electric angel /design for life

bridlington poetry festival

no, that’s not a close-up of dodgy printing but rather hand-painted colour forming the background of this leaflet for a new festival starting this year. i think the idea was suggested by john clarke, festival director and sometime collaborator on such as ‘the shop of priceless things‘. i say ‘think’, because quite often ideas for a design come out of an initial cuppa and a chat – i do know we went away with john getting out his brushes to paint and cut some potential backgrounds (he recently exhibited at scarborough art gallery).

the intention is to suggest the craft reflecting the creative process of creating a poem and a sense of the elemental with the bold geometric shapes. we also consciously kept the typography quite simple in keeping with the relatively conservative tradition of setting most poems. the leaflet opens out into a poster.

dinosaur coast

summer events leaflet for the dinosaur coast – part of our ongoing work for scarborough museums trust.

back & refreshed

we’re back open for business as usual after 2 weeks off over easter. i stayed mostly at home, with a quick mountain biking trip to innerleithen over the last weekend, while adrian and rebecca have been to spain. it’s a bit of a catch-up for a few days while we work on renaissance news before the final assault on the CHART scarborough map. impressions from the last meeting before we went on hols is that it’s nearing completion, with just a few minor adjustments and additions.

it’s been such a time consuming process, it made me think how difficult it would be to map somewhere you don’t live, in any detail. i’ve really had to use the resources available to me, such as satellite imagery, OS maps and good old fashioned walking, in order to get the level of detail we want. details as far down as kerb shapes, steps, alleys and crossings are what differentiate a pedestrian map from a road map, so we’ve been making sure we include a curved building or a waist-high wall as much as we include a huge landmark such as the grand hotel.

as scarborough has so many landmark buildings and recognisable features, it makes for an interesting and beautiful map with individual qualities that couldn’t be associated with other places. also the spread of green areas has meant it’s been possible to include important contour information, valuable to a pedestrian, in a way that is both functional and aesthetically pleasing. hopefully people will agree that the finished product is both useful and stunning to look at.

incidentally, as you may be able to see from the photo, spa bridge is also refreshed and open for business as usual with a shiny, new yellow surface to match the sand and a new turquoise paint job to match today’s cloudless sky!