Our visual identity

The story

Our department has a long history of working on land and sea, alongside those that live, work and care for these places. We recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land and sea on which we work, and are committed to integrating this recognition into our everyday business.

A significant step towards this is to reflect the connection between DAF and the Traditional Owners in our visual identity.

The seed of inspiration

In 2020, we commissioned artwork by Indigenous artist Shara Delaney to represent the department and the important connection we have to land and sea, as part of our NAIDOC celebrations.Shara used circles to represent community, people or place, as well as our five business areas: Agriculture, Biosecurity, Corporate, Fisheries and Forestry.

Paying homage to country, Shara used the colours of sea and earthy tones for mother earth. The design of her artwork represents the work of DAF in connection with the Traditional Owners and features elements of water, fish, people, land and forestry, along with red ochre colours to represent agriculture.

With a strong story of connection, it seemed natural for us to use this artwork as the inspiration for our new visual identity.

The end result

Using connection shapes and a colour palette inspired by Shara, our visual identity reflects both the elements of country and our connection to it. Inclusion of a section of Shara’s original artwork within the connection shape at times emphasises this relationship.

Songlines are used to link together other elements, reflecting the origin of songlines as paths that cross country to link important sites and locations. The songline graphic in our visual identity is inspired by those found in Shara’s original artwork.

DAF acknowledges the intellectual property of Shara Delaney in our visual identity, and thanks her for allowing elements of her artwork to be used to represent our connection with land and water.