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.

continuation of the ‘on the edge’ publicity [more here] in the form of A0 posters at various locations around the scarborough campus of the university of hull. local surfer oli banks’ film, 900 miles, shows tonight as part of the spring 08 season. i’m estimating that tonight’s creative coast [the 5 minute pitch - at which rebecca will be pitching on behalf of electric angel] will finish in time for a dash up the hill to the uni to catch the movie.

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.

we love to design posters and it’s always fun to pull out designs from several years ago and see how they’re wearing. since we’re currently working on the promo material for the boys’ & girls’ brigades youth event ‘firm foundations’ next year, we dug out a poster from a previous year. this dates from before our redesign of the firm foundations logo (and from before our bb rebranding too) but it remains one of my favourite pieces of work.

we’ve been kinda renaissance mad (in a good way) this last few weeks. as well as the renaissance friends work for regional development agency yorkshire forward and the monthly scarborough’s renaissance news we’ve been working on designs to promote an event taking place in scarborough this weekend.

run by yorkshire forward, ‘looking back, stepping forward’ aims to celebrate the successes of urban renaissance in yorkshire over the last 5 years, and to look forward to the future. friday will see people from renaissance towns across the region gather in scarborough for a day conference and dinner, and saturday will see the harbourside transformed with marquees for a day featuring drama, music, discussion and a ‘renaissance marketplace’ at which all scarborough’s action groups will be able to show what they do.

it’ll be a big weekend for us - friday will see the launch of ‘renaissance friends’, the town is already covered in posters (top - we call this unusual shape ‘A3 sliced in half’), leaflets (above & below - these are compliment slip size with an extra tear-off bit on the end) and banners advertising saturday and our design will form the backdrop to the theatrical performances, plus we’ll be there with creative coast too. it just leaves one question - how will i get time to watch the footie…?

you can just turn up for the marketplace on saturday but do book (it’s free) to see a performance too: www.scarboroughsfuture.org.uk booking deadline is thursday 11th so hurry!

quick notes about the design - there’s a danger that renaissance can fall into the trap of becoming a bit of a club for those in the know. the aim however is to involve as much of the community as possible in shaping the future of the town. we’re been trying to combat the club thing happening in scarborough with the redesigned newsletter and it was clear that we needed a populist approach to promoting the ‘your town, your future…’ event. the police box stands on scarborough seafront just round the corner from where the event is taking place and with doctor who back in vogue it’s having a new lease of life for family photos with ‘the tardis’. the time travel metaphor seemed totally appropriate given that the drama performance will show two alternate views of scarborough in the future. we’ve set it against a timeline comprised of the original renaissance ideas for the sandside area and the revamped seafront illustrating the transition from ideas to reality.

the design has gone down really well - we really ought to have a satisfied customers section on this website and start collating some quotes. police box photography, artwork and text all produced in house at electric angel. no sonic screwdrivers were used in the production of this piece.

acoustic gathering II is this sunday in the wonderful peasholm park. the island’s faux japanese pagoda has recently been rebuilt and when steve at mojo’s music cafe (who’s the dude behind acoustic gathering) asked us to design the posters again he suggested using that as an image. a waterfall runs down in front of the pagoda so we placed the names of the artists as if tumbling down the rocks.

last years acoustic gathering was superb - a chilled family-friendly atmosphere, fantastic setting (the musicians perform from a floating ‘bandstand’ on the lake - that’s the white silhouette at the bottom of the poster) and great weather. so fingers crossed for sun this sunday. do yourself a favour - pack a picnic and end the summer in style.

full line-up here, more about peasholm park here.

one last piece of church-related work from the vaults (actually from our shelves full of plastic folders). this leaflet-poster always makes an impression with people who know of the community of the resurrection in mirfield. largely because this is not the sort of imagery you’d associate with them. click on the link and you’ll get a flavour of the community.

but a group of students with a dynamic approach (including james mckaskill, later to be channel 4’s ‘priest idol‘) had a vision of a youth event that would tap into the intrigue about religious orders and new age belief, combining the opportunity to spend a night in a monastery with rock music, midnight mass, bbq’s and chilling out round camp fires.

there’s an obvious debt to anthony gormley and perhaps david bowie too with our ’star man’ illustration. he majority of the poster is set in typefaces designed by eric gill. the community’s logo is from a memorial roundel carved by gill and the chapel has some beautiful stations of the cross carved by gill’s assistant joseph cribb. they’re not usually accessible to the general public so it was a treat to be able to see these when our friend huw invited us to dinner and evening mass with the community. two things stick in my mind - the atmosphere of the plainsong mass and the sizable portions of chicken. “ah! vulture again” commented one of the monks.

(if you want to visit some of gill’s work in yorkshire i highly recommend the publication by graham carey available from the henry moore institute.)

active faith communities are a government-funded organisation who work with groups from many faith traditions helping them realise their potential in transforming communities. they will help groups who have ideas for community centres, youth work, parent and child groups, work with the elderly, healthy living initiatives - ideas that can play a positive role in society.

we were invited to contribute ideas as part of a review of their image and promotional material. some form of leaflet was seen as essential but there was also the realisation that leaflets are often filed away or slipped into drawers and never seen again. something we’d noticed working with many clients in the charitable and religious sectors was that office walls are usually personalised with inspiring images and quotes - quite often just printed out from a word processing program. so why not provide something both inspiring and beautiful to put up on walls that also kept active faiths contact details close to hand?

finding a quote that embodied the aspirations of the organisation but was not deemed too exclusive to any one religion was going to be tricky. in fact we could only think of a few people who are perceived to have transcended their personal beliefs and speak to all people regardless of faith, nelson mandela being an obvious example. we found this quote by ghandi which was thought to be perfect (you see - we do more than just design…).

working with a translator we produced a multi-lingual leaflet-cum-poster appropriate to the west yorkshire communities in which active faiths works. it was also a great opportunity to try a little multilingual creative typography. the coloured panels on the poster side of the leaflet run along the folds so as to play down the shadows cast by the folds when pinned to a wall or noticeboard.