The Age arrived on Melbourne newsstands some 16 years later and, after some teething issues, had grown to be the state’s leading newspaper – and the city’s ‘newspaper of record’ – by the turn of the century. With a liberal, free market stance, it played a pivotal role in the evolution of the Victorian capital.

In 2026, The Age – with help from Right Angle and the University of Melbourne – is again wielding its broad-reaching influence and standing as a bastion for a progressive Melbourne to start a series of conversations about the city’s future. Melbourne Assembly will take place from 19–21 October at Federation Square and brings together luminaries from the fields of urbanism, politics, culture, education and science.

After helping to conceptualise, name and program the event, Right Angle’s creative team turned to this context to tease out territories for a brand.

We came enamoured by the bureaucratic grids and margins that dominate the way cities have long been spoken about: council documents, planning submissions, town hall minutes and formal submissions. Our research revealed order was the antidote to the chaos of the urban realm; habitat was being shaped in ring-bound dossiers and black and cream paperwork.

We’d found an angle but we needed a tall glass of water to balance our creative sensibilities. If one end of the citymaking spectrum could be so rigid, what sat at the other? Next chamber in the rabbit warren led us to the tactile, handmade, patchwork sensibilities of the printing press – an aesthetic tightly woven into even contemporary newspaper layout.

As we trawled through visual records of The Age’s early printing press (a beast of a thing housed first housed on Collins St, then Spencer St, before, like many of Melbourne’s residents, it moved further and further out through the concentric zones of Greater Melbourne) we stumbled across The Age’s treasure trove of photography. Photo journalists for The Age had documented the city’s story for over a century – why couldn’t they also paint its future?

This third direction stuck with both us and The Age and we began to move through a range of iterations. A two-font logo borrowed referenced the block lettering of protest signs that adorned so many iconic images in the archive, while a gentle serif represented the editorial authority that underpins The Age. An evolution saw the serif dropped and a dynamic stretch added to represent Melbourne’s evolution; when partnered with the brand’s signature neon green and The Age photojournalist Christopher Hopkins’ commissioned shots of contemporary Melbourne, an optimistic vision of the city was starting to rise to the surface.

As Nine’s brand team began to roll out event assets, Right Angle turned our hand to copywriting, ensuring Melbourne Assembly had a voice as confident, assuring and determined as The Age’s editorial output.

Tickets for Melbourne Assembly are available now for The Age subscribers. Right Angle clients interested in joining should reach out to discuss attending as our guest via [email protected].