electric angel /design for life

ea win yorkshire forward contract

we’re pleased to announce that electric angel has been awarded the contract to design the brand and produce a website to launch the yorkshire forward project, renaissance friends. continuing our practise of collaboration with other north yorks coast-based creatives we’ve invited ross kendall to join us on this project. we’ll be managing the project and doing the design work, ross will be providing the website functionality.

renaissance friends launches in october at the renaissance reunion event in scarborough. so keep an eye out if you’re at the event, or watch this blog for when the site is launched.

september renaissance

september issue of the renaissance news is out (well has been for almost a week now). features some fantastic panoramic photography by james of the harbour and new lighting at night. you can pick up a copy or get one posted to you by contacting the renaissance office: 01723 341346.

we’re currently working on the october issue with tom, a student at scarborough sixth form college, who is spending a few days with us as work experience. he’s writing a special centrespread aimed at the new university students who’ll arrive at the end of next month – our working title for it is ‘chilled scarborough’ – not a reference to the weather, but to those places sometimes off the beaten track that are great for collecting your thoughts and just chilling out. we’re also amusing him greatly with our collection of 1990’s britpop cd’s.

south bay drama

i was witness to an incident at the site of the old south bay pool yesterday – crumbling seaside buildings, relics of another age when the english seaside resort was king, finally gave way and collapsed. several people were seriously hurt and the emergency services equipped with inadequate equipment struggled to rescue people from the smoke-filled wreckage.

this episode of the royal, itv’s 1960’s hospital drama will screened later in the year.

it’s kind of ironic to see a faded seaside resort reconstructed at a location where several years ago scarborough’s own crumbling buildings were demolished and replaced with a public art space. thankfully they didn’t collapse on top of anyone. the tv set is remarkably convincing and at first glance looks pretty much like the area did before the redevelopment. i imagine people enjoying a walk through the south cliff gardens must look down and think ’scarborough really ought to do something about that’.

photos below (taken on my phone, so not v good) of the set – click on the small images to see a larger photo.

god is a dj

today sees the launch of the new proost website at greenbelt festival. if you’re of a religious bent then we’d describe proost as being on the cutting edge of worship resources since 1997, if you’re not, then we’d describe proost as being an independent london-based record label catering to a niche audience. whichever, the proost posse are heroes and it’s been a pleasure to work for them.

the brief was to help relaunch proost on their tenth anniversary as they moved to the next stage in their evolution offering not just CD’s and books, but movies, mp3’s and pdf’s as downloads. they’re also on a mission to discover fresh creative talent with their ‘unusual suspects’ campaign and so there’s lots of stuff on there that no-one has seen before.

we invited gordon (aka scarborough-based sneakytrick) to work with us on this project and he should take credit for the clever stuff happening when you use the site. basically it’s an online shop with a slideshow as the main interface and a media player to preview audio and video. much of the content is available as physical products or downloads and there’s a cracking subscription offer that gives you access to all downloadable content for 12 months. it’s built in joomla! – an open source web application framework. we’ll blog more about the philosophy behind open source sometime soon, perhaps when we’ve shown you a few more sites we’ve been working on recently that were all built with similar technology.

i confess a vested interest here. a few years ago proost published a track i wrote on the cd ’spirit of the new’ and as a result it was also picked up by a publishers to go in a youthwork resource book/cd-rom. thanks jonny for spotting my badly produced original! so should you be interested you can log on at www.proost.co.uk and take a listen – it’s called ’spirit draw near’. and while you’re there why not take out a subscription…?

the mission continues

year two report for the mission partner project.

on a mission

one from the archives. thornbury mission partner project ran in the community in which we were based in bradford – it’s aim to try and find common ground in a diverse cultural setting and thus sow the seeds for a more cohesive community. these reports served the dual purpose of informing local people of the project’s progress and in attracting further funding from various charities and trusts. the project was successful in extending it’s initial thee year funding to a five year period.

scarborough’s surf scene

I’m not quite sure how to describe the surf scene in Scarborough, it’s unlike many other places I think. The scene in Scarborough mainly consists in the water, the same faces will be surfing the same spots when there’s a wave there. Outside of that it’s the occasional Secret Spot organised surf night (www.secretspot.co.uk) or long chat with Steve and Mark at Fluid Concept (www.fluidconcept.co.uk) or congregating on the North Bay early morning looking at a flat sea because that swell never arrived. It’s temperamental here, a swell can last one evening, it can blow flat within minutes and you hold your head in shame as you walk out of a flat sea. It can also be absolutely perfect, some well travelled locals say it’s world class here on occasion, and I think slowly the secret is getting out…

A weekend trip to Scarborough isn’t the chips and ice-cream affair of the past, nowadays it’s a drop by a hire shop, get a board and a wetty and spend four hours splashing around in the north or south bay kind of place, something we as surfers are all having to accept. We have to accept that more and more people are taking up surfing and look at the advantages it brings to us rather than the disadvantages. Yes, we’ll have to start abiding by the rules of surfing, we’ll have to look out for learners in the line up and we’ll have to accept that people will be in our way sometimes but also these people probably mean that Carl can keep doing a job that he loves (Bay Area Surf) and Mark can keep shaping beautiful boards for us all (Fluid Concept).

So for all those times we fight our way through 60 people in the north bay on a weekend there’s the times we surf it as the sun comes up with 3 other people out mid-week. In the end, it’s all surfing whether there’s 2 of you or 202, there’s loads of waves round here, enough for everyone to enjoy. There’s waves right now in fact…

sign of the times?

for as long as i can remember this row of shops on st nicholas cliff have been antique shops, very much selling a bygone image of scarborough – victorian postcards, watercolour prints of the bay etc. but i was passing the other day and noticed the bright coloured sign announcing a surf shop [www.bay-surf.co.uk]. there’s also a shop selling posh clothes for groovy toddlers.

sign of a new young populace in scarborough? the statistics say not but perhaps it is indication that a generation are playing a more vibrant role in the town’s life. the south bay seems to be busier every week with surfers, many obviously traveling here from the city. perhaps james might share some thoughts on how the local surf scene is changing…

‘god jobs’ or how to think like a great graphic designer

interesting interview with new york-based designer james victore courtesy of graphic define magazine – an except from the forthcoming book by debbie millman ‘how to think like a great graphic designer’. i particularly like his honesty in the following excerpt and his definition of the impulse to produce beautiful, pure work as ‘god jobs’:

The rule here is there are jobs you do for “god,” and there are jobs you do for money. I try to approach everything as a “god job”—lowercase g. At the beginning of a project, I ask, “What are we going to do, and how are we going to do it? How are we going to make a person fall in love?” And when we start getting questionable feedback about what we’ve done, we have to realize it’s not always possible to do the god job. That’s when I know we just have to get it done and get paid.

in the interview he also talks about the designer’s responsibility in the world to contribute to society. good stuff.

artworks – exhibition material

we design quite a lot of these things, but as they’re often delivered straight to who we’re doing the work for we rarely get them in the studio to take a photo, so please excuse the photoshoppery on this image. this is a banner stand as part of the new artworks identity.

[we're thinking of registering the phrase photoshoppery]