electric angel /design for life

coastival [and electric angel] on tour

we’re hitting the road [and rail] tomorrow when we’re accompanying mezzo-soprano victoria wright [pictured above] to perform in slightly unusual venues around the region to promote coastival. alas you won’t get to hear mine or james’ rich baritone as we’re on ‘set’, photography and flyer-handing-out duties.

the strapline for the festival is ‘yorkshire goes to the seaside’ and part of our plan for the promotional material is to photograph the coastival signposts across the region. and as seen as we were traveling around anyway the idea somehow grew to include live music in unusual places.

also joining us is phil who’s doing working experience with us for the next 2 weeks, and with us for the day in york and leeds is jason who’ll be work experiencing in the near future. so should you fancy hearing some popular opera classics in an unusual location, here’s where you can find us:

wednesday
york railway station 10.15-11.15am
leeds railway station 1.30-2.30pm

thursday
bridlington harbour 10.15-10.35am
beverley market place 12.15-1.00pm
hull princes quay shopping centre 3.30-4.15pm

you have been judged! [meeting comics legend john cooper]

today i met with comic artist legend john cooper who we’re working with on a project. truth be told, he’s a bit of a hero to me. partly because i was enjoying his art in such as battle long before i bothered checking the artist’s credit on comics, but mostly for his work on judge dredd.

as a child, buying a comic full of tales of action and bravery of world war II from the railway station newsagent was as much part of the family holiday as the essential bucket and spade purchase once we’d arrived. cooper’s dynamic work on the johnny red strip is probably his most iconic, and with reason – cooper’s illustrations jumped off the page and still look vibrant today. looking back at old copies of battle, cooper’s work is often in a class of its own.

but the comic strip that really got me thinking about visual storytelling as a teen was judge dredd. cooper drew the first ever judge dredd story, but censorship and the resulting rewrite meant that it didn’t get published until issue 5. john told me today that the original story had dredd shooting a motorist whose car was spewing pollution in mega city one [the future reality where the dredd stories are set] but had to be toned down. and people think this government’s green car tax plans are extreme…

john’s artwork recently returned to the pages of the judge dredd megazine with the armitage strip and he says there’s more to come… you heard it here first comic fans. because there was a fairly radical shift in comic art in the 90′s to a more painterly style, especially on the pages on 2000AD, john’s artwork, still rooted in his classic 70′s style but with a funky informal edge, looks full of energy and fun – it’s no wonder that the web’s comic fan sites are cheering his return to the UK newsstands.

anyway, john politely didn’t pass judgment on my scrappy thumbnail sketches and i can’t wait to see him transform our story with his art.

the adventure begins here

one of our recent major branding projects has been working with the boys’ brigade to update their image. the boys’ brigade was the world’s first uniformed youth organisation [little known and air-brushed out of history fact: founder of the scouts, baden powell was originally a boys' brigade leader] and operates across the world with half a million members worldwide.

when requested to look at redesigning the brigade’s logo we returned to their traditional badge of an anchor – symbolic of a sure and steadfast faith – which whilst still an important part of the organisation’s identity had somehow lost it’s shine. in fact it had been neglected for so long that a definitive version of this historic badge no longer existed with several variations being in common use.

we redrew the anchor and added a definitive typographic style for the ‘the boys’ brigade’ also establishing a definitive colour palette. there are two variations of the anchor/type positioning depending on size and intended use.

we were also asked to come up with a new strapline for the organisation. in the past these had often referenced the brigade’s history, the most recent being ‘first for boys’ which was developed in the 1970′s. we took the approach that the priority for any such strapline had to be that it was attractive, or at least, not embarrassing to current and potential members of the BB – we’re well aware of how youth organisations aren’t exactly the epitome of street cool right now. our responsibility was to them as much as to the brigade’s leaders. what’s been really rewarding about his job is how ‘the adventure begins here’ has been adopted, used, played with and obviously well liked across the BB.

in many aspects the BB has quite a devolved structure – decisions are made at ‘brigade council’ where the leaders of the local groups have opportunity to both speak and vote on the future of the organisation. likewise, websites and marketing material for groups and events are often created at local level so any logo had to be popular so it would be ‘owned’ by the brigade’s members – not that design should pander to popular opinion, but we believe it’s vital to understand who you’re designing for and respect them. it also had to be able to withstand the rigors of the pc age that puts design tools in the hands of everyone. i think one test of whether a logo like this is successful is how it works not just where it’s beautifully printed but in situations where the quality cannot be guaranteed – something we took into consideration. you can see franked mail from the BB below.

a look at us working…

people are often intrigued to see where and how we work. well it’s something like this…

ok, so that was actually james and rebecca doing some colouring at the punch and judy puppets exhibition launch. and it seems they’re not the only ones:

we supplied an outline version of the cut-out-and-wear mask we drew for the exhibition poster – you can pop along to scarborough art gallery and colour your own in. or if you just want the mask already coloured for you you can download one from the museums trust website. oh – and there’s a puppet show in the gallery on saturday – details on the trust’s website or from the gallery (look out for another of our hand-drawn posters).

signs of the very best in yorkshire

it seems fitting that today being yorkshire day, we’re working on promotional material for coastival – a festival taking place in february that will showcase some of the best music, art and culture from the region (and a few guests).

above is a sneak preview sent from bay area sign and image solutions of what james and i will be carting across the region as we do some promo work for coastival later this month [more about which soon]. the logo hasn’t been officially launched yet which is why we’ve cropped it off the top of this pic. we’ll blog that as soon as the press have got a look at it. bay area are one of the festivals sponsors – they produced the freebay wifi and the sea scarborough change signs and currently working out some options for green lane centre – they’re great to work with and very good at coming up with creative solutions so do check them out if you’re needing some signage type stuff.