electric angel /design for life

on a mission

one from the archives. thornbury mission partner project ran in the community in which we were based in bradford – it’s aim to try and find common ground in a diverse cultural setting and thus sow the seeds for a more cohesive community. these reports served the dual purpose of informing local people of the project’s progress and in attracting further funding from various charities and trusts. the project was successful in extending it’s initial thee year funding to a five year period.

scarborough’s surf scene

I’m not quite sure how to describe the surf scene in Scarborough, it’s unlike many other places I think. The scene in Scarborough mainly consists in the water, the same faces will be surfing the same spots when there’s a wave there. Outside of that it’s the occasional Secret Spot organised surf night (www.secretspot.co.uk) or long chat with Steve and Mark at Fluid Concept (www.fluidconcept.co.uk) or congregating on the North Bay early morning looking at a flat sea because that swell never arrived. It’s temperamental here, a swell can last one evening, it can blow flat within minutes and you hold your head in shame as you walk out of a flat sea. It can also be absolutely perfect, some well travelled locals say it’s world class here on occasion, and I think slowly the secret is getting out…

A weekend trip to Scarborough isn’t the chips and ice-cream affair of the past, nowadays it’s a drop by a hire shop, get a board and a wetty and spend four hours splashing around in the north or south bay kind of place, something we as surfers are all having to accept. We have to accept that more and more people are taking up surfing and look at the advantages it brings to us rather than the disadvantages. Yes, we’ll have to start abiding by the rules of surfing, we’ll have to look out for learners in the line up and we’ll have to accept that people will be in our way sometimes but also these people probably mean that Carl can keep doing a job that he loves (Bay Area Surf) and Mark can keep shaping beautiful boards for us all (Fluid Concept).

So for all those times we fight our way through 60 people in the north bay on a weekend there’s the times we surf it as the sun comes up with 3 other people out mid-week. In the end, it’s all surfing whether there’s 2 of you or 202, there’s loads of waves round here, enough for everyone to enjoy. There’s waves right now in fact…

‘god jobs’ or how to think like a great graphic designer

interesting interview with new york-based designer james victore courtesy of graphic define magazine – an except from the forthcoming book by debbie millman ‘how to think like a great graphic designer’. i particularly like his honesty in the following excerpt and his definition of the impulse to produce beautiful, pure work as ‘god jobs’:

The rule here is there are jobs you do for “god,” and there are jobs you do for money. I try to approach everything as a “god job”—lowercase g. At the beginning of a project, I ask, “What are we going to do, and how are we going to do it? How are we going to make a person fall in love?” And when we start getting questionable feedback about what we’ve done, we have to realize it’s not always possible to do the god job. That’s when I know we just have to get it done and get paid.

in the interview he also talks about the designer’s responsibility in the world to contribute to society. good stuff.

it ain’t easy bein’ green

ah, kermit the frog delivering the eco-message long before it was fashionable. we figured that with our work for scarborough borough council’s roll-out of recycling and our founding principle of offering graphic design with an ethical edge, we owe it to the people we work with to come clean about whether we cut the mustard on green issues.

well, we are trying… we re-use paper (ie. we print on both sides and use scrap for sketches and note paper), we take all used paper to be recycled, we upgrade computer equipment for as long as possible before buying new kit, then we offer our old kit to friends, family and for community use rather than see it trashed – we’re not adverse to pre-used kit ourselves either. we send print cartridges for recycling, always buy re-filled cartridges and try to print as little as possible using screen-based proofs instead. we re-use envelopes (see pic above) and have often re-used furniture at electric angel hq. our studios to date have always been in buildings that have been cheaply adapted to new use (old mills etc) rather than glitzy resource-consuming new office buildings.

we use public transport for business meetings as a first choice and we almost always walk or cycle to the studio. we use an ethical bank. we check out the green credentials of the printers we work with all of whom use paper from sustainable sources. we have looked into recycled paper many times but the current view is that the recycling process to make paper suitable for litho printing is more damaging to the environment than growing and chopping down trees. but we’ll keep an eye on that. james and i dress entirely in clothes made from recycled tractor tyres plus lunch at the studio is only ever what we can gather from rockpools in the south bay – mostly bladder wrack and sea anemones.
ok, so we made the last couple up, but we are making an effort.

but we confess we’re not too sharp at turning off the plug sockets every night. this used to be because we’d leave time-consuming processes running overnight but they’re not nearly as necessary now computer hardware is more reliable and a lot faster. it’s now very rare that a pc is switched on if we’re not using it. but we promise we’ll starting switching those other bits and pieces off when we leave on a night. also our current website hosting provider doesn’t claim to use green energy (although we haven’t specifically asked them) so that’s something that’s on our mind although things are so much simpler with them that we’re at least saving a good few hours of computer energy-guzzling time developing websites…!

we’d love to hear of any eco-conscious creatives’ suggestions of how to do the green thing in a studio/creative business. so do leave any ideas or experiences here by clicking on ‘comments’.

find your inner space

one last piece of church-related work from the vaults (actually from our shelves full of plastic folders). this leaflet-poster always makes an impression with people who know of the community of the resurrection in mirfield. largely because this is not the sort of imagery you’d associate with them. click on the link and you’ll get a flavour of the community.

but a group of students with a dynamic approach (including james mckaskill, later to be channel 4′s ‘priest idol‘) had a vision of a youth event that would tap into the intrigue about religious orders and new age belief, combining the opportunity to spend a night in a monastery with rock music, midnight mass, bbq’s and chilling out round camp fires.

there’s an obvious debt to anthony gormley and perhaps david bowie too with our ‘star man’ illustration. he majority of the poster is set in typefaces designed by eric gill. the community’s logo is from a memorial roundel carved by gill and the chapel has some beautiful stations of the cross carved by gill’s assistant joseph cribb. they’re not usually accessible to the general public so it was a treat to be able to see these when our friend huw invited us to dinner and evening mass with the community. two things stick in my mind – the atmosphere of the plainsong mass and the sizable portions of chicken. “ah! vulture again” commented one of the monks.

(if you want to visit some of gill’s work in yorkshire i highly recommend the publication by graham carey available from the henry moore institute.)

future faithful

whilst we’re on a bit of a religious tip it seemed appropriate to photograph some of the branding for the diocese of bradford which we designed about 4 years ago and is still going strong. how we came to be offered the work was a very pleasant experience – the bishop had expressed a desire to rebrand the diocese in order to suggest fresh thinking and a dynamic approach to being church. this was in contrast to the ‘firm of solicitors’ image that their current coat of arms suggested. the diocesan communications office asked around for suggestions of local designers who would bring understanding and enthusiasm to the job and our name turned up every time. (all those bottles of whisky sent to vicars at christmas clearly paid off…)

the visual identity is comprised of three main elements – the logo, the coloured strip (an echo of the logo) and the strapline. the diocese asked for some ideas for a strapline that would symbolise both the history and tradition of the anglican church and a forward-thinking attitude. ‘future faithful’ was what we came up with and was an instant hit.

the colours that make up the logo and colour strip were chosen for symbolic reasons: blue is for the river aire and bradford beck on top of which the city of bradford is built. green symbolises the moors and hills that make up the wider metropolitan area of bradford. grey represents the stone that the city’s iconic buildings are built from, purple has a long standing tradition of symblising christ the king and orange is a vibrant contemporary colour deliberately chosen to contrast with the others.

a rather nice coincidence that turned up was that all the colours were also represented in the bishop’s stole (long scarf type thing worn over his cassock). the logo flies as a flag from bradford cathedral as well as being available on everything from ‘future faithful’ badges to umbrellas.

be the change…

active faith communities are a government-funded organisation who work with groups from many faith traditions helping them realise their potential in transforming communities. they will help groups who have ideas for community centres, youth work, parent and child groups, work with the elderly, healthy living initiatives – ideas that can play a positive role in society.

we were invited to contribute ideas as part of a review of their image and promotional material. some form of leaflet was seen as essential but there was also the realisation that leaflets are often filed away or slipped into drawers and never seen again. something we’d noticed working with many clients in the charitable and religious sectors was that office walls are usually personalised with inspiring images and quotes – quite often just printed out from a word processing program. so why not provide something both inspiring and beautiful to put up on walls that also kept active faiths contact details close to hand?

finding a quote that embodied the aspirations of the organisation but was not deemed too exclusive to any one religion was going to be tricky. in fact we could only think of a few people who are perceived to have transcended their personal beliefs and speak to all people regardless of faith, nelson mandela being an obvious example. we found this quote by ghandi which was thought to be perfect (you see – we do more than just design…).

working with a translator we produced a multi-lingual leaflet-cum-poster appropriate to the west yorkshire communities in which active faiths works. it was also a great opportunity to try a little multilingual creative typography. the coloured panels on the poster side of the leaflet run along the folds so as to play down the shadows cast by the folds when pinned to a wall or noticeboard.

the mount project [7of7]

download a pdf of all the mount series to print yourself here
[series of seven A3 size prints, pdf format 26k]

the mount project [6of7]

the mount project [5of7]