we love to design posters and it’s always fun to pull out designs from several years ago and see how they’re wearing. since we’re currently working on the promo material for the boys’ & girls’ brigades youth event ‘firm foundations’ next year, we dug out a poster from a previous year. this dates from before our redesign of the firm foundations logo (and from before our bb rebranding too) but it remains one of my favourite pieces of work.
website to compliment the visual identity and promotional material we designed for west yorkshire community chaplaincy. the brief requested a simple design that gave priority to provision of information plus ease of use for wyccp staff who handle the updates. the site is driven by a content management system with training delivered on site at wyccp’s offices in leeds. visit it at www.wyccp.org.uk
i’ve been meaning to blog about the creative diplomas since the creative coast event in september. a post on this blog highlighting the government report on education for creative industries got me thinking again, so here’s my thoughts on the idea…
a quick intro to the diplomas first: it’s a national scheme in which local education authorities apply to run specialised diplomas for gcse age pupils instead of the traditional qualifications. given the scarborough borough’s existing creative and digital scene and existing creative strengths within local schools, it was decided that the borough would first apply for creative diplomas. in addition to core subjects such as maths and english, students will be able to create a mix of projects that encompass and combine various creative skills. i would have loved to learn this way when i was at school.
this is exciting for the creative industries in scarborough as it provides a near seamless route from secondary school through college, university and into the creative industries. it’s almost the final piece in the jigsaw puzzle as we already have great creative courses at yorkshire coast college and the university of hull scarborough campus. with creative coast we’re trying to facilitate meetings between these establishments and local practitioners to provide a mentoring scheme. add the incubator units in the creative industries centre (opening 2008) and scarborough is looking at becoming a perfect place to study and start a creative business.
so what’s the catch? well in return for having this new generation of savvy creatives in the town, the schools will need a fair bit of input from creative professionals – in providing input to course content and offering workplace experience for teachers and students. and most of this will have to be given for free.
there are two problems with this: the majority of scarborough’s creative scene is made of individuals, and the first issue is that many work from home – that pretty much rules out work placements. the second is that when you work on your own, finding time to give away for free can be difficult – every hour you spend with a work placement or in a school is an hour you don’t earn a wage and contrary to popular belief, most self-employed creatives don’t really earn that much.
if the creative diplomas is to work, it’s going to require some creative thinking to overcome physical obstacles, some learning about the nature of creative businesses from the schools and some real generosity on behalf of local creatives.
and i do think creatives need to be more generous, particularly those who do manage to make a living doing what they love. i’m reminded of a conversation a couple of years back at yorkshire coast college. i’d been working with some students on the graphic design course and myself and a representative from another local creative business were asked if we’d mind coming in to talk to some assessors. for some reason he saw this as an opportunity to slag off the standard of students in general and declared that his business would never employ students fresh out of college as they ‘weren’t up to speed’. instead they always advertised outside of scarborough and only within the industry. i suggested that it was businesses job to take students and teach them how to apply their skills in the workplace but my argument fell on deaf ears. i was embarrassed that another local company would not only declare this opinion in front of assessors at their local college, but that they even thought it at all. if everyone thought like this how would anyone ever get their first break? did he not remember his first job and how someone generously taught him?
i hope that he is very much in the minority in scarborough – on gut instinct and the evidence of the people i’ve met through creative coast i’d suggest he is. so creatives of the north yorks coast, it’s time to put your mouth where your money is and open your doors and your hearts to a future generation of creatives. it could be the best investment you ever make. it’s unlikely you’ll make any money out of it, it will probably cost you money – but there’ll be a lot of grateful young people as a result. that’s time well spent in my book.
domestic abuse services are a north yorkshire-based organisation providing a lifeline to victims of domestic abuse, both women and men. we were invited to refresh their logo earlier in the year when they changed their name to reflect a wider spectrum of services. we are pleased to announce we shall be working with them providing both graphic design and copywriting to develop a strong communication approach for the organisation.
the lead-up to the ‘your town, your future’ event seemed a bit of a headlong rush, not least ‘cos i was on holiday the week before and there’s always a sense of gathering momentum as you make plans for being absent for a week, ideally plans that don’t involve having to touch a computer whilst on holiday (which i happily achieved). add to this pressing print deadlines and it makes a busy pre-holiday couple of weeks.
working to the brief for the publicity material, the emphasis was on the drama performance and marketplace when in fact there turned out to be lots more happening too – stuff we’d have dearly loved to promote if only we’d known about it. the turn out to the event was perceived to be a success with over 800 people attending but i bet we could have got a few more down had we had chance to promote the cultural entertainment on offer.
there were some grumblings that the drama performance wasn’t a local production – that strikes me as a very fair complaint when you consider the huge wealth of experience we have in the town in both playwrights and performers. fortunately there was some great local stuff happening on the beach thanks to create who had curated an afternoon of good things including music, poetry performance and some wonderful hit-and-run (at least that’s what i call it) performance from rounders – the stephen joseph youth theatre. we were looking for a good photo of the banners we designed and my favourite has to be this [top of page] of some strange alien creatures gathered in front of a banner on the harbourside.
above is a sand drawing taking form on the beach on the saturday, coordinated by beam [little known fact: scarborough was previously a holder of the world record for the world's largest sand painting, it was eclipsed in june of this year] and below is james’s much acclaimed nighttime photo of the harbour, here being used as a backgdrop to the renaissance friends stand. all photos from the forthcoming issue of renaissance news.
as promised yesterday. brochure design here, leaflet and invite here. again, apologies for our photoshopped images rather than real photos – we don’t often get chance to photograph stands in use. above: 5 panel stand pop-up stand; below: roller stands for use as part of larger display or where a smaller presence is required. the stands are designed so the background image runs continuously when placed together.
beverley will host the pre-premiere of two surf films in a surfers against sewage fund raising event which i am really looking forward to. step into the realm by swansea based film-maker tim davies and nine hundred miles by local man-of-many-talents oli banks. you may have seen oli at various music events playing his beautiful acoustic folk alongside stand-up bass player tom watton but you may not have known that he is also an excellent film-maker and surfer, even winning a nationwide competition on www.surfcore.co.uk. this film is the culmination of 10 years work by oli who has been a regular feature at various breaks up and down the coast with his watercam, floating about in the lineup. to take a look at his competition winning film ‘my mate mark’ see www.virb.com/899prod. there will also be an official scarborough premiere which i will also be going to.
also check out the work of dseven who designed this poster on www.flickr.com/photos/dseven/
electric angel design studio, scarborough, north yorks uk
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