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.

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.

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.

we were invited to design a new visual identity and promotional material for the 2008 festival after being recommend by an existing client and winning a competitive pitch. we took two starting points for a design concept that runs through all the material - the first was the lure of a relaxing weekend by the sea, settling down to hear the authors themselves rather than just reading a book, this led to the deckhair-book illustration. the second was inspiration from the paperbook format itself. thus the brochure is the same size as the first mass-market paperbacks and pays homage to their distinctive graphic style.

the conceit of holding a book and not just a programme followed through into the printing - we specified a coated thin card cover with uncoated interior pages to give the same feel as a paperback. colour-coding indicates the different days of the festival. additional information such as day ticket prices are designed as if real objects left on the page of the book.

having the programme as an ‘object’ has followed through to the flyers [pictured] and posters [in a library near you now] which advertise the festival as a book with the ‘rear cover’ announcing the authors involved. the unusual programme size meant we were able to use the offcuts from the cover to produce bookmarks as give-aways at local libraries. other design work includes banners and tickets.

from our perspective, enjoying working as a graphic designer is often about who we get to work with - so special mention to the enthusiastic staff at scarborough central library who run the festival as well as keep a thriving library and information centre running. you can read principal officer lee taylor’s perspective here on the bbc website - we’re grateful for the credit he gives us. the festival website can be found here. the festival runs from 17-20 april with authors including ian rankin, louis de bernieres and joanne harris.

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

it’s fun seeing your designs applied to different media - we’ve had logos cast in bronze, etched in glass and projected onto cathedral walls, but never before turned into a cake. these are photos from last night’s creative coast birthday party. cake by icing maestro anthony and posse at imaginative icing who did an amazing bit of icing-typography reproducing the creative coast logo. is this the first ever use of franklin gothic book on a cake?

then we all got to have a go…

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.