electric angel /design for life

intervening with CHART Scarborough

CHART Scarborough is one of the big projects were currently working on. the main focus is a map of scarborough based around cognitive mapping theory aka legible cities thinking, that has the intention of encouraging people to navigate the town via cultural destinations. to raise awareness prior to the launch and to encourage some wider participation in the project there’ll be a series of ‘interventions’ around the town over the next few weeks.

some are pretty straight forward like the sign above that went up outside the library yesterday, some will be more situationist guerilla art. i’m not saying any more about those… if you’re in scarborough you’ll hopefully discover one by chance. there’ll also be a week-long competition in the local newspaper.

the library sign is the first time – if you discount the progress reports on www.chartscarborough.com – that an section of the map has been seen in public. this is still a work in progress and there’ll be some changes to this after a couple more community workshops and feedback from the interventions, but it will give you a good idea of what it’s going to look like. the map will be packaged as part of a leaflet in which we intend to break away from the traditional imagery found on publications promoting this part of the world – ‘map as art object’ is one of the phrases from the original brief…

espionage, blackmail, romance and menace!

ah, just a typical day in the studio.

actually that’s how we’ve chosen to describe the 2010 scarborough literature festival. our design work includes posters (copywriting too on those), flyers, bookmarks targeted at adults and kids and the festival brochure. it’s a good line-up again and this year’s main image is in the style of a pop-up book with each pop-up suggesting one or more of the authors and events in the festival – this theme follows through into the brochure. we’re particularly looking forward to the beano event – tickets are on sale now from scarborough tourist information centre.

name to a face

brochure-cum-poster for ‘name to a face’ at scarborough art gallery. the brochure includes a map of scarborough for you to have a go at matching portraits of famous people to associated locations in scarborough.

do go see this show – the wall paintings by sarah venus [also used on the poster] are fantastic and really help bring the paintings alive. there’s also a young person’s activity guide we designed [more of which later] which makes it a good exhibition for all ages. you can get a sneak preview here.

rock the boat

publicity material for ‘rock the boat – an exhibition of mechanical sculptures at scarborough art gallery.

as with the bawden and ravilious design this is a leaflet that opens out into a poster but with something of a challenge as the only images of sufficient quality we had to use were of half-finished sculptures. so for the main image we drew an illustration of the ‘mad cow minotaur’ that was to feature in the exhibition.

the print uses metallic silver ink to simulate the metal finish of some of the sculptures and we were able to follow this through on the posters outside the gallery and the information panels inside the exhibition. given the main image, the extra ‘o’s in ‘mooving’ seemed a highly appropriate mis-spelling to add to the design.

the leaflet also features a quick activity for younger visitors which we devised – spotting some of the components from which the sculptures are made [shown below]. as well as the minotaur the exhibition includes a moo-ing cow, two boats, a fascinating take on conception and a recently-delivered spinning teacup. the exhibition runs until sunday 20 september.

scarborough rocks!

poster and flyers for battle of the sands 09. the call has gone out for bands to take part in october of this year – last year’s winners – the excellent mum locked in castle – won a support slot with feeder at coastival. get your skates on as the deadline is 14th august. details at www.create.uk.net

we’ve designed the poster so that the call for entries section can be sliced off once the entry deadline has expired, thus saving print costs and paper by not needing two separate posters.

watch this space

we seem to be always popular with work placements, perhaps partly because so few design studios offer them (shame on you!). and we like to give our placements something fun and real to work on if we can.

recent 6th form placement sabina impressed us with her photography so we suggested working on a centrespread for the july/august issue of ’scarboroughs future’ that encouraged people to look at possible future renaissance projects. these include the spa and surrounding area taking in the roundabout [possible future use as a surfers changing and shower area?] and controversial disused cliff lift, the far harbour area, the ‘argos building’ [space better put to use as a market square?] and the grand-daddy of them all – the futurist on the seafront.

sabina created this photomontage with the addition of our words and typography. it’s a little different to some of our previous scarborough-focussed projects in that we’re not trying to make scarborough look good, but rather encourage people to reimagine spaces and how they might be transformed.

for us this also hints at some future projects we have lined up in which we’ll be exploring space in scarborough and in one instance, helping the physical transformation of an area.

no angels

typographic treatments of three poems by kate evans from her poetry residency in palliative care settings in north yorkshire. the resulting work has been produced as a limited run of posters which will be framed and put on the walls of hospitals and hospices, and postcards which will be there for patients and visitors to keep if they wish. the project is arranged and funded by HAFNEY.

the balance here was between visual interest and legibility and all three designs came out of an intuitive approach – reading the poem and then responding to it. the aim is to enhance how the poem communicates. i started working like this long before i discovered poetry concrete although who knows what influences i absorbed back in the day that prompted me to take this approach. that said, a relationship between poet and designer like this seems quite rare and i’m grateful for kate’s trust in me which – worse case scenario – could completely ruin the mood of the poem.

it’s interesting how people interpret the designs differently. the layout of no angels [the blue design] was inspired by renaissance paintings of angels which often have a spray of light emanating from them which doubled as soundwaves from ‘the blare of the alarm’ in the poem. kate thought it was maybe based on angel’s wings. i like that ambiguity. eternity [the red design] started with kate’s suggestion that she envisaged the poem in a spiral. sometimes had the longest gestation eventually ending up as a much simpler layout than my initial scribbles which were more like the complex peasholm magic lantern images.

although given free reign on design, i had some self-imposed rules – solid colour and one font throughout. as well as finding restraints useful, this was also a rational design decision to tie the three poems together visually.

bawden & ravilious

tonight sees the opening of ‘east coasting: art & design by edward bawden & eric ravilious with mark hearld’ at scarborough art gallery.

we have designed the promotional material, information panels and artwork labels for the exhibition. we’ve also worked with the museum’s trust’s learning manager to produce a kids activity sheet. the leaflet-cum-poster-cum-invitation shown here was an example of how sometimes tight constraints produce creative thinking. scarborough museums trust wanted to make a noise about what looks to be a spectacular exhibition. posters were essential, leaflets were desirable and an invitation that felt a bit special would be nice too. but the budget would never extend to all three.

our suggestion was a leaflet that opened out to be a poster, some could be printed poster side only for where posters without folds were desired. we’d already seen some work by hark hearld, who has created ‘a miscellany’ for the exhibition [a room full of wonderful collected items] and so he was invited to produce lettering for a paper band that wraps around the leaflet to turn it into an invitation with a personal touch. these could be printed in house at the trust for very little cost. matching envelopes complete the effect.

our design was inspired by book covers designed by bawden and ravilious and to get an authentic look, was lettered largely by hand with a dip pen. if you look through a book or website of their design work you’ll be able to play ’spot the lettering’ on our poster. the crab illustration is by edward bawden, the gulls by mark. with this kind of work, the aim is to pay homage rather than create a pastiche and i hope we got the balance right.

the feedback for this has been amazing and the gallery is expecting a bumper turnout tonight.
do try and get down to the exhibition – curated by lara goodband – which runs until 4th may. whether your taste is for design, illustration, fine art or english whimsy, you’ll find something to delight.

the electric angel gallery

there’s a little back story behind our new studio. when we decided that we would buy our own premises we had a wish list of ideal locations in scarborough. obviously some would never come on the market or be anywhere near our budget, but museum terrace was one of those places we said ‘if that ever comes up for sale…’. well it did, so we did.

another thing we said was that if we ended up with premises that had a public face that we’d love to run a little art gallery. well we did, and so we are. yes, it is possibly the smallest art gallery you’ve ever seen, but we’re going to enjoy exhibiting work by local creatives just because we like what they do.

we open to the public on friday as part of coastival – you can catch our first exhibiting artist – rachel welford – and myself on radio york friday morning talking about it along with other coastival peeps such as FEEDER.

shown here is the poster for rachel’s exhibition which doubles as the invite for the private view and to come have a peek at our new place. the invite slices off to form a more traditional poster.

the modular approach

quick post on a few more coastival designs. we consciously developed a modular approach to the poster and programme design so that we could create extra posters and banners from a collection of existing elements. this not only means it’s easier than designing from scratch each time, but also that the festival organisers know we can create new material for particular audiences quickly and cheaply whilst retaining a distinct house style for coastival. below are a full page magazine advert [first transpennine express explorer], roller banner stand, billboard banner and street banner all using this approach.