beverley literature festival
yes, it’s been over a week since we last blogged – but we have been busy and as a result will have lots to blog, plus some exciting news about electric angel hq.
now then…
beverley literature festival kicks off tomorrow with an enticing collection of authors and activities. we’ve designed the festival brochure, posters and display material and i think it’s one of those jobs where i’ll explain what we did and why…
something we decided very early on with electric angel was that we would define our design priorities anew for each job and that there would never be any overarching ambition to develop a recognisable studio house-style [although some people say we do have one], be fashionable or serve any other purpose. in some ways this goes against popular theory that to initially develop a reputation as a designer you need a distinctive style.
with beverley literature festival our priorities were worked out with the festival’s director – good communication and ease-of-use being the overriding priorities for the brochure.
the design uses clear roman and sans serif fonts with good contrast combined with slightly more anarchic hand-written headings. we’ve striven to achieve a logical easy-to-read layout. the dates alternate in colour so that the diary page, the programme and the booking form all correlate. we consciously broke with page numbering tradition so that the first page of the programme section was page 1 even though not a ‘right hand’ page, but then because our brochure opens upwards rather than outwards we felt that let us off the hook. and we had a reason anyway.
oh, and the reason for the that upwards opening was to get the diary page as a complete vertical list alongside the map for easy reference.
the decision to use two colours came after looking at promotional material from a range of literature festivals which were rather generic. we decided that a limited colour palette would lend beverley a distinctive style – colour is all too often used just for decoration. the choice of paper type – slightly rough cartridge paper style stock – was also part of communicating a sense of authenticity.
the illustrations are created from photos taken by james – we created bold stamp-like images in which the letter ‘B’ keeps appearing. as well as being playful they help to sell part of the attraction of beverley literature festival which had been neglected in recent years, namely spending some time in this charming yorkshire wolds town. bear illustration by children’s author lydia monks – appearing at this year’s festival.
the booking form is positioned as the centre pages of the brochure making it easy to remove without destroying any vital information. it’s also designed to pop straight into a DL window envelope with the return address showing in the window.
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