Midford has been making Australian school uniforms since 1946. Three generations have grown up in them. But the category treats its catalogues as price lists: garment on white, style code, size table, next page.
The 2021 edition marked 75 years, and the job was to make the anniversary count without turning the book into a museum piece. Our position was simple. A uniform is not a product, it is the thing a student wears every day of their childhood. So we made a fashion book, not a trade catalogue.
“Made to be worn” became the line, opening on a run that reframes the whole category: made to stand out, to make history, to take centre stage, to inspire a generation. We art directed and shot the campaign on location around Sydney, real students in sandstone quadrangles and schoolyards, in natural light, photographed with the attention usually reserved for editorial rather than a supplier brochure.
The 116 pages then have to carry genuinely dense information: thirteen categories, style codes, fabric weights, colour systems, full sizing tables. A wide display serif holds the headlines, navy and white keep the pages calm, and a sweeping navy panel separates image from specification. Numbered hotspots over the garment photography lead into macro crops of the details that actually matter, the twin-needle stitching, the fused lapel, the embroidered crest. Illustrated garment icons run down the margin as a category index, so a uniform shop manager can find the right page with their thumb.
The result is a catalogue that sells a 75-year-old range like something worth wearing.
Since 1999, Rollers has supported the projects building regional Australia. What began in Tamworth with a handful of machines is now a fleet of over 600 units working out of depots across New South Wales and Queensland, still family-owned. The problem was never capability. It was legibility. To a contractor scanning suppliers, Rollers looked like every other hire company, and what actually set it apart, wet hire with ticketed operators, audited compliance, depots with decision-makers on the phone, stayed invisible...
