electric angel /design for life

more names, more faces

photos of our two full walls for the ‘name to a face’ exhibition. the mood of two distinct areas of the exhibition was of piecing together information, notably about victorian society photographer sarony, and making sense of a vast archive of material from a scarborough family. visitors to the show were encouraged to add any further enlightenment to the material on display.

to echo that theme we developed a chequerboard approach to the interpretation panels that was both very cost-effective and allowed some freedom for extra works to be added. initial layout ideas for the two walls were produced in the studio and then we helped place and fix the panels in the gallery.

other interpretation panels for the exhibition match in style and all the prints have a textured laminate and are wrapped to give the effect of canvases to tie in with the paintings that formed the rest of the exhibition.

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below you can see one of sarah venus’s wonderful wall paintings in the background – we incorporated a corner frame design by sarah into the panels for a cohesive look.

making an entrance

occasionally we are approached to work on something that doesn’t exactly fit our business model of working with public sector clients and charities, but the subject matter of the job gets us so excited we have to say yes. when we were approached by local engineering firm unison to help them make their reception entrance a bit more dynamic for a series of visits from the USA, thoughts of cladding the walls in dual-layers of images and text flooded into our heads. they’d never go for that…would they?

well, yes, they would!

unison’s clients include huge names in world aviation and vehicle manufacture such as boeing and alexander dennis and they recently began running tours across the UK taking in their facilities at eastfield industrial estate, alexander dennis, GKN aerospace and the university of sheffield’s advanced manufacturing research centre. we first helped them create a brochure for these ‘tech tours’ and this formed the basis of the reception area designs. our suggestion was to use the large wall at the back of the area as a kind of introduction to the tour, showing the places visited. this would be in two layers, a bottom layer carrying on the smoke design from the brochure and a second perspex layer showing the current tour itinerary and clients.

the use of the perspex layer serves 2 purposes. it creates a separate focus from the purely aesthetic background images, allowing important information to be displayed, literally standing off. it also takes into account the possibility that the tours could change venues and therefore the perspex can be replaced or amended without adjustment to the rear panel. bay area sign and image solutions were helpful as usual in making the idea work.

the total effect of the reception area was added to with door signage and another board showing unison’s key client, which sits behind the reception desk, visible as soon as you enter. in the future we hope to be adding more signage to the factory, including a 5 metre long glass wall and banners throughout. it’s exciting to work on such large scale things with clients who don’t see anything as an impossibility and like to see nice, big design as much as we do!

some other nice, big design will be revealed soon when the railwayart project is put in place.

meet the locals

young people’s activity guide for the name to a face exhibition at scarborough art gallery.

an exhibition of portraits can seem dull to a young audience unless the stories behind the faces are drawn out. the exhibition already does this very well, but another layer needed to be added for a younger audience. perhaps the trickiest part of this was guiding them round an exhibition you haven’t yet seen yourself – it’s one thing to look at the works that will form it and the plan of what will go where, but until you’re in the space itself with art on the walls it’s hard to think of the best way of creating that guide. but that’s a luxury you don’t have. we threw around some initial ideas with the museum trust’s learning officer, ian, and then developed the full guide from there.

‘meet the locals’ is designed to be used by children who can read on their own or by younger kids with the help of an adult or older child and encourages them to explore the exhibition according to themes, and back again to see if some of the paintings stuck in their memory. it asks questions and encourages them to make creative responses by drawing, writing and moving around the gallery. it’s an activity sheet that can’t be done anywhere except in front of the painting and photographs.

but there is something to take home – the rear of the guide has instructions of how to turn the guide itself into a mask and a pin-hole camera. galleries and museums have always seemed to be about more than looking – they’re about inspiring people, so we love the idea of young people going home and trying to ‘capture’ a portrait of someone on their pinhole camera.

who let the designers in?

typical – there’s an iconic hockney hanging on the wall not a few centimetres away and here we are looking at our own work in a rather self-obsessed manner.

we did look at the art too, honest.

that’s some crazy art

we’ve been working on the legacy documents for the ‘crazy, damn right i’m crazy’ exhibition – art from the arts council collection which was shown at the ferens gallery, hull earlier this year. you might remember that the art was chosen by the ferens art ambassadors and marketed to the same age 16-25 age group. the docs aim to provide information and advice to anyone embarking on a similar project .

we didn’t post any images of our work in the gallery at the time, so here are some pics courtesy of art ambassador hannah. thanks hannah!

this is the banner advertising the exhibition hanging in the atrium area – visible as soon as you enter the ferens gallery. below it is joseph beuys’ ‘intuition… instead of a cookbook’.

one of several banner stands which were also used at freshers fairs to attract students to the exhibition (see pic below), door panel (with blackout curtains due to possibly offensive content) and if you look carefully, floor graphics that lead from the gallery entrance to the exhibition.

exhibition info panels (above) and artwork labels (below) continuing the style of the promotional booklets.

feedback sheets encouraging visitors to leave their comments in the manner of artist ross sinclair’s t-shirts. 1100 people did.

bawden and ravilious exhibition panels

this weekend is your last chance to catch the excellent bawden and ravilious exhibition at scarborough art gallery. below are a couple of snaps of some of the information panels we designed for the exhibition. for each we hand-drew a capital letter in the style of the alphabet ravillous designed for wedgwood and chose fonts that were appropriate for the era when bawden and ravilious were working together -today i also spotted the same style lettering in a ravilious illustration of a shop front.

i’ve tweeted about another couple of special exhibitions on over the weekend >

next up at the gallery is a touring exhibition curated by turner prize winner grayson perry who was in scarborough recently judging the rotunda museum for the art fund prize. the rotunda is at the bottom of the terrace our studio is on and we’re pleased to be working on some educational material for them at the moment.

green lane

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

sign

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.

enterprising britain – dressing the set

probably our last post on this – until the enterprising europe competition anyway…

i said in an earlier post that we needed to provide contrasts – we reinforced the message of old scarborough and renaissance scarborough in several ways on the judging day. we began in woodend with a revisited version of the visual presentation, this time with scarborough businessman peter wilkinson setting the scene from his experiences of living and working in the town. because this time we had a full day to show present day scarborough, we spent more time showing how bad scarborough had got before the renaissance process. it took a fair bit of digging around to find incriminating images for the presentation – people don’t generally take many photos when somewhere isn’t looking too good.

then i presented my story – how moving to scarborough has been great for us and how the creative industries here are vibrant and rapidly growing. so i got to speak in front of a wall of changing images of scarborough being a dynamic place.

we reinforced this contrast by lining the presentation room with banner stands – on one side black and white images of scarborough as was, on the other vibrant specially-commissioned photographs of scarborough today. when the judging team returned to woodend for a drink and chilled close to the day with some of the local surf community, the banners were also placed as a reminder of the transformation.

so there you have it. i gather there’s a nice glass trophy somewhere in the town hall but i can’t post a photo as we haven’t seen it yet – we will campaign to get it in the renaissance office window in the centre of town for ordinary folks to see. as far as i know, there hasn’t been an official thank you from the town hall which is a shame but as i did a fair bit of the contacting of people and asking if they would be open to meeting james murray-wells and the judging team, i would like to say a personal thank you to everyone who gave their time gladly and spoke enthusiastically and honestly about living and working in scarborough. they are all people we invited because of what they’re doing for the town. enterprising britain was won by ‘the renaissance partnership’ and these are the type of people who make it happen. thank you and well done!