electric angel /design for life

…it’s a coast thing

this evening sees the official launch of the new brand for the north yorkshire coast at beiderbecke’s hotel at an ‘ambassador’s dinner’ sponsored by yorkshire forward. the ambassadors dinners are a renaissance initiative and include representatives from scarborough businesses, education and strategic partners who are well placed to spread the word about scarborough further afield – which is why we’re going to them first.

“…it’s a coast thing” is a brand in the fullest sense incorporating photography, language, a logotype and most importantly – attitude. this is the culmination of a fair bit of work by us, as we developed the mechanism back in 2006 by which we engaged a wide cross-section of the residents of the borough in creative sessions, encouraging them to share what they valued about living in this part of britain [a similar process to that for the bowling gates we designed]. this led to the creation of a constantly growing bank of comissioned photographs, the logotype and our writing the brand guidelines.

the launch to organisations we hope will be enthusiastic early-adopters of the brand has been a while coming but has recently been given impetus by scarborough’s enterprising britain win. it seems an age since we designed the business coast brochure which was the first publication designed to the brand values but we hope there’ll be many more uses across a wide range of media to come as people use the brand – this evening i’ll be introducing it used on stationery, emails, website and a van and bus in the hope of encouraging others to think of ways in which they can start to spread the message.

coastival programme

the coastival programme was launched this week announcing a fantastic line-up for the festival in february. our challenge in designing the programme was to create a cohesive look for a wonderfully diverse weekend in which you might go see feeder, watch laurence olivier in wuthering heights, visit a video installation in an underground carpark and spend some time in the company of a best selling author.

we’ve identified the 8 strands of the festival with hand-drawn icons and a colour-coded system. the first two ‘openings’ of the programme reveal a general then genre-specific intro to coastival, the reverse is a full page of what’s going on over the whole weekend categorised by strand. we wrote the copy for the introductions.

as with all work for festivals like this the priority is to create something that is as usable as possible. all the venues are numbered and can be found via a map on the rear of the leaflet. plus there’s an at-a-glance listing so you can browse each day chronologically.

if you’d like a programme posting to you free of charge send an email titled ‘Please send me a Coastival programme’ and containing your name and address to contact@create.uk.net

don’t be gull-able

this is a companion piece to the ‘drinking‘ and ‘dog poo‘ signs. scarborough borough council gave us a very open brief to design something eye-catching and that would get the message across in a more friendly way than regular prohibitive signage. we were given free reign with the design and wording.

as with the other 2 signs, the images were entirely consutructed from lettershapes – you can see the comma for the gull’s eye and the parantheses forming the gull’s neck.

this is a small project, but public signage is so pervasive there’s a responsibility in designing this stuff. to be honest, i wish they’d just put them on lamposts and not spoilt the signposts. we got to suggest where the metal freebay signs might go in the same area and made an effort to avoid spoiling an attractive place whilst still informing people of the free wifi access. the idea behind designing all these signs the same size was that they could be clustered in just a few locations and look cohesive in an attempt to avoid too much visual pollution. it’s always a thrill to see your work in the public realm, but a shame if it’s spoiling it.

crazy, damn right i’m crazy

the title comes from a t-shirt slogan by artist ross sinclair, appropriated for this exhibition at the ferens gallery, hull. the exhibition is curated by the ferens art ambassadors – a group of young people aged 18-25, the work selected from the arts council collection featuring works by the likes of tracy emin, david hockney, joseph beuys and david shrigley.

the project started with coffee and a chat with some of the team behind the exhibition – timing from concept to delivery of print was tight so this was the only real chance to genuinely understand the motivation behind the exhibition and the works chosen for exhibit. the main aim was to break down some barriers between this supposedly high-culture thing called ‘art’ and to get people not just looking, but thinking.

after a range of sketched ideas this booklet was chosen – quite a departure from the usual gallery publicity. for starters it’s a 12-page booklet rather than a flyer or leaflet, it encourages the reader to interact by adding to the illustrations inside – each based on an artwork from the exhibition – and it’s day-glo orange. the photos here don’t really do justice to how bright these are.

this is a job that also called our copywriting skills into play. taking some of the artworks as a starting point, we developed them into the ‘activities’ in the booklet, writing the copy and providing the introduction to the exhibition – a distillation of that chat over coffee. the art ambassadors gave feedback on the initial design suggesting some rewordings and with thumbs up from the ferens and the arts council we were able to make the deadline with the booklets and posters ready for use at events promoting the exhibition. print is by scarborough-based adverset.

the exhibition opening night is this friday. we’ve also designed exhibition graphics, banners etc for inside the gallery so plenty more on this one to blog…

the adventure begins here

one of our recent major branding projects has been working with the boys’ brigade to update their image. the boys’ brigade was the world’s first uniformed youth organisation [little known and air-brushed out of history fact: founder of the scouts, baden powell was originally a boys' brigade leader] and operates across the world with half a million members worldwide.

when requested to look at redesigning the brigade’s logo we returned to their traditional badge of an anchor – symbolic of a sure and steadfast faith – which whilst still an important part of the organisation’s identity had somehow lost it’s shine. in fact it had been neglected for so long that a definitive version of this historic badge no longer existed with several variations being in common use.

we redrew the anchor and added a definitive typographic style for the ‘the boys’ brigade’ also establishing a definitive colour palette. there are two variations of the anchor/type positioning depending on size and intended use.

we were also asked to come up with a new strapline for the organisation. in the past these had often referenced the brigade’s history, the most recent being ‘first for boys’ which was developed in the 1970′s. we took the approach that the priority for any such strapline had to be that it was attractive, or at least, not embarrassing to current and potential members of the BB – we’re well aware of how youth organisations aren’t exactly the epitome of street cool right now. our responsibility was to them as much as to the brigade’s leaders. what’s been really rewarding about his job is how ‘the adventure begins here’ has been adopted, used, played with and obviously well liked across the BB.

in many aspects the BB has quite a devolved structure – decisions are made at ‘brigade council’ where the leaders of the local groups have opportunity to both speak and vote on the future of the organisation. likewise, websites and marketing material for groups and events are often created at local level so any logo had to be popular so it would be ‘owned’ by the brigade’s members – not that design should pander to popular opinion, but we believe it’s vital to understand who you’re designing for and respect them. it also had to be able to withstand the rigors of the pc age that puts design tools in the hands of everyone. i think one test of whether a logo like this is successful is how it works not just where it’s beautifully printed but in situations where the quality cannot be guaranteed – something we took into consideration. you can see franked mail from the BB below.

coastival – yorkshire goes to the seaside

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 – 13-15 february 2009.

piecing broken lives back together

it’s rare that the sound of breaking crockery can be heard from the electric angel studio, but that was the image we developed as part of this work for domestic abuse services – an organisation that helps victims of domestic abuse in the north yorkshire coast and ryedale area.

this project is a good example of how we like to work whenever opportunity arises – a group creative session to help us understand who we’re working with and what they do and opportunity for the people involved [not just the person who wrote the brief] to talk to us first hand. on this occasion we used creating montages of images and some mini story writing as a route into learning what the organisation does and the vital role it plays in helping both female and male victims of domestic abuse. we blogged about the creative session here.

we then returned with several possible concepts for communicating this to both those who might need to use the services das provide and to potential funders. you can see the end results here – a multi-purpose leaflet, an adaptable information pack with multiple inserts and a poster. we believe that effective design is that which is appropriate to the situation – in this context the temptation is to be ‘clever’ with the message and the imagery, the challenge however is to engage interest and then communicate quickly and simply. das believe we’ve got that balance right. this project had quite a lot in common – both in the way we worked, the approach and the subject matter – with the work we did for lighthouse in hull.

a bit of technical stuff for those who are interested – print is on uncoated paper [ie. not flashy] as seems appropriate to the subject matter and it’s a two colour print job which helps to keep costs down as well as having a visual impact. a quick mention whilst were here for the stationery we also designed as part of a process refreshing the organisation’s logo to be applicable to fresh areas of work.

creative coast – now with added whitby

the new creative coast flyers are hitting doormats this week. particularly exciting is that on the 23rd we’re having a whitby launch for the network to see if there’s critical mass and enthusiasm for regular events there as well as in scarborough. the focus of the launch events will be to see if whitby area creatives would value event close to home and what kind of events they might want.

the new flyers are double-sided to show events for the two towns. we’ve scheduled events up till the summer break on consecutive dates so that scarborough folks can pop up the coast and do a bit of networking if they so fancy. also in a change to the advertised date and so we don’t clash with the literature festival launch, the next scarborough event with be on the 30th april and not this wednesday as previously advertised.

scarborough’s future april 08

april issue of scarborough’s future with a centrespread report on digital scarborough 08. you can see the original promo literature designs here.

digital scarborough 08

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.