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.

the new creative coast flyers are hitting doormats this week. particularly exciting is that on the 23rd we’re having a whitby launch for the network to see if there’s critical mass and enthusiasm for regular events there as well as in scarborough. the focus of the launch events will be to see if whitby area creatives would value event close to home and what kind of events they might want.

the new flyers are double-sided to show events for the two towns. we’ve scheduled events up till the summer break on consecutive dates so that scarborough folks can pop up the coast and do a bit of networking if they so fancy. also in a change to the advertised date and so we don’t clash with the literature festival launch, the next scarborough event with be on the 30th april and not this wednesday as previously advertised.

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.

the new exhibition at scarborough art gallery opens tomorrow. ‘fairy tales and fantasy’ is an exhibition of victorian children’s book illustrations - perfect easter holiday viewing for children of all ages. this child is particularly looking forward to seeing some of w. heath robinson’s work in the flesh - his sense of whimsy and the almost-possible was a big influence in my teens. and if you’re going with children, don’t forget to visit the resource room which i gather than had a bit of a fairyland make-over for the exhibition.

we were commissioned to design the promotional material for the exhibition - above is the private view invitation front and rear, below is the exhibition poster. we chose contemporary text mixed with a handwritten element to anchor the illustration - although the initial instinct was to do something ‘fantasy’ or in line with victorian book design, the results were way too twee. feedback suggests that people rather like the intentional playfulness of the invite - you have to flip it over and then rotate to read the text. it originally had a more conventional layout but one morning we came into the studio to find some mischievous but typographically-aware elves had altered the design in the night.

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.

flyer for a north yorkshire creative industries network event hosted by create. the event takes place in scarborough on 12 march in scarborough and looks like the sort of day creative practitioners won’t want to miss [despite the fact that i’ve been invited to lead one of the workshops…]

the event is aimed at artists and designers and will explore some of the themes that cross over between the two disciplines, particularly as ‘crossing over’ is something that both keynote speakers have done. trudi entwistle is a site-specific artist with comissions across the globe who began her career as a landscape designer, andii edwards is a graphic designer who still gets chance to pursue the sort of work he first started to do on a fine art degree.

it’ll be great to catch up with trudi as we know each other from leeds metropolitan university days [me designing, her teaching] and worked together on a book prototype that combined photos and thoughts on her work with typography. local residents might remember trudi from when she transformed the road outside the royal hotel into a grassed area with emerging triangular turfed boxes.

the flyer arrives folded to about the size of a CD case and opens up, first to reveal the introduction and programme and then to A3 to reveal the rest of the information. printed on 100% recycled paper which is what we’re recommending to all our clients these days - the quality is great. credit to scarborough-based printers adverset for a nice job on this. copywriting by us. designers and artist in north yorks should find this dropping on their doormats in the next few days, or you can download a pdf version at: www.create.uk.net/discussions.php - go to the ‘useful documents’ section. oh yeah - my workshop is titled ‘do designers have a soul?’ and will develop some of the ethics stuff i’ve been exploring with students recently.

a quick one pulled out of the archives - early application scheme leaflet for leeds metropolitan university. aimed at a 16+ market and so deliberately using bright photography, a little grunge type and graphic devices to suggest momentum.

…that’s the description for a website we produced towards the end of last year for launch at the national youthwork conference. the aim of the site is to provide a female voice and perspective in a male-dominated profession.

we were asked to design a logo, website and promo postcards for the newly-formed sophia network. the site was a collaboration with ross kendall using open source technology, hot on the heels of the renaissance friends site. there’s a lot going on in the website and ross did a sterling job to meet a rather tight deadline.

the site has two levels of engagement - casual visitors will see the public face which includes a blog, an editorial, events listing and a taste of the features on offer to members. when you sign in as a member there’s a more in-depth blog, an editorial written specifically for members, resources for download and directories of members and female speakers. this enables the site’s owners to tailor the content to two specific audiences as well as provide an incentive for females in youthwork to join up and benefit from being able to interact online in a safe space. the site is powered by a content management system so the owners have complete facilities to update content and manage the membership details.

for the logo design we did some research into ’sophia’ - the greek word for wisdom and in jewish scripture thought to represent the female part of god, something that reaches into the roman catholic tradition of referring to mary, the mother of christ as ’seat of divine wisdom’. we discovered that in the latin church sophia is usually pictured crowned and in the orthodox church with red skin. thus the crown features in the logo and the gold and red provided a starting point for the website’s colourscheme.

the ds06 fringe was an exciting mix of digital creativity - from documentary film to pioneer vj’s hexstatic via sonic art and digital beds. above and below are the fringe flyers we designed. the hexstatic page was blown up to large poster size and there was very nearly a scrap for it at the end of the festival, in fact we had to reclaim it to use at the venue.

oh yeah, the venue. we struggled to find somewhere with the capacity we needed, so decided to create our own… i’ll do a blog post on that tomorrow.

digital scarborough in 2005 was the event that pulled me into the creative community of scarborough. i was invited along to a meeting sometime in 2004 and before i knew it was in the whirlwind of planning a showcase of scarborough’s digital/creative community. in 2006 we improved on the format and with aim higher funding via nybep we hosted a weekend of guest speakers [inc. matt locke, head of innovation at the bbc], workshops and a fringe of digital arts events curated by create.

after a break last year darrell from it & digital york has secured some funding and whole bag full of enthusiasm and ideas for a digital scarborough 08. you heard it here first [or maybe you didn’t]. we’re pleased to announce that electric angel will be designing the promo material which will be out verrrrry soon.

in the meantime it seemed a good excuse to show off our flyer-cum-poster design from ds06. as a side note, it was james [who was a student at the time] who won a competition in 2005 to design the digital scarborough logo - a digitised version of scarborough’s coastline - and that’s how he and i met.