thataway
moving card for west yorkshire community chaplaincy project continuing our branding work for them.
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Latest Entries
postcard from a surf trip
it’s always nice to receive a postcard, but this one has a specific purpose – it’s part of the lead up to the exhibition ‘view from the back – journal of a surf trip’ by kathryn welford. this will be the first exhibition when our tiny gallery re-opens for north yorkshire open studios on june 11/12/13 and 19/20. kathryn will be using our studio walls as an installation to support paintings in the gallery and you can come see the work in progress as part of the open studios. we’ll have a little opening ‘do’ and return to our daily working-week gallery opening when the exhibition is complete.
but back to the postcard – kathryn is asking people to respond to photographs taken on a 6 month trip across spain, portugal, france and morocco with stories, poems or just a simple phrase or single word. these will be included in the exhibition. she’s scattering postcards to encourage this (designed by us) and this is the first that’s been returned. you can also respond via the exhibition’s blog: http://www.viewfromtheback.info
so get writing and then call in for open studios to see your text being used.
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.
bridlington poetry festival
no, that’s not a close-up of dodgy printing but rather hand-painted colour forming the background of this leaflet for a new festival starting this year. i think the idea was suggested by john clarke, festival director and sometime collaborator on such as ‘the shop of priceless things‘. i say ‘think’, because quite often ideas for a design come out of an initial cuppa and a chat – i do know we went away with john getting out his brushes to paint and cut some potential backgrounds (he recently exhibited at scarborough art gallery).
the intention is to suggest the craft reflecting the creative process of creating a poem and a sense of the elemental with the bold geometric shapes. we also consciously kept the typography quite simple in keeping with the relatively conservative tradition of setting most poems. the leaflet opens out into a poster.
dinosaur coast
summer events leaflet for the dinosaur coast – part of our ongoing work for scarborough museums trust.
back & refreshed
we’re back open for business as usual after 2 weeks off over easter. i stayed mostly at home, with a quick mountain biking trip to innerleithen over the last weekend, while adrian and rebecca have been to spain. it’s a bit of a catch-up for a few days while we work on renaissance news before the final assault on the CHART scarborough map. impressions from the last meeting before we went on hols is that it’s nearing completion, with just a few minor adjustments and additions.
it’s been such a time consuming process, it made me think how difficult it would be to map somewhere you don’t live, in any detail. i’ve really had to use the resources available to me, such as satellite imagery, OS maps and good old fashioned walking, in order to get the level of detail we want. details as far down as kerb shapes, steps, alleys and crossings are what differentiate a pedestrian map from a road map, so we’ve been making sure we include a curved building or a waist-high wall as much as we include a huge landmark such as the grand hotel.
as scarborough has so many landmark buildings and recognisable features, it makes for an interesting and beautiful map with individual qualities that couldn’t be associated with other places. also the spread of green areas has meant it’s been possible to include important contour information, valuable to a pedestrian, in a way that is both functional and aesthetically pleasing. hopefully people will agree that the finished product is both useful and stunning to look at.
incidentally, as you may be able to see from the photo, spa bridge is also refreshed and open for business as usual with a shiny, new yellow surface to match the sand and a new turquoise paint job to match today’s cloudless sky!
we have intervened
the intention of CHART Scarborough interventions was to both raise awareness of the project and to get some input from the wider community. this was done by two competitions: one prompted by signs placed on prominent buildings around the town [that's a window in the art gallery above and stephen joseph theatre below - we also did woodend creative workspace, customer 1st/town hall, renaissance office and the library] and via the local newspaper, the scarborough evening news, who ran a week-long competition and intend to print a version of the map in the newspaper when it’s complete.
we also stencilled messages in the town centre which we hope will prompt a few people to think about place in a new way – part of CHART Scarborough’s intention to encourage locals as well as visitors to navigate around the town to a different set of criteria. we’ve got some [albeit simple] philosophy on how a map can change perception of place and thus the person courtesy of walter benjamin, guy debord et al. we’ll treat you to that little nugget another day…
how did you get here?
chalk stencil in Scarborough town centre. more on the the CHART Scarborough interventions soon.
back to bradford
i’ll be back in bradford this evening with andrew clay of woodend, at bmedia‘s third thursday event. it’s a bit of prodigal son moment for us both having grown up in the area and now returning to tell heady tales of the high life in north yorkshire, or more accurately of the creative sector on the coast and scarborough’s national and european enterprise award wins (andrew and i both presented to the judges). i’ll be wearing my creative coast cap and we hope that this event, a reciprocal visit after steve ding visited us from bmedia before christmas, might enable us to build some strong links between creatives on the coast and in west yorkshire.
mentioning bradford also gives me opportunity to post a pic of a community artwork project electric angel did several years back now – we recently obtained some better quality photos of the resulting metal gates in the east bowling community in bradford but hadn’t had chance to show them.
digital scarborough talk
due to vaughn oliver having to pull out of digital scarborough today due to family illness, i’ve been asked if i could fill in. so with a head full of cognitive mapping due to CHART Scarborough, i’ll be delivering a talk on the theory behind the project and our research and progress so far. i’ll also have the very latest version of the map which is still in progress. 4.30pm at westwood school of arts (yorkshire coast college, next to tesco).
