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.

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.

if you look on the right hand side column of this webpage you’ll see a new feature: ‘Right now we are…’. we’re using twitter to update this as often as we like, i guess it’s a hyper blog. or a blog for hyperactive designers.

do we think you really need this minutiae of our working lives? well, it will enable us to add smaller updates as to the sort of stuff we do as the main blog is fairly selective. but yeah, it’s probably a little self-indulgent but that’s been an accusation leveled at blogs from the start. we’re constantly surprised at the numbers we get visiting this blog [and we love you all], so this is a little experiment to see whether twitter is useful and how we might be able to use it in future website projects - you don’t know until you try. if you’re a twitterer and want to hook up our twitter ID is electric_angel.

a new tax year, a slight change of name [we’re now electric angel design LLP] and business as usual. we’re currently working on:

rebranding of the boys’ brigade. this began a few years back with new logos for the younger age groups and then a redesign of the organisation’s logo which made regional and national press. we’re now designing logos for the older age groups and producing the definitive brand style guidelines that will help the BB present a forward-thinking image to it’s members, partners and the public.

boys’ brigade recruitment. a fresh approach to attracting leaders and new members. the plan is to involve boys in research and development of recruitment material. we’re really looking forward to this one.

a new brand for the north yorkshire coast. the logo sneaked out a while back to assist inward investment for the borough but the full brand is now nearing completion. exciting stuff.

scarborough literature festival. we had fun on this - keep your eyes peeled to this blog to see what we came up with, or even better - get down to any north yorkshire library.

public art at hull and york medical school at scarborough hosptial through hafney.
and plans to work with a childhood hero on an innovative brochure for ryedale group print specialists.

plus a few things we’ve been asked to keep under our caps for now. needless to say, we’re looking forward to the months ahead.

happy easter everyone. we’re back in the studio on friday 28th.

creative coast 2 year old celebration, tonight at bar2b scarborough 7pm. food, live music and your chance to help decorate the creative coast cake!

it’s all sorted, the [digital] clock is ticking [or operating silently with a steady glow]. ds08 kicks off on wednesday 12th with live music from the university of hull and yorkshire coast college as part of the creative coast 2nd birthday party at bar2b. party from 7, live music open to all from 9pm.

friday night is the centrepiece - upload - an evening of music and visuals curated with the intention of inspiring people to soak it up and try something for themselves. acts include electric angel faves the jawline of julianne moore [think earlyish pink floyd with broken laptops and juicy theremin. nice], plenty of electro-acoustic loveliness, some circuit-bending and a dj set using wii controllers. can you believe this electronic smorgasboard of goodness is free? you’ll need to book online at: upload.eventbrite.com and if you’re the sort of person who facebook’s [is that a verb?] join the group for last-minute info.

saturday sees joomla! founder brian teeman meet local web designers, developers and other creatives to build 2 websites for charity in a day. if you want to join in get in touch with darrell at science city york or call in during the day at sigma at the cask to lend support, moral or otherwise. plus there’s a ds08 afterparty also as sigma, details on the facebook group. if you just can’t make any of ds08 you can watch online at www.digitalscarborough.org

photos are of the flyers science city york commissioned from us - they’re designed to fold two ways to promote the whole of ds08 to a wide audience and folded in reverse to specifically promote upload in club/music venues. there’s also a pic of the poster in the window of mojo’s music cafe - undeniably scarborough’s most informative cafe window. ‘good things for the ears eyes and soul’ - that’s our copywriting throughout the leaflet too, we’re getting asked to write quite a lot of stuff these days.

…until tuesday 4th march. i’ll be at yorkshire coast college in the morning of the 4th leading a workshop following on from the original lecture - i’m looking forward to seeing what ideas the brief has prompted.

…for a while, at least. that’s because from today we’re being joined by hannah who’s studying design at the university of hull school of arts and new media. she’ll be in the studio one day a week on a work placement. so if you ring and a new voice answers the phone - that’s who you’re talking to. welcome hannah!

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?