Country Culture is a unique e-commerce platform. It provides a global marketplace opportunity for designers and makers from regional Australia to showcase and sell their high quality designs and products. Country Culture founder Angela Lavender commissioned Toben to create the brand identity, the brand communication & guidelines, packaging and web design to launch the business. The brand has to appeal to a mainly metropolitan contemporary customer base, whilst being true to its country origin as a brand that the largely country based designers & makers could identify themselves with. The website and packaging in particular also had to comfortably house a wide range of products.

Our approach was to find an strong loveable icon, that is quintessential to the Australian regional life, and loved by city-siders and country fold alike. It also had to be represented in a way that breaks with the stigma of 'country product' being crafty and without a contemporary edge. The logo mark features an Australian kettle dog which is a synonym for Australian regional culture. By adding the tie and glasses, 'Rusty' shows that he is as comfortable on the back of a ute as he is in the finest city store. This humorous and quirky approach helped to communicate the brand in an understated and loveable way. The additional brand elements underline the idea of the rural and crafted in a contemporary context; the unique brand colour ('neon rust') gives the brand its needed standout against some heavyweight industry competitors.

In its first year running, Country Culture has receiving fantastic editorial features throughout many publications due to a positive affinity with the branding. It has also been featured on one of Australia's main television channels and a production company is looking into using Country Culture as the basis for a TV series featuring Australian designers and makers. The brand successfully appeals to large age bracket and a wide demographic, and has received overwhelmingly positive feedback from the designers and makers who "feel incredibly proud to be Australian, and to be a part of this platform". Another unexpected and much-loved result is that the owner has since bought a little 'Rusty' cattle dog as the latest addition to her farm. One of the biggest complements we could imagine to our brand building.