electric angel /design for life

coastival’s rather splendid day out

coastival returns, and a year earlier than expected with a one-day event – their rather splendid day out.

due to public demand, coastival’s buxom seaside postcard mascot – christened glady’s – also returns to entice you to the UK’s first seaside resort for an out-of-season day of drama, laughs and good grooves for all ages. tickets are already sold out for some events so head straight to www.coastival.com for yours.

images are from our flyer design featuring a die-cut cover, hand-drawn logo and some cheeky seafront-inspired typography.

to the lighthouse

we didn’t manage to blog this at the time, although it’s lovely that people are still mentioning the design. taking cue’s from literary history and continuing to evoke sense of place [the lure of a long weekend in scarborough is an integral part of marketing the festival] this identity from 2011 helped the festival consolidate it’s place on the literary calendar.

liquid quality

the 2011 swim times leaflet for the imove sea swim project.

the photograph that covers the whole leaflet was taken by james swimming out in the south bay and we printed it in reverse on translucent paper with the black type printed on the front to give a sense of depth. the white lettering is the whited out of the background image and so is basically the light shining through the paper. the typography continues a house style for the project started on the beach huts earlier in the year.

we’ve had more lovely comments about this than any other recent piece of work (thanks everyone who has taken time to mention how much they like it), not least this typically poetic one from john who is co-curator of the project: “lovely liquid quality – as if you’d dipped an image in the water and hung it up to run and dry”

the leaflet was printed by north wolds.

sea swim

i feel privileged to work on a lot of the jobs we do, but being able to play with beach huts down on the sea front is possibly the most fun.

this is the first stage of a typographic artwork as part of ‘sea swim’ – an imove project connecting sport and art in surprising ways. these beach chalets have been lent by scarborough borough council to the project as their HQ, not just for changing into wetsuits, but for writing poetry, creating art and in time, exhibiting the fruits of the project.

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as the project finds its rhythm more text will be added. these initial letters are created in chalkboard paint so look out for group swim times, nuggets of info and lines of poetry cropping up on them over the coming months (a visualisation of how the full artwork might look using temporary text from the original sea swim proposal is shown below). as the project is about creativity and documenting the act of swimming we have this idea that everything created or collected could be an artefact with it’s own number as part of an obsessive curating regime. and so we awarded the chalets the coveted no.2 slot (no.1 being the sea itself…)

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you can pop down the chalets and find out more about the project this saturday any time between 10-5 and you’re invited to join the group for a plunge at 10.30am and 3.30pm. no athletic endeavour needed – it’s all about the experience of being in the water. to find the chalets just wander past the spa at the south bay and look for the big letters… john wedgwood clarke will be running a free creative writing workshop from 10.30am-12.30pm as part of the open day. to book a place, email him at seaswim@btinternet.com – bring a photograph of you swimming as a child!

(oh, and by the way – i didn’t paint all that by myself, don and jason are the professional signwriters, they just let me lend a hand so long as i promised not to spoil their nice brushes. more hand-painted loveliness coming soon…)

pink. mmmm.

i like pink. so i was delighted when creative north yorkshire asked us to work on their visual identity and to stick with the pink. these cards come in three colourways and are the first fruits of that work.

not what you think
(or how david bowie helped us design)

the group of young adults working with the ferens gallery in hull had previously been known as ‘the ferens art ambassadors’ but there was a general feeling that this sounded rather formal and none too helpful in attracting new members to the group and promoting the exhibitions they curate. we were invited to work with the group to develop a new name and visual identity that would help them promote what they do.

the starting point was look at existing logos from a wide range of sources and uses and how they conveyed a message through their choice of words, colours and style. with those thoughts in our minds we ate some biscuits, then started to write our own descriptions of what the ‘art ambassadors’ do and how it could be described. one of the techniques we used – especially good for when you grind to a halt or need a fresh perspective at familiar phrases – was cut-up technique.

i was delighted that the group appreciated david bowie and i could take a brief excursion to alan yentob’s 1974 documentary ‘cracked actor’ where bowie’s burroughsian wordplay is synced to him singing ‘moonage daydream’. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il6-mnTjAVA. any design job you bring a bowie reference to has got to be good.

plastic soul dalliances aside, it was this process and resulting discussion (shown above) and possibly some more biscuits that led us to the phrase ‘not what you think’ as exactly the sort of challenging and polysemic phrase that would work on promotional material for both exhibitions and the group. some examples:
- ‘not what you think’ confounding expectations of what’s inside a gallery
- ‘not what you think’ as to what it’s like being part of the group
- ‘not what *you* think’ as a challenge to take on other perspectives to the world
- it’s… ‘not what you *think*’ …it’s what you do. as a prompt to get involved

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also out of this process came the title ‘future ferens’ for the group itself which we thought would work well as a subtitle or explanation of the above phrase – a concious reversal of the usual name and subtitle convention.

the second stage was to take these words and develop them as a logo that could be use in various contexts. above we are trying out variations at a second workshop using dummy posters. below is the finished logo in use on the ‘unwrapped’ exhibition publicity. it’s designed to be almost used as a ‘stamp’ over the top of images or almost haphazardly on a design, to indicate the freshness of thought by the future ferens and, in time, we hope as a stamp of approval or signifier you can trust an event bearing this mark. the final artwork which will be supplied to printers and other designers is deliberately at an angle in the hope it will never look too formal or staid.

the ferens have got it licked

lollipops printed as part of a promotional campaign targeted at a student audience for the ferens gallery in hull. the exhibition has been curated by ‘future ferens’ – a group of young adults working with the gallery who aim to engage a younger audience. we have recently helped rebrand the future ferens (originally known as the ferens art ambassadors) and designed the promotional material and interpretation for ‘unwrapped’.

an special view of the exhibition happens tonight with DJ’s, free drinks, CD’s and great art. i’m confined to the scarborough locale awaiting arrival of mini-riley no.2, but james will be there – do say hello if you are too.

more CHART

a couple more pics of the CHART Scarborough map (that’s Culture, Heritage and ART Scarborough) to show the size. it folds down to normal DL leaflet/envelope size but with the photographic side we hoped to create something that was interesting/attractive enough to be a poster too. which way up you display it is up to you – it’s designed so there is no top, bottom, left or right (although personally i’d snip off the cover before framing).

CHART Scarborough map

here’s the job that’s been consuming much of our thought and time over the last 6 months. it’s been a big project, not just in terms of time but also the thinking and research that has gone into its production.

it’s a free map intended to encourage visitors and residents explore the town from a cultural perspective. for this to work, we researched cognitive mapping theory – the idea that you can draw maps that aid people to build better mental pictures of places and thus navigate them in a more intelligent way. this works if your map can show in an instantly recognisable way, the key places and spaces that the brain uses to remember and form journeys.

as well as using workshops with residents to identify how people currently move around the town, we’ve deliberately ‘loaded’ our map with cultural landmarks to try and encourage use of those places as an aid to navigation, thus subtly changing patterns of movement in the town by those who use the map. that’s the idea anyhow – as far as we know this hasn’t been tried before. we’ve also added a few theories of our own, particularly about the use of colour in communicating sense of place.

the reverse side further encourages exploration by using a ‘map’ of photographic images (all taken in-house) that we hope will prompt exploration of a town that often suffers from predictable patterns of movement. poems by two local poets – john w clarke and kate evans – add some context and entice further.

this is stage one of the project. stage two will be an intreractive online version. for now, accompanying trails can be downloaded from the website – www.chartscarborough.com – and more are being added every week. if you would like to know more about the theory, workshops and interventions as part of this project you can also read the project’s blog there. the map itself can be picked up at venues across scarborough (or just get in touch if you’d like us to post you one).

chart scarborough launch

some photos from last night’s launch event.

it began with a visit from william smith and other notables from scarborough’s cultural heritage…

…and finished with a brilliant performance by scarborough hip-hip school.

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visuals were largely the work of our placement student, emma, created from the map artwork. we used 4 projectors to create a wall of constantly changing images.