Quintyn the Koala and their Iso-Friends

Keith Stanley (he/him)

Piyathida 'Nicole' Kalamphak (she/her)

Artist biography

Keith Stanley is a Sydney-based artist specialising in illustration and digital art. His signature style involves vibrant colours with influences from street art, comics, music and film, and his work has sparked the interest of musicians, tattooists, conventions, and theme parks. Keith has developed his own brand, Heavy Mental Art, where he sells paintings as well as designs for a variety of items including clothing, skateboards and ukuleles. 

Nicole Kalamphak is based in Melbourne and specialises in graphic design and branding. A multi-talented individual, she started out as a biomedical student before completing a degree in International Business. She is now studying Communication Design at RMIT University and designing for both local and international organisations. She has worked with clients such as the Victorian Multicultural Commission, the Australian GLBTIQ Multicultural Council (AGMC), and Digital Reach Asia, with the aim of creating graphics that embolden and communicate the essence of an individual community.

Support The Artists

Find more of Keith’s artwork on his website, or by following him on Instagram and Facebook.
Keep up to date with Nicole's work via her Instagram and website.

Artist rationale

In 2020, due to the impact of the pandemic, Pint of Science decided not to host events in the usual live venues. Instead, we rapidly moved everything online, and thus created #PintAUOnline. Within a very short timeframe (just four days), Keith Stanley and Nicole Kalamphak undertook the task of creating the artwork and theme for our new digital format. 

Given the difficulties of the year, Keith and Nicole wanted to create something fun that could bring the scientific community and the online audiences together. Keith came up with characters and icons, starting with a sketch of Quintyn: a koala cosmonaut sitting on a couch in space. 

“I wanted to create something fun and different for Pint Online, so I started sketching down ideas and concepts. A koala in a spacesuit on a couch in space just seemed to fit perfectly for what is going on in the world right now. The rest of the characters organically followed from the Quintyn character.” – Keith 

In addition to Quintyn, Keith created a platypus, a pygmy possum, a kangaroo and an echidna. These classically Australian animals featured on the various events (Trivia, Podcasts, Reddit AMAs and Panels). And thus our 2020 theme was born.

From there, Nicole created a logo and layout, combining them with the characters and distinctive colour palettes to create unified themed-layouts for each activity.

“I really love the characters Keith created, so I wanted to create ways we could apply the characters but still keep a consistent theme across the various graphics mediums (website, social media, YouTube, etc). So, I created a custom logo and built a colour theme around the characters. I believe consistency is key to effectively communicating the event to everyone, both internally and externally. As designers, keeping this balance is one of our biggest challenges.” – Nicole