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.
Archived entries for design-exhibitions & signage
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.
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!
still crazy
banner for promoting the ‘crazy, damn right i’m crazy’ exhibition. these were used at freshers fairs where our dayglo posters and interactive booklets were much in demand.
(we said there was) more than this
above is keynote speaker brian mclaren at the run national conference – more than this – last week. and behind him on probably the biggest flat projection screen i’ve seen are our graphics. it’s certainly the biggest screen we’ve had our work projected onto [and our work is currently being projected at local cinemas... but more on that later].
the brief for this job was to design some screens that would introduce the themes of the conference over three days and a constant side strip to brand the event – which is what you can see on these photos. they continue the visual and typographic style we used in the conference publicity material, natch.
photos courtesy of trefor at run. more available to view on flickr.
bradford disabled people’s groups – unique and together
we were asked by bradford district council for some ideas of what they might do for an exhibition stand for an event. the stand was to represent voluntary groups that work with people with disabilities and they liked the idea of some kind of interactivity and ideally wanted to at least consult the groups that it would represent.
we suggested a creative session where the groups members would be invited to come and create artwork – both visual, tactile and audio – to be incorporated into the stand design. taking inspiration from anthony gormley’s field we invited the participants to make a clay model to represent themselves, and to create a photomontage/collage from images they had brought with them.
audio recordings were made on the day and developed into an ambient soundscape of voices and sounds to accompany the stands. we invited artist morwenna catt and audio artist joe gilmore to help at the session. we also asked both the people who run the groups and those who attend then what they valued about belonging – these quotes are the words you can see at the top of the stands.
the completed stand was constructed from three roller banners, thereby allowing it to be used in a cut-down version with only one banner if desired. the soundscape plays on CD behind the stands on a loop, and – this is the interactive bit – there’s plenty modeling clay and an invitation for people to add their own creation, thus building up a community of clay people as the stand is used in different locations.
in many ways this is one of the most authentic pieces of design we have done – it’s perhaps not very ‘cool’ but it includes the voices and work of the people it represents and we valued the opportunity to work with them.
