electric angel /design for life

folkwood sampler …or what we’re listening to [6]

at last week’s suncourt film festival screening we were given a sampler from a new local record label set up by ollie banks who was performing that night. it’s comprised of three tracks – by ollie, joseph ellis and rowan oliver. and it’s all beautiful. ollie’s guitar and singing sound fantastic, the joseph ellis track is a lovely whymsical piece of folk-pop and rowan’s composition is an engaging blend of folky and contemporary sounds that reveals something new on each listen.

it’s often a mistake to make comparisons with well known artists, so we’ll just say that this cd fits in really nicely with some of the stuff we’re currently playing in the studio – matt deighton, neil finn, ben harper, the lilac time etc.

folkwood have a web presence linking to the artist’s myspace pages at: www.folkwood.co.uk

there’s more live music (from matt crossley) and film (zidane) tonight at the suncourt. and it’s the second rain-free sunny day in a row…

stir crazy in bradford

it was only the other day when chatting with some friends that i realised we’ve now been based on the east coast longer than in the city, which i guess makes us a bonafide north yorkshire coast business. without getting too self-analytical i think electric angel is a mix of city thinking and coast attitude so for me though there’s a sense that our spiritual home is still west yorkshire. so whenever there’s something happening in leeds or bradford that i can’t get to i start to miss the city.

at the moment i’m missing ‘stir’ – a mix of music, art and film happening in bradford city centre. the centenary square area strikes me as a rather successful piece of town planning, great for relaxing with a coffee or pint and contrary to bradford’s sometimes ropey reputation events in the city centre have a great vibe. this weekend you can check out some fab sounding stuff include ‘fresh milk’ – billed as ibiza on a milk float, and ‘this is not cannes’ – a premiere of specially comissioned film shorts screened on the large screen in centenary square. full details at: bradfordsummerevents.com/stir/

igniting the creative spark

more promoting artworks in action… we’re regularly called upon to design leaflets for events and training programmes. quite often there are follow-on events to advertise and reports to design so we’re always thinking about how a visual style might develop in the future even if we haven’t yet been commissioned to do that.

here are two examples of logos for artworks-run courses which required their own logo – simple one-colour designs that would photocopy well, retain impact and easily used by artworks on supplementary material but also make the most of colour when the budget was available. the ‘ignite’ logo is seen here combined with an image – the spark at the end of the match is part of the logo. the ‘rise’ logo is seen here against a montage of images from the first rise arts training course.

things to do in scarborough when you’re dead

…or just a little bored over summer.

summer east coast style kicked off with panache last night with the first of the suncourt film festival screenings. a dj set by rowan oliver of goldfrapp [very casual, delivered via ipod from a deckchair] and great live music from ollie banks plus double-bass and percussion [rowan again] preceded the evenings movie, 1970′s surfing classic ‘crystal voyager‘. we were also treated to a preview of ollie’s own surfing movie which is nearing completion. the suncourt is part of the victorian spa buildings which overlook the southbay – usually inhabited by the spa orchestra, holiday-makers enjoying cream teas and the occasional wedding it’s a criminally underused space at nighttime. but what can be better than sitting under a starry sky, looking across the waves into the distance and listening to some chilled sounds?

the space was set out with chairs and tables with candles, good ole deckchairs for relaxing in, a tent for the musicians and huge umbrella-thingies for the audience in case of rain. but it stayed dry and actually got warmer into the evening. the pics above make it look empty but that’s because ross and i bagged a table near the front and nearly everyone else was sat behind under the big brollys expecting rain. there were some great moments when the horizon in the film perfectly matched the horizon through the windows of the suncourt but the lens on my phone wasn’t wide enough to capture it

last summer was nicely rounded off in the suncourt with ‘acquiescence’ – a chill out night with dj sets, visuals and a lovely atmosphere [some very poor pics above] – here’s hoping the space is used for more events. all of this years film festival includes live music and dj sets, the other films are billabong odyssey, zidane and bladerunner [which i'm hoping is the now rather rare original version rather than the director's cut]. like, be there dudes or totally donut [sorry, seem to temporarily have picked up some californian/australian surf talk].

other stuff you really shouldn’t miss this summer:

totally tactile at the art gallery

scarborough jazz summer season – includes the always great jon taylor [1 august] and alan barnes & pat mcarthy trio [15 august]

beached festival [9-12 august] – 4 days of rocktastic entertainment on the south bay beach. beached has a knack of putting on names that will be big news within a month or two. hence previous years we’ve been treated to the libertines, kaiser chiefs, and the fratellis plus established stars such as the bluetones. this year the established name are alabama 3 and the exciting tips-for-the-top [according to the electric angel pop-o-meter] being grime/grindie name lethal bizzle and teeside heroes dartz!

acoustic gathering [16 september] – fab family-friendly day of acoustic music in gorgeous surroundings including chris helme and lots of local talent. we’ll blog more about this later…

mapping the journey [2]

the map was such a hit that artworks wanted to follow through the theme with their annual report. the result was a publication that masqueraded as an ‘A to Z’. dummy maps around the page edges suggest that the booklet is going to be full of maps but upon opening fully there’s the annual report text and images.

mapping the journey

the brief: ‘we want to share the journey we’re on. something attractive and interesting that people will want to look at. something different to the usual annual reports’. well for a journey you usually need a map, so that’s what we did. these half size os-style ‘maps’ told of where artworks were heading by theming their activities into 5 directions.

a snapshot of a year

annual reports are always a bit of a snapshot in time – a picture of where an organisation is and has been in the previous 12 months. it’s a little like a friend coming back from 12 months traveling and showing you the photos. fortunately artworks photos are always interesting and tell many stories. we took this theme for their annual report on 2003. the centrespread features a timeline to put all the photos and stories in context.

a creative break

an excellent night at the merchant yesterday evening. a good turnout for wendy’s survival guide for artists which brought the perspective of an arts commissioner to the topic. also an unbilled extra – questions and answers with matthew conduit of creative industry partnerships about the creative industries centre. and then just as things were winding down a second batch of incomers ensured we saw out the evening. it’s great that people tuned up knowing that there’d a be a creative crowd in that night. when stuff starts happening organically rather than having to be planned you know it’s really working.

hello also to liz from script yorkshire who came for a chat and might be starting something similar in selby.

creative coast is taking august off (although we’ll be just as busy behind the scenes planning the rest of the year) – we’re back in september/october with some exciting stuff.

big bruvver is watching

…at least that’s the hope if you’re a young person in care who wants to get heard by the powers that be.

artworks set up a day based around the ubiquitous tv show where there were creative ‘tasks’, a party and the all important diary room where you record your thoughts. some discussions with young people to whom the event would be promoted revealed that they were targeted with lots of info and flyers offering help or advice, much of it of little interest. they suggested that if something was to get noticed it had to be colourful and eye-catching and not look like the usual flyers.

the short print run led us to using a specialist digital printers [the always excellent abbey] whom we also asked about unusual cutting. as a die-cut wouldn’t have fit in the budget we suggested a skewed shape – something that would deliberately be an awkward shape and not get lost amongst the usual formats. this did the job – it’s always slipping out of any stack of printed material [our portfolio included] because there’s no right angle to anchor it with. the day was a success and we were also commissioned to design a report [in a traditional shape this time] to document what happened.

scarborough’s creative industries centre

one of the big stories in the local creative scene is the conversion of wood end [originally home to C20th literary superstars the sitwells, more recently a museum] into scarborough’s very own creative industries centre. situated next to the art gallery in a rather pleasant leafy part of the town it’s been interesting to see what was in danger of becoming a building at risk be transformed with addition of a new wing which will apparantley have a ‘living roof’. the centre will have office space, artists studios and exhibition space as well as housing the museums and galleries offices and stores.

today the centre manager was formally announced. so welcome to andrew clay [pictured above in front of the development], currently centre manager of round foundry in leeds who is leaving the big city for life by the sea. i suspect he’ll be the first of many as the buzz about the areas creative lifestyle grows. meanwhile the rest of us are waiting to hear about the centre’s charges. the consensus at electric angel hq is that if it has a better view than our current studio we might be interested… still, you can see the sea from the kitchenette where we are now, although it does mean leaning over the microwave oven – an elderly device that we share serious doubts about. we can probably merit the move on health and safety grounds alone…

a quick mention for the sitwells whilst we’re on topic. for some reason we had the above photo of the sitwells on the studio wall when i used to manage a design and multimedia team at leeds metropolitan university. i think it was there purely so we could enjoy the profiles. rarely is a family blessed with such a great collection and indeed variety of facial protuberances. the sitwells have been criticised for being such rampant self-publicists (they’d have been ferocious bloggers) but noses like that deserve as wide an audience as possible. hats off to them.