james has been hand-drawing… visit his personal blog for more.

hmm, sorry for the pun. i’ve been invited to speak the launch of ‘creative craven’ on 3rd of july in settle. the idea is to launch a creative network along similar lines to creative coast but for the craven area. local creatives will be exhibiting their work and there’s a chance to chat over lunch. sounds like a good day, i hope some of our experiences with creative coast and bmedia before it will be of use. it’s also a nice opportunity to revisit a lovely part of yorkshire.

above is keynote speaker brian mclaren at the run national conference - more than this - last week. and behind him on probably the biggest flat projection screen i’ve seen are our graphics. it’s certainly the biggest screen we’ve had our work projected onto [and our work is currently being projected at local cinemas... but more on that later].

the brief for this job was to design some screens that would introduce the themes of the conference over three days and a constant side strip to brand the event - which is what you can see on these photos. they continue the visual and typographic style we used in the conference publicity material, natch.

photos courtesy of trefor at run. more available to view on flickr.

it’s creative coast whitby tonight 6pm at the shambles bar in the marketplace. all welcome. we’re kicking off with a ‘creative swapshop’ - bring what it is you do [product or service], and swap it for what someone else does. it’s good fun and of course, a valuable networking event cos everyone gets to find out what everyone else does.

after that we’ll be throwing around ideas to decide what creative coast whitby does over the next few months. if you would like to help shape the fledgling network please do come along.

if any scarborough types fancy the trip over the moors in search of swaps, give me a ring at the studio before 4.00.

the june issue of renaissance news came out at the start of last week but we were so tied up with enterprising britain that we’ve only just got round to blogging it. the centrespread, shown above, documents the opening of the rotunda museum - the latest renaissance project to achieve completion.

the rotunda is one of britain’s oldest, and probably finest, purpose-built museums and has just received a multi-million pound revamp to bring it into the C21st and restore it to its original purpose as a geology museum. it was originally built in 1828 to communicate the theories of william smith ‘the father of english geology’ - a character who has been somewhat forgotten by the general public but is one of britain’s scientific heroes. the new rotunda makes explicit the links between geology and oil and gas exploration as well as having plenty of dinosaur bones and fossils. i guess i don’t need to point out that james’s design for the centerspread takes its inspiration from ammonites.

photography of the museum and official opening by tony batholomew.

the essentials of life. or a summary of our programme for today’s enterprising britain judging.

obviously we want to win this thing so won’t be giving too much away just yet as to what we did but i think it went well. i helped present the initial presentation and james [representing graduates who stay in the town] came down for the ending. above is a photo of a photo being taken [how postmodern] of the judging team meeting local surf entrepreneurs including james [1st left]. judge, james murray wells, founder of glasses direct is sixth from the left.

we’re weren’t particularly nervous because we’re confident in the story of scarborough’s transformation over the last 6 years, but all the judges really helped by being down to earth and i enjoyed chatting with james and the others. i think they enjoyed their day in scarborough even if we did try and squash a lot in - but we did have a big story to tell.

so now we have to wait till september to find out how we did…

working hard mostly. hence no recent blog posts. soz!

yeah, things have been kinda running away with us. good news is we’re hitting all the deadlines and lots of people are getting in touch for work or even just to say nice things. but we haven’t got round to blogging much. i’ve just returned from creative coast [more about which below] and am full of enthusiasm for, well, everything. so whilst in a good mood, here’s what we’ve been up to:

enterprising britain. we’ve been involved in both the creative direction of our entry and some related design work. we’re being judged tomorrow and the whole team [us, the council, folks from the community, local entrepreneurs, business owners and other dynamic people] are determined to enjoy it. i guess the ironic thing is that we’ve tried to plan a day for the judging team that’s authentic, with real people and real stories, but avoiding bluster and spin has proved to be hard work. but we’re happy with what we’ve put together. wish us luck.

design. of course. work for the boys’ brigade, scarborough museums trust, hull and york medical school, coastival, the ryedale group, acoustic gathering and others. we’ll get round to blogging it all soon.

tonight was creative coast. it started out as a kind of hypothetical networking vs marketing discussion but developed into something far more constructive. our guests for the evening were shirley collier [chief exec of scarborough museums trust] and jayne harper [marketing manager of duraweld] and i think everyone there got some real good advice and ideas. from my perspective the evening was exactly how creative coast should work - useful content, good discussion and most people hung around doing the networking thing afterwards. i counted 25+ people. a top night.

we were asked by bradford district council for some ideas of what they might do for an exhibition stand for an event. the stand was to represent voluntary groups that work with people with disabilities and they liked the idea of some kind of interactivity and ideally wanted to at least consult the groups that it would represent.

we suggested a creative session where the groups members would be invited to come and create artwork - both visual, tactile and audio - to be incorporated into the stand design. taking inspiration from anthony gormley’s field we invited the participants to make a clay model to represent themselves, and to create a photomontage/collage from images they had brought with them.

audio recordings were made on the day and developed into an ambient soundscape of voices and sounds to accompany the stands. we invited artist morwenna catt and audio artist joe gilmore to help at the session. we also asked both the people who run the groups and those who attend then what they valued about belonging - these quotes are the words you can see at the top of the stands.

the completed stand was constructed from three roller banners, thereby allowing it to be used in a cut-down version with only one banner if desired. the soundscape plays on CD behind the stands on a loop, and - this is the interactive bit - there’s plenty modeling clay and an invitation for people to add their own creation, thus building up a community of clay people as the stand is used in different locations.

in many ways this is one of the most authentic pieces of design we have done - it’s perhaps not very ‘cool’ but it includes the voices and work of the people it represents and we valued the opportunity to work with them.

i’m on radio york this morning being interviewed about the upcoming enterprising britain finals. it’s been hinted that i’ll be asked about whether scarborough’s a rather unlikely place to be doing business. so i guess it’s myth-busting time again. i’ll be on around 7.10am, although anyone with any sense will clearly still be fast asleep.

oh yeah, and that was me interviewed on page 42 of the guardian on saturday. i enter the big brother house this wednesday and can be seen parachuting naked from the houses of parliament on friday lunchtime.

we realised the other day that we hadn’t put photos of ourselves on here. so meet the posse… james, rebecca, adrian.