electric angel /design for life

give ‘em the old razzle dazzle

invitation inviting representatives of US-based aerospace and automotive companies to a reception at the house of commons and ‘tech-tour’ of british companies. the link between these companies is that they all use pipe-bending machines designed and manufactured by scarborough-based unison ltd.

although pipe-bending might not get you really excited, it’s worth knowing that it’s this technology that ensures your car works and that the plane that takes you on holiday is as safe as it is (unison technology is helping build the new airbus 380 as well us used in the RAFs AWACS early warning planes). you can also add to that that these folks have developed technology that is also eco-friendly by reducing waste and energy consumption.

we rarely work with other businesses so this might be seen as a bit of a departure from our usual work with the voluntary and arts organisations but we took this on because it seemed to have much in common with work promoting the area – it’s about building image, not least another jewel in scarborough’s enterprise crown.

the invitations – printed by scarborough printers mcray press – use a foil-blocked cover with the house of commons crest, a textured paper for the invitation and matching cream paper for the fold-out itinerary and letter. we hear that they’ve received glowing comments from all involved, one quote in particular that it was the best piece of marketing material they’d seen in several years.

the festival coast

the festival coast is a brand developed for the yorkshire coast festivals association to promote a wide variety of festivals and events. we designed the logo – flags forming the the shape of the yorkshire coastline – a couple of years back and have continued develop a house style which is very much a tribute to artist tom purvis who designed posters for the london and north eastern railway. he pretty much defined what’s known as ‘the golden age’ of railway posters.

despite me being a big fan of purvis et al, it was actually members of the association who suggested we reference old railway posters, i think partly because ‘the festival coast’ has that 1930′s ring about it but also to create a style that stood out as something different from racks of shiny photograph-based leaflets – a visual shorthand that there was something more substantial for visitors [and local residents] in this part of the world. james drew the illustration which is a montage of several views along the coast.

the large envelope was a cost effective way of gathering lots of printed material for a conference – an idea we originally suggested for a similar event for the north yorkshire creative industries network.

green lane

logo for green lane centre in whitby – part of our branding for coast and moors voluntary action. sign produced by basis.

are you ready for the weekend?

this weekend sees the third scarborough literature festival with a line up of thriller writers, poets and a strong bbc presence [including a cyberman!]. we were invited to design the programme and publicity material following our work on the festival last year which received some really nice comments.

because the festival is still something of a new kid on the block albeit one already developing a strong reputation, building an identifiable brand is important. to this end we recommended using a dominant image that had a recognisable relationship with last years ‘bookchair’ illustration. the illustration this year incorporates the festival title and dates as paper ‘stickers’. the travel stickers continue through the programme to highlight the themes running through the festival.

pick up a programme from any north yorkshire library or look at the details online.

…it’s a coast thing on the road

photos of the first two uses of the brand on local business vehicles by bluebird vehicles and awj glass.

…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 poster

poster for coastival. C19th music hall posters were the inspiration for this – and for the centrespread of the coastival programme too. we took the same idea of displaying a wide range of acts/events on one long poster but in a more contemporary style.

it’s fun working with typography within a limited format like this because it’s about achieving visual hierarchy and thus steering the viewer visually through the design, not always in a straight top-to-bottom way [a lot of contemporary graphic design seems to take very minimal approach to this, usually at the cost of readability]. this is a balancing act with following some self-set ‘rules’ about typefaces that sometimes work against what you’re trying to do. the typeface issue is that music hall posters would use a diverse range of fonts to cope with long or short names on the poster – we felt this approach would have been too busy and too retro in this situation.

we’ve had some nice compliments on the poster and the programme design – thanks folks. i can feel a post coming on on the whole visual legibility thing as it’s often something that people have stated as to why they’ve chosen to work with us.

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

celebrating 125 years

the boys’ brigade have been celebrating their 125th anniversary this year which makes them the world’s first uniformed youth organisation [the scouts celebrated their centenary last year].

we were commissioned to design a logo to be used at celebrations, on publicity material and on a whole range of commemorative products. when i went down to bb hq around easter it was fun to see everything from mugs to rulers to keyrings with the 125 logo on including this rather nice bronze badge – we adapted the logo to work as a roundel for this. anyway, we failed to blog this at the time so are sneaking it in at the end of the year, but a belated congratulations to the bb on their 125 years of ‘bringing hope to a generation’.

you’d have to be crazy…

…to wear one of these. t-shirts, as worn by the ferens art ambassadors promoting the exhibition at freshers fairs and at the exhibition launch.