at last we’re allowed to tell you… we’ve been keeping quiet about coastival - a new 3-day arts festival taking place in scarborough in 2009.

the festival which takes place in the otherwise sleepy month of february pulls together organisers from many of the yorkshire coast’s main festivals including beached, acoustic gathering, the jazz festival and it will be the new home of the festival of light. festival strands include dance, theatre, spoken word, visual arts, music, film, comedy and a full children’s and youth programme. events will take place across venues in scarborough. you can see it as a taster for the rest of the year’s festivals or as a new rich mix of the very best art and culture yorkshire has to offer.

we have been commissioned to develop a visual identity for the festival, a website and work on ideas for a promotional campaign over summer 2008. we also came up with the name ‘coastival’. the signs we’ve been teasing you with are the start of the publicity campaign [bringing yorkshire to the seaside], photos below are from yesterday’s launch and photocall with the yorkshire post [on page 8 of today’s edition] and scarborough evening news [their story here]. photo above is of mezzzo-soprano victoria wright helping launch the festival.

you can catch me talking about our plans to tour yorkshire with an opera singer on yorkshire coast radio today and you may have heard festival organiser wendy clews of create on radio york yesterday. more about the summer tour as the plans firm up…

in the meantime put the dates in your diary: coastival - february 17-19 2009.

broadband capital of britain - that’s how monday’s yorkshire post describes scarborough’s ambitions as part of an article about freebay wifi [above]. it’s not just the seafront wifi that causing waves but also the 100mb connection into woodend creative workspace - scarborough’s new creative industries centre - which opened for business last week. it’s good to see word getting around and the north yorkshire coast challenging a few preconceptions.

we’ve been mentioning this for a while and it seems a long time since we took the above photos after a creative coast event, but FreeBayWiFi is now live and free to use on sandside and round the harbour. this is phase 1, there’s another aerial going in soon which will extend the zone.

if you’re not the type of person who gets excited about techy stuff [and to be honest, that’s us too really] what this means is that you can check your email, look at websites, even do your weekly shop online while sipping coffee on the seafront. it’s also anticipated that free wireless broadband will be useful for the fishing fleet and boats mooring in the marina. if you’re the cynical type and think that sounds like a bit of a far-fetched continental dream for the yorkshire coast, then think again - last week i was meeting to discuss a project in one of the seafront coffee shops and everyone else in there was using a laptop. there’s no hype around this one.

we were pleased to be invited to help FreeBayWiFi happen and window stickers (designed by us and featuring our logo design) are going up in seafront premises today. metal signs will be appearing over the next couple of weeks. you can check out the website we’ve produced for the project at www.freebaywifi.net

i’m being interviewed on yorkshire coast radio in the morning about the project. why not get down the harbour, get online and leave a message on the website.

we were invited to design a new visual identity and promotional material for the 2008 festival after being recommend by an existing client and winning a competitive pitch. we took two starting points for a design concept that runs through all the material - the first was the lure of a relaxing weekend by the sea, settling down to hear the authors themselves rather than just reading a book, this led to the deckhair-book illustration. the second was inspiration from the paperbook format itself. thus the brochure is the same size as the first mass-market paperbacks and pays homage to their distinctive graphic style.

the conceit of holding a book and not just a programme followed through into the printing - we specified a coated thin card cover with uncoated interior pages to give the same feel as a paperback. colour-coding indicates the different days of the festival. additional information such as day ticket prices are designed as if real objects left on the page of the book.

having the programme as an ‘object’ has followed through to the flyers [pictured] and posters [in a library near you now] which advertise the festival as a book with the ‘rear cover’ announcing the authors involved. the unusual programme size meant we were able to use the offcuts from the cover to produce bookmarks as give-aways at local libraries. other design work includes banners and tickets.

from our perspective, enjoying working as a graphic designer is often about who we get to work with - so special mention to the enthusiastic staff at scarborough central library who run the festival as well as keep a thriving library and information centre running. you can read principal officer lee taylor’s perspective here on the bbc website - we’re grateful for the credit he gives us. the festival website can be found here. the festival runs from 17-20 april with authors including ian rankin, louis de bernieres and joanne harris.

had a name-check in friday’s edition of the times. as well as quoting me they unearthed another scarborough riley with a far finer pedigee - riley’s dairy. apparently there are loads of their earthenware jars buried under the football ground. given that it’s likely to be demolished for new housing i might have chance at getting hold of one when they dig it up. anyhows, the article mentioned the creative migration to this part of the the uk and said what glorious place it is to live. but you already knew that didn’t you?

it seems our anti-social drinking signs have been attracting attention again - this time in the midlands. the town of southwell has just erected its own signs enforcing the same legislation but unfortunately they’ve ended up rather wordy. and positioned rather high up lampposts. the local paper reported on the signs and printed a photo of one next to a photo of ours [pictured above]. they were even nice enough to give us a mention. the southwell advertiser got in touch with us to ask about designing the signs, followed the next day by bbc nottingham who were also covering the story. fame!

our current media tally for these is two mentions in the houses of parliament, three newspaper articles and a tv slot. we’re waiting with bated breath for a call from mr spielberg… although an enquiry from southwell town council is probably more likely.

thanks to those folks who got in touch to say they saw us on tv last week. we were interviewed in light of the government report on coastal towns that suggest many such locations have a problem with ageing populations - a combination of young people moving away for work and retired people moving in. apparantley we’re one of the exciting young(!) businesses in whom the town are putting hope. talk about pressure.

in the interview i said loads of good stuff about scarborough, creative coast (more of which in another post) and the creative industries centre that the council are currently building. unfortunately it all got edited down to a rather flippant comment on darby & joan clubs… if you listened carefully you could hear james smirk behind me.

still, they did manage to get ‘electric angel’ in big letters in the shot for the 5 seconds i was on tv.