this seemed an appropriate topic to blog on a friday afternoon. the ‘anti social’ drinking sign was a real fun project that scarborough borough council set us. a lovely open brief too - just come up with some ideas for how the borough’s informative signage could be made more fun. the probem is that most public signs have become almost invisible within today’s highly visual culture so if you still want to get a message across a different approach is needed. several previous attempts at this could be seen around the borough, all of which seemed to use badly drawn pint glasses. at best this is rather inappropriate as how many people do you see wandering around town with pints in their hands? (unless, of course, those signs were actually doing a very good job at preventing that…)

in some ways i’m a little saddened that clear, simple signs like the ‘ball games’ one above no longer do the job. maybe they’re over familiar. this particular one is set in ‘transport‘ - the typeface developed by jock kinneir and margaret calvert for the department of transport in the 50/60s. that’s the typeface you see on all the motorway signs, although sadly it’s often used in a rather poor way these days.

so, with a brief to come up with something more visual that just words and yet driven by a personal desire to let typography alone do the job we developed a series of characters out of letter shapes. the original incarnation of the slightly worse for wear fella you can see above was constructed purely from the ubiquitous ‘arial’ font (we’d have used ‘transport’ if we’d had a copy). since then he’s had a couple of tweaks, but much of the artwork is still pure fonts. there’s also a pooing dog and a vicious seagull in the same style so it’ll be fun to see if they eventually pop up all over the place like this guy has. the wording for the alcohol signs had to be phrased according to the law, but on the other ideas we also had some fun with the words to try and make people smile whilst they’re scooping up their doggy mess.

my son dylan points them out whenever he sees one - “look dad, it’s that funny man you drew” - so it’s at least catching the attention of the pre-school age group. although how anti-social you can be with a non-spill cup of milk, i’m not sure. we didn’t know it at the time, but these are the first of their kind in britain and our local mp robert goodwill has recommended to parliament that our ‘funky’ (his words) design be adopted nationwide.

-that’s the question facing a great many prison leavers. in HM leeds there are a team of people from west yorkshire community chaplaincy project to help with resettling plus issues such as drugs and reconnecting with family. we were asked to come up with a brand that had immediate impact and would work in the prison environment as well as in promoting the project’s work to the wider world.

colour was essential for posters to stand out on cluttered prison notice boards, but discretion was also essential and so the contact cards/flyers [shown above] are of a size that can be easily concealed in the hand or quietly slipped into a pocket. another dimension to the brief was that whilst the project had no choice over their potentially off-putting name they needed something that would convey their purpose - a brand within a brand if you like. ‘after prison, what next?’ was our solution - simple, direct and intriguing enough to encourage people to read on and discover that the project is multi-faith and with no agenda to evangelise.

the coloured stripes came out of exploring some of the imagery associated with the prison environment - we turned the negative repetition of prison bars into an optimistic array of colour. this extends across stationery, display banners and leaflets. we’re currently developing a content-managed website using the identity.

the fun thing about blogs is the little insights into people’s lives. now we’re not going to be posting our most intimate secrets, but we thought it would be fun to give a little insight into life at electric angel hq. so what aural delights are we subjecting rob (our work exp. student) to this week?

there’s always at least one aimee mann album in the studio cd rack. ‘whatever’ was her first solo album and has some great songs. some people think she’s a bit depressing - we tend to think she’s just rather wry. always good for sing-a-longs.

this was the first elvis costello album i bought. ‘mighty like a rose’ is equal parts tenderness and bile - he just spits the lyrics out in places. a lot of people say his earlier stuff is best, but i think this sounds fantastic.

i first heard this when bradford library had a diverse vinyl section and i would pop down on my lunch break - it had loads of classic stuff, most of it probably original releases but that was before i got too geeky about things like that. anyway, i didn’t ‘get’ soft machine then, but now i think this is wonderful. that said, this is the nearest to prog-rock we get in the studio thank goodness - unless you count radiohead.

scarborough seems to be challenging preconceptions a lot these days. as with last summer one of the open-top buses that rund between the two bays bears the legend ’scarborough - a university town’. ‘the university of scarborough?’ i hear you cry, ‘we haven’t heard of that one’. well before you start looking it up in the league tables it’s actually the university of hull (who do very well in the league tables) who have a campus in scarborough. it’s home to many of their arts, computing, business and coastal studies courses and has a beautiful location on filey road, not far from the clock tower end of the south cliff esplanade.

there are lots of interesting facts about scarborough campus - it’s the uk mainland’s first fully wifi’d campus, craig gaskill is the uk’s youngest dean and it was here that the uk’s first centre for internet computing was founded. i was invited to be a visiting lecturer on the digital arts course between 2004-6 which i enjoyed very much - the vibe on campus is great (have a look at their on the edge series).

at the start of this university year several of the courses in the faculty of arts combined with the centre for internet computing to form a new school - the school of arts and new media. it will be fascinating to see the work that comes out of this flux where computer scientists and perfomers collaborate on projects.

we were comissioned to develop a visual identity for the school. above are the first fruits if this - an A6 flyer printed with a high gloss varnish. there wasn’t time to source new images but the university provided photos taken from student projects and performances over the last couple of years. we liked the idea of an identity which pushed these often disparate images together in various configurations with a constant typography holding it together. we chose rich colours to try and get a feel of an immersive environment. some of the images were only lowish resolution but we deliberately used them to let the pixels show - usually a cardinal sin but it seemed highly appropriate given the subject matter.

we’ve since produced some banner stands on the same theme. it would be great to animate this identity - i can picture the column images sliding against each other and constantly changing - in web media you could let the user choose which images worked together and thus customise the identity to their liking.

the yorkshire.geekdinner.co.uk blog is now live. check it out for a pic from last friday’s get-together: a joint university of hull, science city york and creative coast do. there’s a also a shot from last wednesday’s ‘bangers and mashed’ which followed the creative coast ‘creativity swapshop’ event (more of which in a later post says rebecca).

some of the work we’re commissioned to do is about selling an image - that’s often quite easy if it’s a positive image that people want to believe in or buy into. but challenging an accepted image is more of a challenge. a series of leaflets, banner stands and development plan for Hull Lighthouse Project was one such challenge.

lighthouse work with prostitutes, providing a listening ear, a warm cuppa and contraceptives on a night, building friendship and offering to help the women deal with the issues that force them into prostitution. lighthouse consciously use the word prostitute when talking about their work - ’street worker’ and other titles just soften the issue.

one of the phrases that came up in conversation was about the labeling of women and how lighthouse aim to see beyond that to the person - the mother, the school-age girl, the abused ‘girlfriend’ who is trapped in a never ending spiral of being used for sex, using drugs to numb the pain and having to go back on the streets to pay for the drugs.

we developed the label theme across a range of leaflets aimed at potential volunteers and funders plus small contact cards that could be handed out to the women. for the images we took grainy photographs of discarded clothing and replaced the manufacturers labels with hard-hitting statistics from lighthouse’s work. these contrast with positive quotes from women who have been helped by the project. all the material is printed on uncoated card which gives flat non-glossy colours and an honest texture. a development plan was in an A5 card wallet format constructed from a thicker weight of the same card enabling inserts to be included and replaced as needed with the images, and thus the message, featured throughout.

client cards were produced to hand out to women on the streets - in contrast to the leaflets aimed at the public these carry only positive quotes and the message ‘we won’t label you’. there were several considerations to the design - it had to be small (ie. easily hidden) and durable but also be aware that card is likely to get torn up as roaches for joints. the budget didn’t stretch to an alternative material so we tried to compensate by having the phone number printed large and repeated so it stands more chance of survival. there’s a flipside to the alternate use for these cards - if something is useful it will be kept and so stands more chance of being around at a crucial moment.

went to the launch for this yesterday evening including a presentation by nynet. sounds fantastic - initially into the business park and then resale possibilities to roll out high speed broadband for commercial and domestic customers. the council have really snatched at an opportunity with this and put us at the top of the list for north yorkshire - not only will it put us on an equal footing with the uk’s major cities, it will put us way ahead of many places much larger than scarborough. it was interesting to hear how similar projects in the usa have had an incendary effect in the rural economy. the next step is to see if there’s the take-up in order to put it into action - let’s hope the likes of pindar sign up for this so the whole town can benefit.

this post is not quite as dull as it sounds as we need a new table and chair for when rob, our work experience student from the HND graphics course at yorkshire coast college starts next week. which is quite exciting - he’ll be with us up until easter. so although it’s a necessary evil visiting this temple of swedish pine and plastic (if we want a table that matches our others), who can resist goodies such as this square frog thing?

ok, i can. 
what are the people at ikea thinking? it looks like he’s unexpectedly eaten a large packing crate. do the swedes subject their offpsring to these slightly disturbing items of childrens furniture or are they for the uk market only?

anyway, i shall return with table and chair only. and maybe some new bookshelves as the very cool but rather useless bracketless ones we have aren’t proving a good marriage with our crumbling victorian plastered walls.

and maybe a square frog thing. after all, it does fit in with the studio colourscheme.

this was what we were ‘working on’ in the tv clip. actually the job has already been printed but it was appropriate to have it on screen. it’s an inward investment brochure we did for scarborough borough council.

the brief was to challenge people’s preconceptions about the borough and tempt them into relocating their business to the area. the slant is lifestyle - yes, we have business parks and broadband connectivity and a fast train links to london just like a city, but…. we also get to live in a beautiful location on the coast, close to miles of handsome moorland and in a place stuffed with culture. hence the brochure features local business success stories, but rather than photos of the workplace they’re having lunch by the harbour, or walking along the clifftops.

the council asked us to feature it it as well as do the design work, so that’s why me, rebecca and dylan are in there at the art gallery and james is looking rugged on the beach with one of his many surfboards, although the south bay was like a millpond when the pics were taken.

we’ve probably had more positive feedback on this than anything else we’ve done. credit has to go to tony batholomew who did most of the photography - it was a pleasure to be able to work with such great photos. the brochure was printed with a spot gloss varnish throughout so the pics look their absolute best (nice work from adverset). it’s a few months since we did this now and looking back it was pretty manic, we didn’t get a lot of time to reflect on the design - it just sort of flowed and there was very little messing about. still it was fun to work on, ruth at the council was cool under pressure and very patient when our pc’s were slowly chugging out the artwork whilst the sun was setting on the print deadline. we’re really pleased with the end result so maybe we should work under that sort of pressure more often?!

thanks to those folks who got in touch to say they saw us on tv last week. we were interviewed in light of the government report on coastal towns that suggest many such locations have a problem with ageing populations - a combination of young people moving away for work and retired people moving in. apparantley we’re one of the exciting young(!) businesses in whom the town are putting hope. talk about pressure.

in the interview i said loads of good stuff about scarborough, creative coast (more of which in another post) and the creative industries centre that the council are currently building. unfortunately it all got edited down to a rather flippant comment on darby & joan clubs… if you listened carefully you could hear james smirk behind me.

still, they did manage to get ‘electric angel’ in big letters in the shot for the 5 seconds i was on tv.