between us we’ve been in the design game for about 35 years, but we suspect that the thrill of seeing your design on a t-shirt never really wears off…

- the topic of this evening’s creative coast, namely how we build the areas creative profile to benefit all local creative practitioners and businesses. we have big plans and need your thoughts and ideas. 6pm at woodend creative workspace. all welcome.

fresh expressions is an initiative of the church of england, exploring and supporting innovative ways of being church. we were invited to develop dvd packaging for their latest publication after they saw our work for the run ‘more than this‘ conference.

the style was to be organic and edgy - standard cd/dvd packaging solutions would have been too glossy so we designed a custom folding cover with integral booklet on cartridge paper-type stock with a large recycled and elemental chlorine-free content. the whole package features grungy, random and sometimes abstract type.

the pack opens to reveal quotes from the dvd and then opens further to access the dvd and booklet.
the packs were hand-assembled at electric angel hq with the dvd’s fixing to the cover with self-adhesive circular tabs.

the dvd menu, disc surface print and promotional flyer were also designed as part of the project. feedback so far has been that we achieved the perfect tone with the design.

… is this sunday and has a pretty good relationship with the weather. so pack a picnic, cross those fingers and get down to the yorkshire coast’s most chilled free music festival. we will be. [image below - detail from this year's poster - an electric angel design. if you're wondering about the link between dragons and acoustic music you need to visit peasholm park where the festival takes place...]

although a humble postcard, designed to be given away on the tour and at forthcoming events, this gives us opportunity to explain some of the thinking behind the approach to promoting coastival.

the name: we were invited to suggest possible names for the festival. coastival was specific about the location (and thus one of the festival’s selling points) whilst still managing to [almost] say festival. it seems to be a popular name.

the signs: we needed to be able to promote the festival before the logo was designed - initially for a press photo shoot. so the challenge was how do you develop a distinct visual approach that will also work with the logo once it is introduced? the signs idea came from the festival’s strapline - yorkshire goes to the seaside and helped [with the oh-so-cute rosa] to get coastival into the yorkshire post.

the photography: by james. the first of a series of the signs in various locations around the region, thus remind people that scarborough is within traveling distance and planting the idea of coming for a day or for the weekend.

the text: on the back, some of our copywriting - the start of communicating a festival with a diverse range of events and audiences.

the logo: hand-drawn and very much inspired by the 60’s rock festivals which often had letterforms that had some visual relationship with water. we wanted it to be approachable and hint at the ‘yorkshireness’ of coastival - not too poncy basically. also on the card is the logo for rollercoastival - the childrens strand of the festival. we’ll blog a a more detailed pic of each logo and the icons for the festival strands soon.

and the postcard idea: well, it was kind of an obvious medium for an event at the coast suggesting fun times and a break from the routine of life.

i never much liked doing dot-to-dots as a child - too predictable. but as adult playing dot-to-dot with real life is fantastic fun - i now find excitement in that hinted-at picture the lines will soon create.

and in a moment of rare self-reflection i’ve twigged that a certain amount of what we do at electric angel is joining the dots. as creatives we look for visual, textual, social and psychological links. when these dots, usually born of conversation, are joined you create a web of ideas for a ‘design’ - usually joining the dots also reveals which delivery methods are going to be most valuable. i think we’ve discovered our design theory.

real life dot-to-dot is the same but with people, places and situations and we now find ourselves doing this too.

at present some of this is done outside our sphere of paid work - a tiny example is when we joined the dots of jan niedojadlo’s scultpture, the alt.worship movement [something he'd previously not heard of], ben edson and greenbelt festival. and hey presto, jan exhibited at greenbelt this last bank holiday weekend. and that’s cool - it’s nice to help make things happen.

but - using this blog as thoughtspace for a moment - how do we promote dot-to-dot as part of the electric angel service? some of the organisations we have long term relationships with already use us in this way - they’ll buy our time and use it to throw ideas around for a project. we love to work like that.

in some senses it’s not revolutionary - this is how many great ideas in the world start out, and when people haven’t looked for the dots it’s why they’ve failed. but there’s a certain thought process that enables it to happen and we [the electric angel posse] need to recognise that that’s part of what we do and offer it as such. it’s partly what we’re hinting at with the ‘design for life’ tag - this is about more than ink on paper. i’ll post more dot-to-dots as they happen as i believe they’re now as much part of our portfolio as, say, a poster design.

photos of victoria performing in york station. this was the best of the unusual venues we visited to promote coastival. people stopped to listen, often to chat and the sound of arias echoing around the magnificent station architecture created quite an atmosphere. it was lovely to see people look and smile even as they were dashing to catch a train. radio york interviewed victoria and myself live from the station and broadcast a snippet of her performance.

our task was also to take photos for use in future publicity - this was sometimes a little more hazardous than we had anticipated. the photo at the humber bridge below very nearly resulted in james and i getting blown across the humber. we were also accused of stealing real road signs - so they must look the part!

you can sign up to be first in the know with headline acts, listing and special offers for coastival at www.coastival.com. full resolution versions of the photos of victoria performing are also available on the coastival website.