if you’ve taken the most cursory glance at james’ blog, tweets or photography portfolio you’ll know about him and bikes… i know about james’ ability to use a mouse and keyboard with one arm in a sling. so whilst it’s unlikely i’ll also be flinging myself down mountains on two wheels anytime soon, i was recently given a long discarded rusty old gal which prompted this repaint and spur-of-the-moment typography job (you’ll see i didn’t really bother tackling too much of the rust).

having a bike again has prompted something of an affair with the cinder track (site of the wayfinding artwork we created with rachel welford) which i’d only walked various sections of before. having tasted the scarborough end of the route on bike and loving the ravenscar stretch on foot i’m rather tempted to attempt the whole scarborough-whitby in one go. but should this sound all rather athletic, no fear – there are plentiful opportunities for ice creams, cream teas and pub lunches on route.

we (me on typography, james on photography) created this as an offshoot to the creative coast windows project (first fruits of the project here). it uses words from retirees in scarborough. writer dina murphy had conversations with older folks on benches around the town, which given the hilly nature of scarborough get regular use – she then selected phrases from those conversations as the source material for one of the windows.

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we borrowed some of the phrases to create a few temporary text interventions around town of which this is one. it’s exploring a potential approach to future public art projects – a small part of an idea we first had about 5 years ago and which has been stewing away since then. we’ll be revisiting this on different scales as we grab a bit of spare time here and there.

as for the windows project, we’re just chasing permission for our preferred building in the town centre. the window design will also feature illustrations by rachel welford alongside some wonderfully evocative text created/curated by dina. there’s also a design by another local writer-artist-designer team that will shortly appear on the former scarborough music shop opposite boyes department store.

iSaint came about as a response to a call from designed and made for their items that could be given or lent to people as part of 100% design (aka london design festival) which is happening this week. the idea of the project, called ‘love me live with me’, is that people live with an item for a couple of weeks, then respond with how/if it made an impact on their lives in some way.

iSaint is a secular icon – you write your name on the front and hang or place it by the door to be reminded every time you leave the house of your potential to play a positive role in the world.

you can follow progress of our iSaints (there’s a thousand of them out there somewhere) and look at the other items that are part of the project at www.lovemelivewithme.com

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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