electric angel /design for life

things they didn’t teach you in college

[inspired by this tweet, conversations in the studio and lots of work placements]

— you’ll need to defend (and explain) your creative thinking. to your clients and your colleagues. everything has to have a reason, make sure you know yours.

— good design has nothing to do with fashion.

— typography isn’t about choosing a typeface. it’s about understanding how words work, how people read, how to present information. accept that you probably know very little about it. understand that you need to know a lot about it. rectify the situation.
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desert island discs – james

unlike adrian, i don’t own physical copies of most of these songs, or a working tape recorder, so i’ve gone all modern and made a spotify playlist. mine are in a kind of peak and trough order, opening hardcore, a moments relaxation, then back rocking again and so on: desert island discs

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desert island discs – adrian

with radio 4 about to announce the entire nation’s desert island discs, and just because we love radio 4 at electric angel HQ, we thought we’d indulge ourselves.

the problem with the eight record limit is not really selecting the records, but on what criteria to make the selection. james and i have discussed this on more than one occasion when we really should have been doing some kerning (apologies to whoever’s poster wasn’t quite as typographically sensitive as it might have been that day).
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freestyle

a superb end to our [tiny] poetry series last night with rapper james koppert. james was honest, funny, angry, political, questioning, self-depreciating, heart-breaking. the evening finished with some freestyling in which james took us from a play on words with ‘electric angel’ to a fly on the gallery wall and out to the yorkshire coastline.

john allsopp was in the audience and took some footage – you can watch it here.

it’s been hugely enjoyable to put our gallery to use as a [tiny] performance venue and the enthusiasm of the poets and audience has been fantastic. question is, what shall we put on next…

thanks to wordsmiths felix, mark, john and james and to all who came. good, good evenings.

btw, you can catch john w clarke performing by the grotto as part of the crescent gardens art trail tomorrow. he’ll be reading for about 20 minutes at 10.30 and 12.00.

tiny poetry : the edger

it’s our final ‘tiny poetry’ night in the gallery this thursday. all have been ‘sell-out’s” so far and hugely enjoyable (tickets are actually free – just call in for one). this thursday it’s an ‘unplugged’ set from rapper james koppert aka the edger. here’s the blurb:

“… a rap artist and a street poet using words and rhythms as a vehicle to express anarchic musings and unstructured passions to challenge the listener to challenge their own thoughts. a recent review described the poet as being “an angry chav crossed with a modern day Shakespeare” who rather than reads his poetry explodes his words directly (sometimes literally) into his audiences faces”

click here to hear james in action: www.myspace.com/theedgerhiphop

8.30pm. drinks on the house.

live, last night, sold out!

thursday evening, as a dreary, misting of dank weather engulfs the town, a small gathering of surfers, designers, poets and artists got together for the second of our ‘tiny poetry’ gigs at the electric angel gallery – tonight was the turn of landscape poet mark dickinson.

mark’s work is intrinsically linked with his surroundings, his time spent in the natural environment, be it fishing or surfing. he says more important to his poetry than these activities is walking. his great knowledge of natural environments, geology, history and words create orchestral poems that build and ebb and flow as if a part of the landscape themselves. mark read from a decades worth of work ending with the epic trods which follow.

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our next poet, john clarke, attended (who you can see next thursday, 26th august), along with local filmmaker ollie banks, who works with mark on many surfing related projects, and james koppert, another of our poets who’ll be performing on thursday 9th september.

two weeks in to our tiny poetry gigs and they seem to be going down very well indeed.

tiny poetry

what’s the point of having space if you’re not going to use it? ok, so we only have a tiny little space but let’s use it anyway. so as seen as our current exhibition is all on the walls (literally – see here) we thought it would be fun to use the gallery floorspace for some poetry gigs while it was on. there’s the loose theme of the sea/surf/coast to tie in with the exhibition, but we’ve told the poets ‘do what you want’ and we can’t wait to hear what they do.

for full details download a flyer here.

peasholm magic lantern

coastival sees the welcome return of scarborough’s festival of light [which i think was our first design work for create]. we’ll be converging on the rotunda museum for a lantern parade on friday 13 february and will certainly be checking out other light goodies such as video installations in the south bay underground car park and in the crypt of saint martin’s church on south cliff. there’s also something called the chroma van which promises ‘a unique exploration of colour perception in the comfort of a remodelled caravan’. how can you resist that?

i’ve also been invited by poet kate evans to apply typographic interpretations to a series of haiku’s as part the peasholm magic lantern. the lantern will take place in the faux-oriental pagoda on the island of peasholm park and features haiku’s by kate, photographs by mark vesey and an original composition by amaya huntley. kate showed me the first draft of the complete sequence yesterday – i think it’s going to be something rather special. the music is wonderful and the whole experience reminds me very much of some of the more immersive alt.worship experiments we instigated in bradford.

the images above are from felt – our little book of treatments of poetry from 2 years ago. this haiku makes an appearance as part of the magic lantern – you’ll have to come experience it for yourself to see the others.

what we’re listening to [14] – ollie’s free download

back as part of digital scarborough 06 we organised a creative coast event – the 5 minute pitch. we invited a panel of investors and creatives to hear three local creatives pitch an idea, dragon’s den style.

the ‘pitchers’ received training on speaking in public from lizzie of raised eyebrow and duncan from business link. ollie green was the youngest of the participants – still in school at the time – and impressed the panel with his idea for an internet radio station showcasing local music and his enthusiastic & slick presentation.

forward-wind 2.5 years and olllie is now at music college and has just released his first album ‘hold on’. it’s a free download so you can enjoy it too: http://ollie.bandcamp.mu/

the tracks are as infectious as ollie’s enthusiasm was back at the sjt in ’06.
if you’re local, look out for an interview with ollie in next month’s issue of scarborough’s future.

kosmigroove – what we’re listening to [13]

it’s funny when you discover a description and whole subculture for something you’ve been into for ages, blissfully unaware that there’s a whole load of other people out there also desperately seeking more of the same. such it is with a clutch of albums currently on rotation in the studio, all of which are apparantly fine examples of ‘kosmigroove‘. nice to know we’re not alone.

miles davis, olympia 1973
miles in his post-bitches brew stop-start chuggery. ‘jazz fans’ often hate this stuff. but if you like it there are lots of live performances from this period available on the net.

charles earland, leaving this planet
tight group with stellar soloists often heading for the stratosphere.

tony williams lifetime, emergency!
where jazz really meets rock. frantic, distorted, kinda scary.

fela ransome-kuti and africa ’70 with ginger baker
funk jive goodness.