electric angel /design for life

to the lighthouse

we didn’t manage to blog this at the time, although it’s lovely that people are still mentioning the design. taking cue’s from literary history and continuing to evoke sense of place [the lure of a long weekend in scarborough is an integral part of marketing the festival] this identity from 2011 helped the festival consolidate it’s place on the literary calendar.

flowerings

leaflet/fold-out poster for forthcoming exhibition at rural arts gallery in thirsk. it features work by judith brown, iona calvert, ruth moore and dionne swift and is curated by lara goodband.

sound of the sands

our seaside rock-er from the battle of the sands posters has been smartened up to appear in a concert fusing jazz and rock at coastival. the concert features dan and ben of mum locked in castle who were winners of the first battle of the sands competition.

storm force

invitation / poster for the recent ‘storm force’ exhibition at scarborough art gallery.

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unwrapped

some images from the unwrapped exhibition and publicity. the flyers are printed using fluorescent blue – not as in-yer-face as lime green or yellow but still the brightest possible blue you can get. we’ve developed a range of colours designed to contrast with the heritage colour palette generally associated with municipal galleries – a continuation of the work that began with dayglo orange of ‘crazy, damn right i’m crazy‘.

the image used on the flyer is by Eduardo Paolozzi. his work and studio recreation at the dean gallery in edinburgh is must-see if you’re a fan of pop art or just interested in post-war art and sculpture in general.

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you can read more about the exhibition at the contemporary art society website. it is, of course, a great exhibition. go see.

saucy

the coastival 2011 brochure design – it folds out from a postcard size leaflet to a large poster. we had fun playing with the seaside cliches and puns (and acknowledge our debt to saucy seaside postcard artist donald mcgill for the inspiration).

the toe-dipping skinny man illustration is by house of deadleg, the plump lady we drew in-house. look out for a few more seaside cheeky chaps and gorgeous gals when the coastival essential guide comes out in november-december which will feature complete listings for the weekend.

more CHART

a couple more pics of the CHART Scarborough map (that’s Culture, Heritage and ART Scarborough) to show the size. it folds down to normal DL leaflet/envelope size but with the photographic side we hoped to create something that was interesting/attractive enough to be a poster too. which way up you display it is up to you – it’s designed so there is no top, bottom, left or right (although personally i’d snip off the cover before framing).

CHART Scarborough map

here’s the job that’s been consuming much of our thought and time over the last 6 months. it’s been a big project, not just in terms of time but also the thinking and research that has gone into its production.

it’s a free map intended to encourage visitors and residents explore the town from a cultural perspective. for this to work, we researched cognitive mapping theory – the idea that you can draw maps that aid people to build better mental pictures of places and thus navigate them in a more intelligent way. this works if your map can show in an instantly recognisable way, the key places and spaces that the brain uses to remember and form journeys.

as well as using workshops with residents to identify how people currently move around the town, we’ve deliberately ‘loaded’ our map with cultural landmarks to try and encourage use of those places as an aid to navigation, thus subtly changing patterns of movement in the town by those who use the map. that’s the idea anyhow – as far as we know this hasn’t been tried before. we’ve also added a few theories of our own, particularly about the use of colour in communicating sense of place.

the reverse side further encourages exploration by using a ‘map’ of photographic images (all taken in-house) that we hope will prompt exploration of a town that often suffers from predictable patterns of movement. poems by two local poets – john w clarke and kate evans – add some context and entice further.

this is stage one of the project. stage two will be an intreractive online version. for now, accompanying trails can be downloaded from the website – www.chartscarborough.com – and more are being added every week. if you would like to know more about the theory, workshops and interventions as part of this project you can also read the project’s blog there. the map itself can be picked up at venues across scarborough (or just get in touch if you’d like us to post you one).

fossil festival

the natural history museum have come to town for scarborough fossil festival which is taking place at venues across the town this weekend. the advance publicity is in the format of a leaflet folding out to form a poster with details of the events on the reverse.

posters and banners at venues promote the event across the town – they seem to be working if the people heading into the rotunda museum as i took this photo are anything to go by.

untamed energies

leaflet-poster for a forthcoming exhibition at rural arts in thirsk. the exhibition features textiles by sally greaves-lord, ceramics by remon jephcott, jewellery by marlene mckibbin and etchings by maria pavledis. it’s curated by lara goodband whom we’ve also worked with on producing panels for ‘another view’ – the current exhibition at cliffe castle in keighley.

untamed energies forms part of the north yorkshire open studios which runs over two weekends in june. we’re also hosting an exhibition for open studios: ‘view from the back: journal of a surf trip’ by kathryn welford will be an installation and paintings inspired by a vw camper journey around europe and morocco. our tiny gallery is currently closed for some minor building work and kathryn’s exhibition will mark the re-opening.