electric angel /design for life

coastal connections

flyer for a north yorkshire creative industries network event hosted by create. the event takes place in scarborough on 12 march in scarborough and looks like the sort of day creative practitioners won’t want to miss [despite the fact that i've been invited to lead one of the workshops...]

the event is aimed at artists and designers and will explore some of the themes that cross over between the two disciplines, particularly as ‘crossing over’ is something that both keynote speakers have done. trudi entwistle is a site-specific artist with comissions across the globe who began her career as a landscape designer, andii edwards is a graphic designer who still gets chance to pursue the sort of work he first started to do on a fine art degree.

it’ll be great to catch up with trudi as we know each other from leeds metropolitan university days [me designing, her teaching] and worked together on a book prototype that combined photos and thoughts on her work with typography. local residents might remember trudi from when she transformed the road outside the royal hotel into a grassed area with emerging triangular turfed boxes.

the flyer arrives folded to about the size of a CD case and opens up, first to reveal the introduction and programme and then to A3 to reveal the rest of the information. printed on 100% recycled paper which is what we’re recommending to all our clients these days – the quality is great. credit to scarborough-based printers adverset for a nice job on this. copywriting by us. designers and artist in north yorks should find this dropping on their doormats in the next few days, or you can download a pdf version at: www.create.uk.net/discussions.php – go to the ‘useful documents’ section. oh yeah – my workshop is titled ‘do designers have a soul?’ and will develop some of the ethics stuff i’ve been exploring with students recently.

mapping south cliff

although there’s no doubt that scarborough is developing a more continental culture, it’s not often we’re to be found drinking wine at 10am overlooking the sea. at least not on a work day in february. but this morning our excuse was the official unveiling of a map of south cliff gardens on the esplanade – a joint project between scarborough civic society and scarborough borough council. [given the chilly morning it was mulled wine].

this has been a genuine collaboration – the original map was drawn by architect richard flowitt of the civic society, james did the digital colouring and labels and i did some work on the layout and typography. the map was also printed in last month’s renaissance news and we’ve received some lovely comments from people about it. thanks all. it has been commissioned to celebrate 50 years of the gardens coming under the management of the council and coincides with the restoration of the 13 shelters dotted across the south cliff.

the south cliff gardens are one of the legacies of scarborough’s victorian heyday and sometimes tend to get forgotten or ignored by visitors and residents alike which is a shame because there few more pleasant activities than a stroll through the gardens looking out to sea and spotting squirrels and birds – i’ve even seen wild deer there. hopefully a few more people will now be tempted in as a result of the map. it’s situated opposite the crown spa hotel, printed copies can be obtained from the renaissance office: 01723 341346.

digital scarborough

digital scarborough in 2005 was the event that pulled me into the creative community of scarborough. i was invited along to a meeting sometime in 2004 and before i knew it was in the whirlwind of planning a showcase of scarborough’s digital/creative community. in 2006 we improved on the format and with aim higher funding via nybep we hosted a weekend of guest speakers [inc. matt locke, head of innovation at the bbc], workshops and a fringe of digital arts events curated by create.

after a break last year darrell from it & digital york has secured some funding and whole bag full of enthusiasm and ideas for a digital scarborough 08. you heard it here first [or maybe you didn't]. we’re pleased to announce that electric angel will be designing the promo material which will be out verrrrry soon.

in the meantime it seemed a good excuse to show off our flyer-cum-poster design from ds06. as a side note, it was james [who was a student at the time] who won a competition in 2005 to design the digital scarborough logo – a digitised version of scarborough’s coastline – and that’s how he and i met.

run website [or adrian's secret life as a writer]

the balance in our workload between design for print, websites and other creative stuff is always unpredictable. we’re currently busy with websites so i thought we ought to blog a few before there’s too much of a backlog. this is the website for mission network run – actually the first job we did for them, so it predates the print designs we’ve blogged about. we produced the design and html for a programmer at run to develop into a content managed site.

so to my secret life… run also invited me to write three articles a month for the sprint section of the website, a magazine section within the site. i review resources, offer a guide to what’s on the internet and surf contemporary culture for a series of ‘beginners guides’. the site launched in its new format over 2 years ago, so i’ve been making some of my living as a writer for a couple of years now – something i always forget to mention whenever people ask us what we do. in fact, there’s plenty of our writing in quite a lot of the design work we do and although we’ve never advertised that we do copywriting, people often see our stuff and ask us to write. alas, unless you’re a run member you can’t access to these particular articles but i’ll try and remember to post some examples of or links to our writing at some point.

a creative migration

centrespread from this month’s renaissance news [download it here]. nick, the renaissance manager, asked if we’d like to do a feature on electric angel in the newsletter but we thought there were more stories out there than just ours. so we put a shout out to the creative coast members for anyone who’d moved here in the last few years to share their story too. gordon [sneakytrick], sarah [sarahphotogirl] and nick [emily edwards creative] were those who got words and pics to us before a rather pressing print deadline. but there are still stories coming in so there may be a ptII to this piece…

this issue of renaissance news was issued to everyone who attended the ‘looking back, stepping forward‘ event over the weekend so it was great timing being able to spread the word about scarborough’s creative scene to lots of visitors from other renaissance towns.

your town, your future… you decide

we’ve been kinda renaissance mad (in a good way) this last few weeks. as well as the renaissance friends work for regional development agency yorkshire forward and the monthly scarborough’s renaissance news we’ve been working on designs to promote an event taking place in scarborough this weekend.

run by yorkshire forward, ‘looking back, stepping forward’ aims to celebrate the successes of urban renaissance in yorkshire over the last 5 years, and to look forward to the future. friday will see people from renaissance towns across the region gather in scarborough for a day conference and dinner, and saturday will see the harbourside transformed with marquees for a day featuring drama, music, discussion and a ‘renaissance marketplace’ at which all scarborough’s action groups will be able to show what they do.

it’ll be a big weekend for us – friday will see the launch of ‘renaissance friends’, the town is already covered in posters (top – we call this unusual shape ‘A3 sliced in half’), leaflets (above & below – these are compliment slip size with an extra tear-off bit on the end) and banners advertising saturday and our design will form the backdrop to the theatrical performances, plus we’ll be there with creative coast too. it just leaves one question – how will i get time to watch the footie…?

you can just turn up for the marketplace on saturday but do book (it’s free) to see a performance too: www.scarboroughsfuture.org.uk booking deadline is thursday 11th so hurry!

quick notes about the design – there’s a danger that renaissance can fall into the trap of becoming a bit of a club for those in the know. the aim however is to involve as much of the community as possible in shaping the future of the town. we’re been trying to combat the club thing happening in scarborough with the redesigned newsletter and it was clear that we needed a populist approach to promoting the ‘your town, your future…’ event. the police box stands on scarborough seafront just round the corner from where the event is taking place and with doctor who back in vogue it’s having a new lease of life for family photos with ‘the tardis’. the time travel metaphor seemed totally appropriate given that the drama performance will show two alternate views of scarborough in the future. we’ve set it against a timeline comprised of the original renaissance ideas for the sandside area and the revamped seafront illustrating the transition from ideas to reality.

the design has gone down really well – we really ought to have a satisfied customers section on this website and start collating some quotes. police box photography, artwork and text all produced in house at electric angel. no sonic screwdrivers were used in the production of this piece.

dog rough

well not so much a rough, rather a prelude to the ‘clean it up’ signs we’ve been comissioned to design as part of a revamp to public information notices in the borough. this is the doggy poop design adapted to an A3 poster to promote biogdegradable dog mess bags. the permanent signs will probably be the same format as the antisocial drinking signs i blogged about a few weeks back on which the illustration will have a tighter crop and bleed off the sign (which looks best. it just wouldn’t work like that on A3).

the same idea follows as with the drinking sign – the illustration is almost entirely constructed from letterforms just with bits deleted and some straight lines connecting them. you can probably spot the capital ‘B’s for his legs, the ‘U’ for his tail and of course the asterisk for his, ahem, bottom. i’m kinda pleased at using eszett’s for ears – you usually only see these in the german language these days but were regularly used in english until about the 18th century (gotta confess i only learned this recently. if you’re intrigued you can read more about eszett’s on wikipedia. go on – you know you want to.)

after prison, what next?

-that’s the question facing a great many prison leavers. in HM leeds there are a team of people from west yorkshire community chaplaincy project to help with resettling plus issues such as drugs and reconnecting with family. we were asked to come up with a brand that had immediate impact and would work in the prison environment as well as in promoting the project’s work to the wider world.

colour was essential for posters to stand out on cluttered prison notice boards, but discretion was also essential and so the contact cards/flyers [shown above] are of a size that can be easily concealed in the hand or quietly slipped into a pocket. another dimension to the brief was that whilst the project had no choice over their potentially off-putting name they needed something that would convey their purpose – a brand within a brand if you like. ‘after prison, what next?’ was our solution – simple, direct and intriguing enough to encourage people to read on and discover that the project is multi-faith and with no agenda to evangelise.

the coloured stripes came out of exploring some of the imagery associated with the prison environment – we turned the negative repetition of prison bars into an optimistic array of colour. this extends across stationery, display banners and leaflets. we’re currently developing a content-managed website using the identity.

looking beyond the label

some of the work we’re commissioned to do is about selling an image – that’s often quite easy if it’s a positive image that people want to believe in or buy into. but challenging an accepted image is more of a challenge. a series of leaflets, banner stands and development plan for Hull Lighthouse Project was one such challenge.

lighthouse work with prostitutes, providing a listening ear, a warm cuppa and contraceptives on a night, building friendship and offering to help the women deal with the issues that force them into prostitution. lighthouse consciously use the word prostitute when talking about their work – ‘street worker’ and other titles just soften the issue.

one of the phrases that came up in conversation was about the labeling of women and how lighthouse aim to see beyond that to the person – the mother, the school-age girl, the abused ‘girlfriend’ who is trapped in a never ending spiral of being used for sex, using drugs to numb the pain and having to go back on the streets to pay for the drugs.

we developed the label theme across a range of leaflets aimed at potential volunteers and funders plus small contact cards that could be handed out to the women. for the images we took grainy photographs of discarded clothing and replaced the manufacturers labels with hard-hitting statistics from lighthouse’s work. these contrast with positive quotes from women who have been helped by the project. all the material is printed on uncoated card which gives flat non-glossy colours and an honest texture. a development plan was in an A5 card wallet format constructed from a thicker weight of the same card enabling inserts to be included and replaced as needed with the images, and thus the message, featured throughout.

client cards were produced to hand out to women on the streets – in contrast to the leaflets aimed at the public these carry only positive quotes and the message ‘we won’t label you’. there were several considerations to the design – it had to be small (ie. easily hidden) and durable but also be aware that card is likely to get torn up as roaches for joints. the budget didn’t stretch to an alternative material so we tried to compensate by having the phone number printed large and repeated so it stands more chance of survival. there’s a flipside to the alternate use for these cards – if something is useful it will be kept and so stands more chance of being around at a crucial moment.