electric angel /design for life

collect the set

this post on carl hopkin’s blog reminded me of our old business cards from the bradford days.

these were sent out upon moving to a new studio – each pack contained a card slotted into a larger flyer announcing the move and declaring each card part of a limited work of art. you could own the full work by collecting the full set of cards [below]. the idea would have worked best if we’d had 10 staff, each of whom’s card could be collected. as it was, this was the early days of electric angel when it was just me, but the idea caught people’s imagination and i received lots of complimentary feedback and requests for full sets. they also worked a treat at exhibitions when i could lay out my business card as a full picture – it was an easy conversation starter.

we need some new business cards, maybe it’s time to resurrect this idea.

around your world in 80 days

we’ve been sent a travelling moleskine on the theme of ‘stuff that makes you go ooh’. you can read all about the travelling moleskines here, but as a quick summary it’s a whole host of sketchbooks being passed around as part of the big draw and will result in an exhibition in september. there’s a flickr group for it here.

above is my contribution to the one that’s arrived with us. expect at least 3 more from us as it travels round the studio before we pass it on.

magic lantern pics

a few photos from the ‘peasholm magic lantern’ at coastival. poet kate evans’ idea was to combine haiku, music, photography and typography in a 20 minute projection in the faux-oriental pagoda on peasholm park island.

my contribution was typographic interpretations of kate’s haikus.

a last minute health and safety panic meant we were all called in to ensure people got safely on, and more crucially, off the island. cold work but it was great to hear feedback – the last people off the island on saturday commented on how they’d enjoyed the ‘eye poetry’. we had 200 people visit on the saturday and were having to turn them away at the end.

pics above: text arranged to look like swans/geese on the lake; haiku about fallen leaves; attempt to use letterforms to suggest goslings.

peasholm magic lantern

coastival sees the welcome return of scarborough’s festival of light [which i think was our first design work for create]. we’ll be converging on the rotunda museum for a lantern parade on friday 13 february and will certainly be checking out other light goodies such as video installations in the south bay underground car park and in the crypt of saint martin’s church on south cliff. there’s also something called the chroma van which promises ‘a unique exploration of colour perception in the comfort of a remodelled caravan’. how can you resist that?

i’ve also been invited by poet kate evans to apply typographic interpretations to a series of haiku’s as part the peasholm magic lantern. the lantern will take place in the faux-oriental pagoda on the island of peasholm park and features haiku’s by kate, photographs by mark vesey and an original composition by amaya huntley. kate showed me the first draft of the complete sequence yesterday – i think it’s going to be something rather special. the music is wonderful and the whole experience reminds me very much of some of the more immersive alt.worship experiments we instigated in bradford.

the images above are from felt – our little book of treatments of poetry from 2 years ago. this haiku makes an appearance as part of the magic lantern – you’ll have to come experience it for yourself to see the others.

hand-drawn

james has been hand-drawing… visit his personal blog for more.

designs lent for lent

it’s always nice to hear of how our work has taken on a life of its own – sometimes it feels a bit like having children and sending them out into the world. mark – a friend from back in the day when we did things with dance music and digital projectors in churches – got in touch to say he’d been using our mount series posters in the chapel of northern general hospital, sheffield during lent. they’re accompanied by a leaflet that lists the original passages the posters were based on and offers a prompt for reflection. a compilation of some photos of the posters in the chapel above. thanks to other folks who have also got in touch to say they’d used them.

the mount project [7of7]

download a pdf of all the mount series to print yourself here
[series of seven A3 size prints, pdf format 26k]

the mount project [6of7]

electric angel 2.0

well, web 2.0 actually. it’s interesting that the internet is evolving into something that more resembles the philosophy we’ve developed as electric angel. so we’ve been doing a little catching up and actually using this technology:

visit our flickr site [where you can view pics of our work as a slideshow] at: www.flickr.com/photos/design_for_life

see james’s atmospheric photography at: www.flickr.com/photos/jamesr0012

plus you can also drop in on mine, rebecca’s and creative coast’s facebook profiles

the mount project [5of7]