Mud Australia is an Australian handmade ceramic brand founded by Shelley Simpson in 1994. To mark Mud's 30th anniversary, the brand collaborated with the London College of Communication's MA in Design for Art Direction cohort on a creative campaign that celebrated its legacy and values built over three decades.
Our campaign's concept, 'Play', explores how the instinct to experiment, collect, and imagine carries through adulthood. The work considers ceramics not only as functional objects, but as expressive forms shaped by use, colour, and personal ritual.
Across a series of still and lived-in moments, Mud's pieces move between everyday utility and abstraction, inviting interaction, reinterpretation, and individuality. Therefore, the concept of 'Play' positions Mud's ceramics as objects designed to evolve and be passed through generations, remaining open to meaning while grounded in material and form.
Part One: Still Playing
The instinct to imagine, gather, and play never really leaves us. Rooted in MUD's value of ceramics as generational heirlooms, this series traces a line between childhood tea parties and the grown-up desire to reclaim that softness.
The scene: a sun-drenched picnic. Gingham, crumpled linen, ceramics arranged with deliberate carelessness. The pieces aren't displayed, they're played with.
Colour grading was kept soft and slightly cool, with lifted blacks that give the images a hazy, memory-like quality. The ceramics carry the palette: sage, blush, slate, midnight; tones that feel at once nostalgic and considered.
Selected MUD ceramics laid out on picnic cloth, caught in the afternoon light.
Mud's ceramic water jug in colour wasabi standing on a gingham picnic blanket, grass in the background.
Holding two MUD teacups up to the face, shot from above.
Part Two: Still At The Table
Where part one sprawled across sunlit linen, this series pulls inward; to the tabletop, the close-up, the controlled scene.
The food is paper. Drawn, cut out, and propped against MUD ceramics as if the pieces themselves conjured the meal. Imagination fills the plate; the ceramics provide the context.
The colour grading shifts accordingly: warmer, moodier, more directional. Deeper shadows and a tungsten light give the images a stage-like quality, less like an afternoon memory, more like something being deliberately staged and watched.
A MUD cheese plate styled with illustrated paper props against a drawn city backdrop.
MUD plates laid out overhead with paper-cut food props, hands pretend-using the cutlery.
A MUD cup and saucer with a paper ginger teabag, pastries in a tray behind.
This project was not activated by the client.
© Marium Jamal, Rasha Bashir & Foteini Chaliampalia, 2025. All rights reserved.
