electric angel /design for life

blue skies and green lanes in whitby

i always jump at the chance to pop up the coast to meet people in whitby. it’s half an hours drive over the moors [sadly the train line was closed in the 1960's] and on a crisp beautiful day like today it’s a very enjoyable journey – it’s a slightly different proposition in fog or a snow storm, both of which i’ve done in the past.

with clear skies and a warm winter sun i couldn’t resist stopping to snap the view on my mobile from the road bridge entering whitby which looks over the estuary to the abbey and the harbour below. it was also a chance to head towards the abbey and visit green lane centre for whom we’re designing a visual identity and signage. the building is still covered in scaffolding but the location is stunning – the last building on the road before some fields and then the abbey. these offices/studios and community training rooms will have some of the best views in england when complete. the building is a coast and moors voluntary action project and our initial task is to design a large sign for the front of the building – there’s a lovely blank canvas, so to speak, over the main doors and we’re putting together some ideas of how to make the most creative use of that space.

digital scarborough fringe

the ds06 fringe was an exciting mix of digital creativity – from documentary film to pioneer vj’s hexstatic via sonic art and digital beds. above and below are the fringe flyers we designed. the hexstatic page was blown up to large poster size and there was very nearly a scrap for it at the end of the festival, in fact we had to reclaim it to use at the venue.

oh yeah, the venue. we struggled to find somewhere with the capacity we needed, so decided to create our own… i’ll do a blog post on that tomorrow.

digital scarborough

digital scarborough in 2005 was the event that pulled me into the creative community of scarborough. i was invited along to a meeting sometime in 2004 and before i knew it was in the whirlwind of planning a showcase of scarborough’s digital/creative community. in 2006 we improved on the format and with aim higher funding via nybep we hosted a weekend of guest speakers [inc. matt locke, head of innovation at the bbc], workshops and a fringe of digital arts events curated by create.

after a break last year darrell from it & digital york has secured some funding and whole bag full of enthusiasm and ideas for a digital scarborough 08. you heard it here first [or maybe you didn't]. we’re pleased to announce that electric angel will be designing the promo material which will be out verrrrry soon.

in the meantime it seemed a good excuse to show off our flyer-cum-poster design from ds06. as a side note, it was james [who was a student at the time] who won a competition in 2005 to design the digital scarborough logo – a digitised version of scarborough’s coastline – and that’s how he and i met.

blogs, blogs everywhere, and not a word to read

phew – it’s been a busy week and there’s no sign of it letting up. but i’m overdue to comment on last week’s creative coast.

i think it was one of the most useful nights we’ve done and potentially one of the most valuable for scarborough’s creative scene. local creatives went away with brand new blogs and the know-how to use them, bringing the cc members blog tally up to 13 [that's pretty good - it was at 3 only a week ago]. and we’ve had more requests since – we’ll see if we can continue to gradually roll them out. ross gave out some good tips and advice and thanks to gordon‘s hard work you can view them via the new creative coast blog: www.creativecoast.net [there's more to be done on the website - we'll officially launch it in march].

james and i have new blogs on the creative coast site. i’ll be using mine to throw around ideas relating to the creative industries, the north yorks coast and other stuff that would clog up this blog were i to post it here. that was one of ross’s tips – define your intended audience. see, i was listening. a little more about what else we got up to last wednesday later in the week…

the wonderful north II

we’ve been blogged…

ea to design scarborough literature festival 08

we’re pleased to announce that we will be redesigning the visual identity for scarborough literature festival. this years event taking place 17-20 april is the second year of the festival and will see a fresh visual identity used across programme, display material and applied to the website. it’s a tight deadline but we’re looking forward to the challenge and working with the enthusiastic team at scarborough library.

[the above image has nothing to do with the festival other than i thought the blog had too much text and not enough photos of late. it's a quick pic of part of our bookshelves in the studio taken pretty much at random but yet manages to cover my passion for the british coast, rebecca's love of andy warhol and james' bemusement at my insisting we listen to wings.]

the wonderful north at creative coast

wednesday is ‘get blogging’ at creative coast. 6pm at cielo’s on sandside. we’re giving away free blogs and the training to use them but you do need to pre-register – just email me. joining us will be laura and bryan from the wonderful north project. they’re travelling around the north of britain discovering inspiring people and places and appropriately, blogging their journey.

design, ethics & soul [and public speaking]

got a couple of speaking engagements coming up. the first is to students in the school of arts and new media at the university of hull scarborough campus on the 4th february. i was a visiting lecturer there a couple of years ago prior to reorganisation and appointment of full-time staff, so although we’ve done quite a bit of design work for the university this last couple of years it’s a welcome opportunity to engage with students again.

the second is actually a two-parter, the first bit being a talk on 5th february at yorkshire coast college as part of an aimhigher project. it’s actually open to anyone who wants to attend, not just students, and is part of a series of free 2 hour events a little worryingly billed as ‘expert sessions’. so i’d better deliver something good… part two will take the form of a crit and perhaps some hands-on design and group discussion following a brief set in part 1.

at the college i’ll be talking about design and ethics and whether as designers we have a wider responsibility to society than just turning out the type of work we want to do. the starting point will be unpacking exactly what the designer’s job is and asking what propels some people to become designers – is it a simple career choice or a compulsion from within? hmm, deep. i’ll be showing some of our work and explaining why there are far more factors than just graphic design determining why something ends up the way it does. so folks turning up for that one can expect a design brief with ethical considerations.

at the university i’ve been asked to show our work with particular reference to websites in the content of larger design projects and some of the realities of running a business. inevitably when i talk about electric angel and the sort of work we do the ethics thing will be mentioned so i guess students can expect a bit of my soul-searching too. anyway, i’m really looking forward to both.

coast and moors voluntary action

one of our branding projects in 2007 was for coast and moors voluntary action – a new organisation formed by merger of scarborough district council for voluntary service and whitby & district voluntary action.

accessibility was of major concern in all aspects of the design, hence the use of 12pt sans serif text with strong colours on both the stationery and leaflet. the website, looked after by coast and moors staff using a content management system, also meets accessibility standards.

the logo was the real challenge to this job. there are several organisations using some variation of ‘coast and moors’ and almost all without fail have a logo that is a straight graphic representation of hills and waves. after leading a creative session with members and partners of the new organisation we chose to develop some ideas that took an imaginative approach and that have resonance beyond just physical location. the chosen design has been christened ‘the ripple’ and this is how it’s described on a framed sign that hangs in the organisation’s building:

picture yourself standing where the north yorkshire moors meet the atlantic ocean .
the sweet smell of heather from the dramatic hills, the tang of ozone from the sea spray .
you see the climb and swoop of the moors reflected in the rolling waves—creating a constantly evolving image of colour, movement and momentum . it is this image that inspired the ‘ripple’ device that is part of our logo . it symbolises the vibrancy, potential and motion that arises when people dream and work together .

goldsworthy at ysp

the last day of exhibition, good weather and a suggestion by friend and local glass artist rachel prompted us to make the journey to yorkshire scultpure park yesterday to see the andy goldsworthy. it was well worth the drive, albeit a rather noisy one due to a dodgy exhaust on the car.

although art galleries weren’t really part of my childhood, the sculpture park was a place we did visit as a family largely due the fact that it’s a pleasant place for a walk regardless of whether you’re a fan of large 20thC sculpture not. however, the most exciting work on display yesterday was indoors – four new temporary works by goldsworthy. the highlight for me was definitely ‘leaf stalk room’ – a screen/curtain constructed from horse chestnut leaf stems pinned together with thorns. it stretches the whole width of a large room and just defies gravity and belief that it actually ‘works’. i think rachel described it as ‘drawing in space’ – the leaf stalks look like ink marks just hanging in mid air. amazing. indoor photography was prohibited so no pics i’m afraid.

the other works – an upside-down-nest enclosure constructed from logs and branches, a room with the walls covered in gradually drying and cracking clay, a series of volcano-esque stone mounds with central holes and a huge pine cone shape of interlocking logs were also fascinating, partly because of goldsworthy’s aim to link the gallery with the environment outside environment but i also felt his work lost something from being inside.

an epiphany for me was seeing a goldsworthy exhibition [photos of work] at leeds art gallery when i was 16 – the first time i’d seen his work and the time in life when i discovered a sense of freedom and galleries all at once. i think what attracted me to his work was the fragility and temporary nature of it and the possibility/fantasy that you could stumble across one on a walk in the woods. although you were encouraged to touch the ‘pine cone’, the fragility of the other pieces meant a strictly ‘no touching’ policy and it felt a little like a false preservation. i wanted someone to open the side of the building and watch them gradually erode. that these pieces will be purposely dismantled and returned to nature seems to be hurrying along a more natural decay that is usually present in his work.

at the opposite end of the park, passing some new stone wall pieces along the way, exhibited works included painting made by trampling sheep, snow dripping through the carcass of a dead hare and the full width of building windows smeared with cow dung and a wavy line cleaned across the middle [pictured at top of this post from outside plus two young eager art enthusiasts, dylan and grace]. perhaps tempting ‘modern art is shit’ comparisons there was a sense of randomness and play with these pieces that contrasted with the obviously very carefully constructed works in the underground gallery. the cow dung piece was engaging and the blood and snow paintings rather beautiful.