needs. I never thought a guitar-wielding prawn would sway my dinner choices, but here we are.
International: I am not the biggest soccer fan, but during the World Cup I sure sounded like one. What saved me from getting exposed for having zero ball knowledge? Reddit.
That’s why Mischief’s ‘People Are the Best’ hit home so fast. Whether you’re pretending to understand offside rules, spiraling down a 2 AM rabbit hole to understand a TV show finale, or desperately seeking makeup advice from strangers, Reddit is where we all go to borrow other people’s brains.
It’s a beautifully simple, honest insight that celebrates the real human chaos of the platform without taking itself too seriously. So shout out to Mischief for the great ad.
