Design Jack

Artisan Roast – Edinburgh

2010-06-15T23:04:00.003+01:00

With the Fringe programme produced and on the streets (check your local HMV all your Brits, time for another example of things I've stumbled upon and found interesting.

Seen this morning outside Artisan Roast, Broughton St, Edinburgh as I walked to work.

Handstand Press

2010-03-28T12:33:00.004+01:00

Live at last.

I've been squeezing the design and construction of Handstand Press' new website in around my rather busy days at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. After too-ing and fro-ing, proprietor Liz Nuttal and I settled on this simple site, inspired by both Mondrian and the Cumbrian countryside, not a usual combination, it must be said.

Handstand Press publishes local history, fiction and poetry by Cumbrian writers and about Cumbria from her home in striking distance of the book town of Sedburgh.

Logo designed and drawn by Ellie Chaney

Inspired by @salidatious who, in turn, was Inspired by @cityferret

2009-12-30T19:51:00.013Z

Inspired saliatious who in turn was inspired by @cityferret (but I can't find a link to her list, or gave up too quickly), I've decided to track my 2010 reading on this very blog post. Instead of creating a list of what I will read this year, which is a recipe for bitter self-contempt, I'm going to update this list throughout the year and see how I get along. Keep in mind, I'm a mighty slow reader (a little bit dyslexic, but have learned to get around it, and have trouble finding time), so it might not be as extensive a list this time next year as I'd like. But, to begin with... (Bold ones underway, bold notes in brackets are my 'review' once complete.)

Last book of 2009
Phillip Roth, Operation Shylock (eh, okay)

January 2010
Virginia Woolf, Street Haunting (one of those little Pocket Penguins, not even I will take long)(Indeed, didn't take long, but not entirely my style, a bit dated in tone, but it was great to read a Proper Writer again)
Peter Carey, Short Stories, (a reread from 10 years ago)
Forgotten just how entirely brilliant Peter Carey is. I think when I first read these, I stopped after The Crab, which is a rather mind bending story that I find entirely disturbing. By casting it aside back then I managed to miss some of the best, insightful and clever short stories I've had the chance to read. Great.
March 2010
Kazuo Ishaguru, Pale Remembered Hills in my possession, but not started yet and must go back to the library. At least I know where to find it.

Don Di Lilo, Libra In progress, and brilliant. A mix of carefully researched history, conjecture and conspiracy theory. Wish I wasn't so tired I can't read more than a page at a time. (fabulous, great book, interesting history, interesting conjecture. Love Di Lilo)

Stephen Fry in America (don't judge, it was a present, its a good read and better than that Bryson fellow)
April 2010
Gill Scott Heron Vulture, still waiting in the library to pick up. (Man, was that April. Since taken out and given up on, let's just say he was 19 when he wrote it and you can tell.)

August 2010
Hanif Kureshi, The Body
(underway, not going well, however. Premise so far, young body more attractive than old body, so get a young body and get laid. Sigh)

Wish I'd designed that

2009-12-30T17:14:00.003Z

Taken in Valvonna and Crolla in Edinburgh.

Flax books on Issu Bookshelf

2009-11-28T18:37:00.004Z

I was glad to see a Litfest and Flax blog with this lovely virtual bookshelf of the digital publications I designed for them as they were uploaded to Issu. Nice to see them all collected together, even if the two at the top left have lost some of their transparency.

Mostly Truthful Postcards

2009-11-13T16:02:00.003Z

Postcards to promote Flax019, Mostly Truthful I'm very fond of the typography of the monospaced font at the bottom of the cover image.

Unsaid Undone in print

2009-11-13T15:19:00.006Z

At some point in the development of Flax book's range of digital anthologies, a decision was made to re-purpose the, to offer a de-digitalised version. The digital versions were still given primacy, published first and the navigation marks left in place, but they would be printed so the audience could read them in bed, or in the bath. From Flax017, Unsaid Undone, I began designing the anthologies with this in mind, keeping them within the bounds of an A3 folded sheet so the text would remain at a decent font size. Above is the cover and below an in side spread featuring John Siddique's half title page, and the back cover.

Flax018, The Crowd Without, has also been printed this way and I'm told it is equally successful, but alas I've not had a chance to see it yet.

Both books can be purchased online, download or downloaded to be printed at home (if you have an A3, double sided printer) from the links above.

Found: Henderson's Gallery

2009-11-05T16:46:00.005Z

I found this lovely bit of gallery advertising outside Henderson's Gallery, part of the Henderson's veggie restaurant complex (2 restaurants and a food store, does that make a complex) on and off Hanover Street in Edinburgh.

The lovely exhibition graphics adorn a wall in a quiet alley and look just great, in my humble opinion.

Mostly Truthful, Flax018

2009-10-24T11:32:00.004+01:00

Feeling a bit Douglas Adams in this... Despite the The Crowd Without, Flax018, being my last digital anthology designed for Flax, here's another one.

Mostly Truthful is a collection of non-fiction from authors based in the North West of England. For the cover, we were trying to find something a little humorous, a reflection of an information source which claims to be authorative, but not quite (oddly, on the very day I completed this project, I waited a good hour for my wife to arrive in Edinburgh on a train that, according to railway boards not disimilar to this, had been cancelled – the ghost train arrived, unannounced and unheralded about 55 minutes late).

When editor Sarah Hymas saw this cover in its initial idea stage she laughed, so I knew we were in the right area. As the designs for these anthologies have tended to work in pairs, I wanted to move away from the dominantly white, kind of serious looking covers we did in the spring and move to a more lush and amusing style.

Mostly Truthful is available for free download from the litfest website and contains some really nice writing, including an interesting piece by Kate Feld on long term emigration and what it does to our understanding of our youths to be totally immersed in a foreign culture. The digital publication also contains links to the authors reading samples of their work and to their blogs.

If you are in Lancaster today (October 24th) you can pop to the Storey Building and enjoy the launch event which may or may not involve brass band music.

Design Jack Website

2009-10-06T09:22:00.003+01:00

Another update to my website driven by a client. I've been experimenting with driving Flickr images to a website to create a flexible site for a local (Edinburgh) photographer to showcase her work. I came across the excellent Pictobrowser, a free, online gallery maker which can be embedded in your webpage of blog. So you get much of the convenience of a Content Management System without the database hassle. You can change the images called just by editing your Flickr sets. Alas, only for photos.

North West Playwrights web launch

2009-10-05T12:58:00.006+01:00

Congratulations to Chris Bridgman and the rest of the North West Playwrights team on the recent launch of their new website. I'm sure there was a lot of hand wringing and heated discussions, but it looks like the results are great. The site was designed by Chameleon Interactive, who look like they do a lot of work in the arts and charity sectors.

I really like that the site is blank slate with style, so it will grow as the organisation adds content and will be flexible to carry whatever type of content they put up there. It shows a good development team that can put the urge to over design aside to create something useful for the organisation.

And now for the self-promotion. North West Playwrights asked me to produce a flyer for the launch event for the website. My approach was to give a sneak peak of the site through plain brown wrapping. Chris Bridgman felt a little more should be revealed, so before an after images below.

Ambition reflects Litfest's ambition

2009-07-19T19:51:00.004+01:00

Andy Darby of Litfest has recently been interviews as part of the Art Council North West's Ambition project to encourage the use of IT in the delivery of the arts. In the interview (which you can see here) Andy talks about several of the projects I worked on with the organisation, included the website and blog I templated, various Flax publications, including a poster commission we published on line and a whole lot more.

Fantastic that the organisation has been featured like this as it has been a hard slog for an organisation with such limited time resources to move so far into other forms of delivery in such a short period of time. Andy, Sarah Hymas, Jonathan Bean and Catherine Salder should all be commended for their efforts. And it is great to see my work showcased like this. Make the three years we worked together all the better.

Passport to Style

2009-07-18T13:35:00.005+01:00

Sharon Gibson has featured my t-shirts designs on her Passport to Style blog.

Sharon writes a blog to support her Lancaster based style consultancy and chose to use the designs to advise men on the types of designs they might look for. She suggests the colours are flattering to most skin tones and the themes suggest spirituality, energy and strength.

Most of her blog posts feature advice for women on what to where this season. I'm pleased to see that the advice looks back to the classy style of 1950s and 60s Hollywood. Let's face it, there has been no era since that comes close to the class and style of the 50s and 60s. If I could find the old suits again – my old ones are a bit thread bare these days – I'd wear them daily.

Sadly, the designs haven't left my computer (except for blog presence) but I'll hopefully submit these and others to more t-shirt companies in the future.

Thanks Sharon, hope the business goes from strength the strength.

Mad dogs and Lancastrians

2009-07-01T23:36:00.008+01:00

In the months before I left Lancaster, I had the fortune of being asked by two of its more creative denizens to create business cards and other stationary for them. Both are free spirited, open minded artists, though of quite different artistic temperaments.

I've worked with poet, editor, puppeteer and performer Sarah Hymas for three and a half years. She has a definite sense of aesthetic and an openness to outside ideas, and there is something about her that has always made me think of the early modernists, and Art Nouveau's Alfons Mucha's relationship with Sarah Bernhardt. I took a photos Sarah uses on her blog, Echo Soundings to create this image, a hand drawn, slightly distorted version of Sarah's intense performances. The colours and style are drawn directly from modernist traditions. and the energy of her pushing out her own name I find quite dynamic.

Meanwhile, Hilli McManus, set, prop and garden designer extraordinaire, asked me to create business cards. Her starting point was her identity, Hilli the Fish, Monty Python, some semi-nude shots taken of her for a theatre company and a few fishy books borrowed from the local library. And the rest is history, or something similar, photohsop montage perhaps.

Hilli's definite ideas of what she wanted combined with an openness to new ideas made her an ideal friend/client. Like Sarah, she was demanding but direct.

Denizen, interestingly, originally referred to people who had come from elsewhere to inhabit a place, perhaps distinguishing them from citizens. Both Sarah and Hilli have come from across the Pennines, Yorkshire and Newcastle respectively, to inhabit Lancaster. And both have come to represent what is best of the city, an embracing comfort that allows the right artistic minds to prosper.

The Crowd Without, Flax018, poetry from Flax

2009-06-20T12:59:00.006+01:00

For three and a bit years I have worked part time with Litfest, a literature festival and literature development agency in Lancaster. They have underpinned my freelance business, but now, as I've moved to Edinburgh, I've had to make the difficult decision to leave the warm comfort of the organisation.

Above is the final item I produced for Litfest, The Crowd Without, an anthology of new poetry. Working with editor Sarah Hymas, I've helped create six anthologies. In our efforts to create a comfortable, online reading experience with added bells and whistles– like links to audio files of the author's reading from the work and to online biographies – we've asked questions, experimented, got it wrong, got it right and started all over again. The most recent pair – though I never intended them to be pairs – are the one's I'm most proud of. They are clean, a little edgy and mysterious and read well without being stuffy.

Thanks to Sarah for her help and support on this and their predecessors, as well as Jonathan for his photography work and confirming eye and Andy for his hands off guidance of the process.

The Crowd Without and the short story anthology Unsaid Undone are available for free download from the Litfest website, on the Flax page. They are well worth a read, featuring some excellent new voices from the North West of England.

t-shirt Designs

2009-06-11T15:59:00.008+01:00

I recently spent a few days working up some designs to submit to Ltd Ink's launch of a new series of t-shirts. Sadly I designed for adults and the ones they chose were a bit younger, perhaps, so none were picked (I'm sure there are other reasons as well).
Above is one I designed working from a photo taken from Kate Rawles Carbon Cycle (with permission, of course) webiste (which I designed a few years back). Wind Power is Beautiful, Baby is a celebration of the elegant technology of the Wind Turbine.

In the Glory of the Beest is another photograph based one, just a lovely image, I think. Initially it was to be The Love Beest, with a big heart, but I decided I preferred the rays of sunshine.
Below are two more joking ones, Ernesto's Original Argentinian Bar and Grill and Molotov's Cocktail Bar, imagining what Cold Warriors might have ended up doing had they not been Cold Warriors. They go along with Big Ron's Seven Step Program for Failed Actors and The Dulles Brother's Fruit Stand.

Litfest Summer 2009

2009-05-15T15:19:00.005+01:00

Litfest's Summer programme of readings has begun, and above is the cover and back/calendar of the publicity I designed for it. This season celebrates the return of Litfest to The Storey building, now a centre for creative industries. I took the design which I created for this event years (Autumn, Festival, Spring and Summer) and added the pushed image of the front of the Storey Building (photo by Jonathan Bean of Beanphoto). I seem to often use this method to reduce the subtlety of an image so that it become flat colour. In this case, I reversed it as well so the base colour is white. The text is easier to read on the white and green of the cover, while, with the white further knocked back, black bulk text is accessible. I use this on the insides (below)...
...but a better example of this is the related A4 poster (for want of a better term) I put together of Jacob Polley's Welcome to your mouths and tongues (clicking this link will download the pdf). the method, but the way, is to use levels to increase the black and white (so the contrast) and then eliminate the grey. Then choose the dominant bits, turn it into a path, export the paths to illustrator, open in illustrator and fill the image with whatever colour you choose. You might have to play a little in illustrator, but that's okay.

Welcome to the Dance

2009-05-10T18:20:00.005+01:00

Going through my portfolio, weeding out older stuff and found this, my first commission some eight or nine years ago. Welcome to the Dance is a book of writing produced in long term care in and around Bristol and was published by Poetry Can, Bristol's poetry development agency.

We were trying to give a sense of loneliness without despair. The disco ball in the corner and the light from the bottom right are meant to give a sense of hope and somewhere to go, a bit like dawn.

I wonder what Hester Cockroft is doing these days.

When you need a hand (Ms Diva's Khabaloush)

2009-05-04T12:09:00.005+01:00

Ms Diva is a small but vital theatre company who devised a mad sounding play which took place last week (sorry, should have blogged this earlier) at the Contact Theatre in Manchester. Hanneke Blower, one of the principles was left in a spot, designing her own publicity at the last minute, so I offered some help and this is the result. A quick, but lovely job to do. Font is Unit Rounded.

Hope it went well, Hani.

Jenn Ashworth's All Stood Together

2009-04-27T14:10:00.004+01:00

Late last week Jonathan at Litfest posted most, if not all, of Litfest and Flax's publishing output up on the writing social media space, scribd. Since then, the books, posters and what not have received a pretty good number of hits, the recently published Unsaid, Undone, for example, has been viewed 43 times in the last five days. Jenn Ashworth's All Stood Together poster (designed by yours truly) has been viewed a whopping 1500 times and counting in the same period.

Jenn's lovely very short fiction is one of six posters Flax published last November all of which can be viewed on the Poster Commissions page of Litfest's site. There are three poems and three short stories. If you like them you can download the A3 printable versions and print them at home – yep Flax are giving them away. And two are available for purchase.

Business Cards for Lesley Anne Rose

2009-04-17T12:45:00.003+01:00

Lesley Anne Rose is a freelance writer of both plays and travel guides, a film and cinema development advisor working for Northern Film and Media and, erm, married to me - but she can't have all the luck.

And so when it came to do her design, she couldn't really ask any one else, in fairness. Above are a series of cards done for her, reflecting the various types of work she does. Five in total, two are film (the image is of her filming on Morecambe Bay), two are travel (image from Grenada) and one general (Ulverston, I think). The images are in keeping with her website.

The cards are printed by moo, which means we could do a variety, relatively inexpensively. Per unit, its a bit pricey, but worth it for projects like this.

Design Jack Website (at long last)

2009-04-14T23:22:00.006+01:00

After years of claiming it would happen, my website is finally live, well, live-ish. Still missing one page, which seems a bit easy to remedy, unless you consider that a similar page has taken me the best part of this long weekend and last weekend to get up as it contains 50-odd layers. So be nice, but comments and corrections more than welcome. And yes, Jonathan Bean, I've probably missed photo credits.

So, if you have the time, take a look at www.designjack.co.uk.

David Gaffney's Storey Shorts

2009-04-09T11:50:00.005+01:00

Short story writer David Gaffney was commission by Litfest to write stories inspired by the Storey Institute building in Lancaster, which has recently been reopened (confusingly just as The Storey) as a centre for the creative industries. Both Litfest and the Storey Gallery will be housed there.

With mere hours (okay, a few days) to go before the launch date, Andy of Litfest asked me to whip up a design for the digital collection of stories, Buildings Crying Out. The resulting cover is below.

The ribbon is a reference to a proposed art project that would have swathed the building in green ribbons. Alas, funding would not allow, but I felt the idea should live some how, even if only on a digital cover.

We decided to experiment with ecofont, a new font designed to use 20% less ink. This may seem like an odd decision, given this is a digital publication, but I will justify it. Firstly, the font has to be able to work in a variety of forms if it is going to have a long and prosperous life. Secondly, the book was designed, unlike previous Flax publications (see below) to be printed as well as read online, so if we are not saving our own ink, perhaps we are saving yours.

Here is a sample page, which doesn't actually show that much, I guess.

To read the book (for free of course) and see how ecofont works, go take a look at the Buildings Crying Out page on the Litfest website.

A little self promotion

2009-04-06T17:35:00.003+01:00

Having just moved to Edinburgh, it is time for a little shameless self promotion. Over the next few weeks I'll be sending these postcards out around Edinburgh, along with a portfolio website, in the hope of attracting some work.

I'm still commuting down to Lancaster to do some work with Litfest, so will be available for work in the North West of England as well, heck I can work pretty much anywhere with decent communication links.

Unsaid Undone, Flax017

2009-03-08T14:40:00.004Z

Unsaid Undone is the next digital anthology to be produced by Flax and will be available from April 2, 2009 from www.litfest.org.

The fiction in Unsaid Undone includes some really good stuff with two of my favourites from earlier Flax publications back, in Annie Clarkson and Andrew Michael Hurley. There is a definite melancholy mood to the work, so in designing he book I tried to reflect that, with a kind of urban decay feel to go with it. We've paired down the colours for this one and tried to concentrate on the readability of the text block to make this even more accessible than previous ones.

I'll post some inner pages and a link when it's live.

Looking Back to Look Forward, Silents Please

2009-02-24T11:25:00.008Z

As I'm working on a few longer term projects and have some new projects to start, I thought it might be useful – to me that is – to look back at some of my older work. I designed Silents Please a number of years ago and worked on it for several years before it died a quiet and natural death.

Silents Please was published for three years by Bristol Silents, a volunteer run organisation that promoted silent film in the South West and around the country.

It began as a small, very small, 'zine aimed at silent film enthusiasts –mind you, this group included Paul Merton, Paul McGann, Director of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival David Robinson and Kevin Barlow, one of the top writers on silent film in the world.

the 'zine grew with the organisation, starting as a 12 page photocopy to a properly printed 40 pager in the last issue. Alas, the organisations success, touring film programmes and a huge silent comedy festival in Bristol, meant that time and money wasn't available to continue publishing.

Publisher Chris Daniels, Bristol Silents
Editor, Lesley Anne Rose.
Shown, early cover featuring the beautiful Mary Pickford. Spread explaining Chaplin's famous banana skin slip.

Faith Book Cover (Martin Stannard, Shadowtrain books)

2009-01-26T16:33:00.014Z

Above is the third book from Shadowtrain Books, Martin Stannard's collection of poetry, Faith. the cover illustration is by artist Charlotte O'Connor, and the design is in keeping with previous designs for Shadowtrain's previous books, Annie Clarkson's Winter Hands and Rupert K Loydell's ex catalogue. For me, the key element of this style is the balance of author and title. With the previous books, we kept to a simple, single image on a monotone background. However, the author chose this image, which we had to work harder to fit in the overall design. Inside, however, we used a serif font (Baskerville) in Faith as it seemed to fit the work better than a sans.

Well done to Ian Seed at Shadowtrain again for publishing another top quality book off his own back. Ian also has his own book out. Anonymous Intruder has been published by Shearsman, and you can read a review here.

Northern Film and Media Garden

2009-01-16T18:42:00.004Z

This has nothing to do with me, just a found item, but it is a pretty cool idea. through a series of questions, they establish you as a flower which you plant in the hope of attracting a bit of interest in your work.

My thistle addicted to tinkering – apparently – can be found in Lancaster:
www.nfmmap.org

Freerange Theatre

2009-01-14T21:37:00.004Z

In the absence of new work, here is some older work. This poster was created for Freerange Theater's production of Tom Kempinski's Duet for One, the story of a musician who looses her ability to play. the storey is told through her relationship with her counselor.

Elevator Poetry

2008-12-08T12:31:00.006Z

As part of its online festival, Online08, Litfest and Flax, brought together a group of performance poets to work together to "remix" their work. The results were recorded and I designed an EP cover to present it online.

The cover is based loosely on the 1977 cover for Elvis Costello's My Aim is True and has the Flax identity, the flower with the publication number, in the tear.

To see the cover in its full glory including the back – and of course, listen to the tracks– on the Litfest website click here.

Photography by Helen Burrow and George Coupe. Photo taken in the elevator at Lanternhouse, Ulverston.

Found (more from Rachael Merrett)

2008-12-08T10:41:00.003Z

Niece Rachael continues her dominance of the small screen. Nice work, kiddo.

Litfest08 Publicity

2008-11-29T12:09:00.007Z

Another Litfest has come and gone. But this year we were designing for a longer term project, a full, year long programme. In the past, Litfest has used red as it's identifying colour – almost all the publicity has been largely red. But now we had to differentiate three seasons and the festival. So, to brighten the publicity up and give the festival a distinctive look, I introduced a bright yellow. The idea was to make the publicity stand out on shelves and posters leap out of windows.

This year was Litfest's 30th anniversary, so we tried to harken back a little to a bit of a punk-rock DIY aesthetic with the reading characters looking a little rough around the edges, like a photocopy. But the layour needed to be clean and readable, as usual, and accessible to the festival's core audience.

The right hand page above publicises the festival's final event, a spoken word event which will result in an online ep which will be available at www.litfest.org soon.

And below is the back cover with the calendar of events, neatly laid out so you can find the show you want to go to. The open spread advertises two special events, one for The Midland book, and the other for a Litfest programme of continuing professional development.

Below are the posters designed for the Waterstones shop on King Street in Lancaster. Again, big, bold and attention seeking. Photo by Jonathan Bean.

And one quad poster posted outside the main venue, the Dukes (also taken by Jonathan, who might also be the model for the character on the poster).

Adorna and Desiderus

2008-11-13T17:56:00.004Z

Flax is working with two authors, Jenn Ashworth and Tolu Ogunlesi, to produce an online fiction, a story of plagiarism which will unfold over the next few weeks. Take a look here and decide which blog to start with.

Peacock Boy, Boojum

2008-11-04T10:49:00.003Z

Peacock Boy is a newly devised play based on a Cypriot folk tale and produced by Boojum theatre company. I was approached to produce the publicity for the play by Director Chris Bridgman. Initially I produced an attractive poster using a puppet from the show, but Chris wanted something grittier, more adult, a little sleazy. Working with images of peacock tails (you wouldn't know how insubstantial they are until you start trying to cut them out of an image) and the slightly provacative naked man to produce what I think is a quite striking, arresting image.

The show has more dates to come, including 13-15 November at the Contact Theatre in Manchester, and 20 November at Unity, Liverpool, where you can pick up a programme which I also had the opportunity to design.

You'll note there are some changes to the image. The difference in scale (the posters were A3 and A0) and the fact that the image wraps to the back of the programme booklet required some changes to the peacock image, mostly knocking the white tale back a bit and adding a black layer, to work to the new size and scale. I also wanted to nudge it a bit further down and line of darkness and grittiness. The insides, after much too-ing and fro-ing with the cast, contains biogs of the company and a short piece by writer Crystal Stewart about the show, all in a dark grey on a background of the tail. I'm hoping this creates a lush layering of greys which reflect the sultriness of the cover. Booklet, 4 pages of A4, folded.

Flax Poster Commissions

2008-11-01T11:47:00.011Z

Flax, Litfest's publishing arm, has commissioned six writers, three poets, three prose writers, to write pieces for posters. Two (above, Annie Clarkson's Okarito and Jane Routh's Between) were chosen to be printed A1 and sold at the Litfest08 and sold online.

The others, including Ian Seed's Man (above top) and Maya Chowdhry (above) are available to read on line or download and print them at home.

So, if you are interesting in getting these for free (or purchasing the lovely printed versions) just click here (Jenn Ashworth's All Stood Together and Meg Peacocke's Paper Mirror above).

The project itself was quite interesting and difficult. I was determined to reflect rather than interpret the writing and to find something that helped to find meaning without dictating the meaning. And to be thrown six pieces of work at once, to try to work on all these ideas at once in a short period of time was quite tricky. And added to that, I was designing across three formats, A1 printed on a matte paper, A3 printed at home (oh the bother with colours) and for screen. All in all quite challenging and fun. I was fortunate to participate in the launch event for these posters at Litfest08. Jenn and Jane were there reading and then we had a good chat about the process of designing these. And one of the things that has come out of my conversations with people about the posters is that each one has been chosen as a favourite by at least a couple people and no one is more popular than any of the others. Which means that the final selection of the final two to print was really tricky. It will be interesting to see which ones are downloaded more.

Thanks to Sarah Hymas at Flax and the writers for the inspiration.

Found (Rachael Merrett hits the little screen)

2008-11-01T11:42:00.007Z

Below is a cool video, my niece's first college project, a short video with a fish.

Nice work Rachael,

I'm hoping no gold fish were hurt in the this production

Litfest Autumn Events Publicity

2008-09-03T20:35:00.003+01:00

Litfest has set another new challenge for me. For the past couple of year, I've designed the publicity for their annual festival. This year, there is an added complication of a season of events which just precedes the festival itself.

The challenge, then, is to create a design which can be rolled out over three seasons and the festival and not get confusing. My solution was to keep a little from last year's festival (see earlier entries) by using the lone figure reading, and add big, bold block colour. The Autumn season uses Litfest's traditional deep red, while the Festival is to be bright yellow. The images have been pushed, and simplified, and then taken into illustrator to create these striking images. It is also the 30th anniversary of the festival, so we wanted to look back a little to 1978, to the diy aesthetic of punk rock. So I've tried to add a little roughness to the images, but keep the structure of a rigid grid to keep the whole thing accessible and readable.

Below is a photo of the front and inside of the leaflet as well as both sides of the bookmark we've produced to accompany the publicity.

Thanks to the staff of Litfest and Storey Gallery for acting as models, and to Jonathan Bean for the original photos, except the ones of him, of course.

Age of Steam, Carnforth Station

2008-08-16T16:21:00.005+01:00

Last Monday was the 40th anniversary of the withdrawal of steam trains by British Rail. Carnforth Station Visitor Centre has organised a month long celebration of steam to mark the occasion. As part of the Age of Steam celebration, I was asked to design a timeline, written by Phillip Grosse, for the exhibition area of the Visitor Centre.

The four boards feature archive photographs supplied by the Cumbrian Railway Association and are each a metre wide, 70cm tall. We produced a David Lean exhibition some months ago (see below), which were shorter (40cm) and I wanted these to be a bit bolder to fill this less fussy space. The previous exhibition had been in a large meeting room which was once, I believe, the ticket hall, while this is in a more traditional exhibition space.

The background of the boards is a burst of steam, taken from the photo on the final board, while each image is appropriate to the dates on the given board. The time lines are split between the blue line, the history of steam in Britain and beyond, and the red line, the Age of Steam at Carnforth Station.

Sharp eyed observers will note some little dots, which cover the screws holding the boards up, and a few little boxes of a slightly different colour, which are changes made to the boards after printing, though there seems to be some debate as the accuracy of the original information and the changed information – so much for absolute facts.

Thanks to Robin Brogden for the careful alterations and mounting.

Prison Project Posters

2008-08-12T11:32:00.003+01:00

In addition to literature events and publishing, Litfest produces a programme of projects in the general community – or in this case just outside of the general community. Projects Manager Catherine Sadler has sweat blood to organise education projects in a number of prisons in Lancashire, bringing writers and artists in to work with inmates, from young people to high security prisoners. As a part of this, I was asked to produce an eye catching A3 poster which would stand out on busy notice boards.

Catherine suggested the Radio, Radio, I suspect because she had been listening to a bit of Elvis Costello, and I just kind of took it from there. My approach to this kind of project is produce something colourful, bright and professional, something a good solid step up from the usual institutional work you might find in places like prisons. Its not just to get noticed, but in the hope it might have some small affect on spirits.

This is the third poster I've designed for this kind of work. The first was for a photography project for young people on parole organised by Folly Gallery (a microscope image of a fly in the cross hairs of a camera lens) and the second for a writing project involving Litfest, a Lancashire Prisons and Central Lancaster University (below), which was adapted for the book cover.

Found (Sign removal, White Lund Estate, Morecambe)

2008-08-08T12:49:00.002+01:00

I have no idea what the sign used to be, but sis & rose interests me.

New Blog and Lancaster City Council

2008-08-02T14:59:00.004+01:00

Readers who have looked at my blog before will have been redirected here through the old Myspace blog. I figured if I have a new blog, I should really have a new blog entry, so here it is:

For the past year and a half I've been working with Rachel Scott at Lancaster City Council one some projects around transport. Rachel is one of the people responsible for Celebrating Cycling and Lancaster's status as a Cycle Demonstration City. We've produced maps (I only did the cover), leaflets for students, business and others, postcards promoting cycling and more. I'm currently working on maps to help people get to work at various industrial estates without driving (it is amazing how well this city is provided for once you take the time to look for what's there). Below is a photo of a selection of the work we've produced.

Applause Theatre

2008-07-21T13:46:00.003+01:00

After months of part-time heart ache, the website for Applause Theatre (plays for school children by theatre professionals) is live.

The design started with a cover for the organisation's third play for school children, A Winter Woodland Tale. I had in mind those little cookies we used to get as kids, coated with a hard, brightly coloured icing on top. So its a candy coloured extravaganza, really.
I decided to create to school children characters, amongst the few illustrations I've done in years. They were adapted for each play and the style used for the biography page as well. My self-portrait as designer is a doffing of a hat to Berke Breathed's Bannana 2000 in the Bloom County cartoon.
For the site, I took the illustrations and coated them with a little more icing sugar.

I'll post the covers at some point as well, bu in the mean time, why not check out the website, www.applause-theatre.co.uk
Thanks to Lesley Anne and John for the patience on this one. We got it out hours after the first phone call of a teacher interested in looking at the plays, shame it was after.

Flax Books (print)

2008-07-15T13:45:00.003+01:00

Before the Rain and West Coast, North Hill

These two books have been out for some time, but I've not figured out how to show them. But I've figured, just take the shots and pop them up. Above are the covers for both books, below are some spreads, including the sub-title page. The font we use for Flax is the Nexus family. I'm particular fond of the serif version, it has amazing little little features. Before the Rain features the isobars of a weather front passing over Britain, bringing rain, of course.

The books are available from www.litfest.org or you can buy it in person from Litfest events which begin in September. Better get the publicity done, then.

David Lean Centenary

2008-07-14T13:43:00.001+01:00

Carnforth Station Visitor Centre is celebrating the centenary of the birth of David Lean, director of the wonderful Dr Zhivago amongst many, many others.
I was commissioned to produce banners, a time line and two boards, one with photos taken on the set of Brief Encounter (shot in part on the station) and one with details of Lean's other great films. Below are three photos of the banners and the latter two boards. Alas, the time line has been so popular (I hope) that I've not been able to get a clear shot of the time line display, which is a three metre long display of three boards, all very nice.
(please keep in mind, I'm no photographer!)

I hope to get a picture of the timeline when I next visit the station to discuss the next project, The Age of Steam, display up from August 4 2008.
Thanks to Sheila for commissioning this work, and Robin for mounting it.

Alan Chapman Consultancy

2008-07-01T13:42:00.000+01:00

It has been a while since I've updated this. I've had a few adventures and a lot of work, and below is one of those project.

Alan Chapman is a consultant for community, charitable and volunteer organisations. He has recently gone freelance and approached me about creating a website along with business cards and letterhead for his new business.

Click here to visit the site. The photo is by Lesley Anne Rose.

More soon, I hope, as I have a stock of project completed for Carnforth Station, Flax books, Litfest, Hazelemre Cafe and Bakery (in process) and Applause Theatre (also in process). At least some of these will be popped up here in time

Esprit Logo

2008-03-31T13:41:00.002+01:00

I was recently approached to produce a logo for an international experiential education programme working in Italy and Lithuania and involving partners in Britain, Italy and Germany. The challenge was to make something active, human and not too specific. I wanted to make the image as simple as possible, clean lines and simple text but with a sense of fun. The running character (or leaping if you prefer) began its life as a stick figure that slowly mutated into this caligraphy-like drawing. One challenge was to try to make the image non-gendered, though as it turns out, the education programme is for boys, so i fussed with no need.

Afro-Caribbean Express

2008-03-22T13:40:00.001Z

The flyers below were produced for a play writing initiative organised by North West Playwrights for Afro-Caribbean community in Liverpool. Writing is pretty difficult to represent in image without resorting to cliche. In this case, the final result is a script in hand performance, so we went with that idea, with a male actor on one side and a female actor on the other. The images were produced in illustrator using stock photos and ones of my hand holding a book (thanks to the lovely web cam on my i-mac) and then taken into photoshop for the effects.

I’m pretty pleased with the result. Hope the project went well.

More Flax books, but this time they’ve been printed

2008-03-19T13:38:00.000Z

Flax, Litfest’s publishing imprint, has produced its first "proper" books, Before the Rain and West Coast, North Hill. The writing is great, I have to say. I’ve yet to figure out the best way to present books on screen without taking photos, so there’s nothing here to see, but you can see (and buy if you like) the books through the litfest site at www.litfest.org. They are really great, honest. And Vancouver people, there is even poetry referencing the Vancouver Fireworks competition and Lake Okanagan – or similar.

Brief Encounter with Digital Culture

2008-03-19T13:37:00.001Z

Another lovely commission from More Music, this time for a project with Folly Gallery and held at Carnforth Station. We produced A6 flyers and A4 posters to advertise this project to introduce young people to digital art and sound recording. Wish this was around when I was a kid.

I’ve done a few projects for More Music now, and each of them has been really great to do. They respect your creativity and always push me a little outside of what I normally do. This time, I’ve taken the image and turned it into curves and then used transparency to bring out the deep blue and white. The text uses a pixelated font (synchro). The result, I hope, is to combine a slightly mystical sense of nature as transmitted through clinical digital media.

Bright Artistic Minds (Lancashire Youth Arts Audit)

2007-12-07T13:36:00.002Z

Some time ago I was contracted to work, along with Maya Chowdhry and Paul Hartley, to work with a group of young people to produce a report of their Youth Arts Audit, looking into the provision of arts in the county and what young people wanted in their areas.

The report is worth looking at on two levels, the first is the results, which at times surprised me and will challenge the conception of arts and arts provision for young people . The second is the process. This was very much a young person led process. Working on the report, we handed over decisions to them and just made it work, and I understand that is how the audit worked as well. This is their report, and it is very good.

I did the design and web work, working in workshops with the 'clients' (a dozen or so young people, from 12-18) to pull together ideas and start building something both appropriate, a little challenging to the adult viewer, and fun. Below is the splash page, but there is so much more, including video and music, at BAM!, check it and see.

the young people we worked with were great. In particular I'd like to thank David from Wyre, Frances from Preston (reluctantly), and Zeba from Preston, though everyone was great and I found them all refreshing, challenging and honest, great for a grumpy old cycnic like myself.

Litfest 2007

2007-12-07T13:33:00.003Z

Litfest 2007 has been and gone and as usual it was busy and like last year, quite successful.

Below is a photo of the local Waterstones window with the 5ft tall posters. The photos are taken by Jonathan Bean which I manipulated. The banner was the identity for the festival and seemed to work. One of these posters was more or less stolen (demanded and taken away) as they were being taken down at the end of the festival, we are hoping the culprit a) isn't the model stalker and b) will return it for our archives.

Below is the pre-brochure leaflet (from it's proof), inside on the left, outside on the right and the big photo is Sarah Hall, or Carhullan Army and The Electric Michelangelo fame. And below that is a flyer for the mighty Linton Kwesi Johnson, who was amazing to see, such a powerful performer and poet.

And finally the cover of the brochure itself (again photo by Jonathan Bean)

Thanks to Penny Darby, the marketing officer for Litfest, and the rest of litfest for allowing and helping me to do this again. Despite the fun and games of trying to get something like Litfest organised, the design can be great fun and I'm pretty proud of the results.

More Designs from Martin Chester (finally an update)

2007-12-07T13:31:00.003Z

I’m finally updating this blog, it’s been a wonderfully busy time on actual work, this doesn’t even include all the stuff I’m been doing for Celebrating Cycling and the Lancaster City Council, which I’ll try to get up later. So here we go:

North West Playwrights new writing project. I did the information leaflets to bring in writers, and here’s the one for the performances.

Drumming Session for at risk youth in Carnforth, Lancashire. These were done for More Music in Morecambe, a lovely organisation to work with.

And finally, for this post, the cover of Annie Clarkson’s collection for prose poems published by Shadowtrain books. Its a really good book and worth tracking down. If you are interested, email me though this page or my home page and I’ll forward it to the publisher.

Hazelmere Tea Tin

2007-07-17T13:28:00.004+01:00

Some time ago I produce the tea tins above for the Hazelmere Café in Grange Over Sands. But I couldn't get a photo to work. Enter Jonathan Bean who took the photo above. Thanks Jonathan.

I designed these from start to finish, the logo, the colour etc. If you take a look at thier website (which I built) you'll see various applications of the logo, from menus, to labels to windows. It is a bit odd to be in a place like that surrounded by you own work.

The tins are the first generation, made for last years supply. Dorothy at the Hazelmere has since ordered a new supply and these come with a new set of tins with a few things ironed out, mostly how the close the logo and text is to the corners.

Apologies to anyone who looks at this blog regulalry (and it seems there must be one or two). It has been a long few months of applying rather than creating design, so not much to show.

Francis C Scott Charitable Trust

2007-01-08T13:26:00.001Z

The Francis C Scott Charitable Trust is an organisation which helps fund some excellent causes, primarily focussed on under 19 year olds and families, in Cumbria and North Lancashire. Some while ago they contacted me to produce a triennial report for them, a fantastic opportunity. The logo/identity work was done by another designer, Caroline Barasford, who had been working with the Trust for a few years before moving on from the freelance dream.

Above is the understated cover we produced, after a cover with a monochrome blue bird sitting on the bottom right. The key to this project is that the result should look stylish and professional, but not stand out .. understated being the key word.

And above hear is one of the spreads. The report was written to highlight some of the best projects the Trust funds, but rather than bragging about funding it, Trust Director Chris Batten decided to write about the projects, the people, how they managed to set up and what they want from funding bodies. It is an excellent idea that really comes off and makes the report much more than a mere report, it makes it a document of success of these projects in trying funding-times.

The report in its entirety is available from the FCSCT Trustees page. The site was designed by Caroline, though I'm now updating it.

Shadow Train books, book cover

2006-12-03T13:24:00.004Z

Speaking of Ian Seed, he has a start up publishing venture called Shadowtrain, with website and everything. His first publication was Ex Catalogue, prose poems by Rupert K Loydell. I did the cover, through Litfest. My final version is below. However, it was published in greyscale due to some printing complications. You can see it (and perhaps buy it) here

I think it is a shame to have lost the single very dark blue pantone, but hey, its still a nice cover and hopefully selling well.

Back in 1985, my mother and soon to be stepfather moved to a place in North Vancouver, my final home in the suburbs. Today, they have moved back to Lynn Valley, where I grew up, indeed mere metres away from the elementary school we three kids went to. If you are reading this, hope the move went well.

Square Cuts, Flax001 digital anthology now available

2006-11-23T13:23:00.001Z

Finally, after lots of work by Sarah Hymas and various people at Litfest in Lancaster, Square Cuts is available. It is a free download, a whopping 48 pages of some excellent new writing from the North West of England. I'm partial to Ian Seed's prose poems.

We were trying to make a pdf that wasn't just a book that happens to be online, but somethng different, an experience unique to an online book. In the anthology, if you have adobe acrobat (a free download) or something similar, you'll find easy navigation, page to page or from the table of contents, links to podcasts of the authors reading the texts and links to profiles. We've tried to make the text areas as similar to a traditional book as possible, using a nice, serifed font (Nexus Serif). And then bold, rich colours for the background. When you open the pdf it should launch as a full screen (don't panic, you can get out of this mode by hitting the escape button). In full screen the text should be readible.

I'd be interested in comments on how anyone reading it found it.

You can download it by clicking Square Cuts

Home Fires: a play by Lesley Anne Rose

2006-11-05T13:22:00.000Z

The Dukes, Lancaster, has just announced its Spring season for 2007 and it includes Home Fires by Lesley Anne Rose (my wife for those who might have found this but don't know me). Lesley's play follows two story lines, both set in Lancaster, the first set in 1943 during the Second World War and the second in 2003 on the eve of Britain and America invading Iraq. Opening night is February 2 2007.

I'm very excited and am looking for a cheap place to get my dj dry cleaned ready for the big event.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to learn CSS for a new website (arghhhh!) and working on a series of other projects, including the triennial report for the Francis C Scott Charitable Trust (more later) and Hazelmere Café in Grange over Sands, which is great fun to work with. Dorothy at the Hazelmere has told me about her adventures setting up a temporary tea shop in a Osaka shopping mall, or some such. Details will likely turn up in my first novel, very Murakami mad. But the design for there tea tin went down well. At some point I'll figure out how to get a good photo of the tin and post it, perhaps when the second edition happens in January.

Photocredits and other

2006-10-19T13:19:00.000+01:00

There are times when you just have to shake your head and wonder. Today, at litfest, my colleague Jonathan Bean was bemoaning the lack of photo credits on the photos he has taken for litfest, and the fact that in one of the few credits he has been given, they wrote his web address incorrectly. Okay, fair enough. But then I go to his blog only to find my work (with his photos) uncredited. Sigh. Still, he is a wonderful and quirky phorographer, as you can see from his work at his website

On other matters, I'm cleaning up some work for the Francis C Scott Charitable Trust, which I'll not post until I've permission to do so. I've also recently had dinner with Kate Rawles who recently completed the Carbon Cycle, a worthy awareness raising cycle ride from El Paso Texas to Anchorage Alaska, criss crossing the Rockies an insane number of times. Details of the trip can be found on the Carbon Cycle website, which I designed along with its host site, Outdoor Philosophy.

Equally exciting, Hazelmere Café has been back in touch, which mean more tea caddies!!! and changes to their website. I'll post a photo of the caddy soon 'cause it is a cool job to have done.

Square Cuts, Flax digital anthology postcards

2006-10-01T13:18:00.001+01:00

Another blog entry, another completed bit of work. This time it is for flaxbooks, the new publishing imprint by Lancaster's litfest.

I worked closely with Sarah Hymas on this one, producing 8 postcards using litfest's colour pallette we'll be using to help establish a new identity over the next while. While keeping to the basic colour and font elements, we wanted to move away from a slightly more conservative litfest look and try something with a bit more interaction between the images and the text.

The basic style, the paper on the solid colour background and the authors name, will be repeated in the anthology itself to establish a digital style for these publication. the little flax flower logo and number will be an ever present on all publications, thought the flaxbooks might well be demoted to the back page of print publications.

The digital anthology itself will be available from November 18 from www.litfest.org and will include work from Jane Eagland, Ian Seed, Peter Wild, Hendryk Korzeniowski, Lynne Alexander, Andrew Michael Hurley and Mollie Baxter.

Litfest06 Publicity

2006-09-19T13:16:00.001+01:00

After some to-ing and fro-ing, managed to get the first bit of litfest in Lancaster's publicity done for this year's festival (see below). I'm failry happy with the result, it's bright and cheerful with some good movement. Bodes well for the events brochure. It looks like a pretty good line up of writers as well, including League of Gentlemen's Jeremy Dyson, a couple Booker longlisted writers (Andrew O'Hagan and James Robertson) and more. See the litfest website (www.litfest.org) for details and to download the brochure when it comes out.

To Die in San Hilario

2006-09-13T13:13:00.001+01:00

As my profile suggests, I'm not the biggest fan of film. I am, however, a big fan of a good story well told. Last night I saw To Die in San Hilario (Morir en San Hilario) at The Dukes cinema in Lancaster. It's a Spanish film about a small town which fails to turn up on the map, whose railway stop is a level crossing with a sign held by one of the residents and who has a long history of providing spectacular, bespoke funerals. The story is a simple one of redemption and love, and it is beautifully told, with wonderful Garbriel Garcia Marquez-esque moments like the sad Berta whose tears produce flowers and a melting heart. Each person who sees it seems to be brought to tears a different times. Unlike mainstream Hollywood films, the stars aren't perfect. The female star is a an attractive middle aged woman with a normal, though very slim, body and the male star is positively stodgy. It makes no difference as the story is just so lovely. If you have a chance to see To Die in San Hilario, do!

About Design Jack

2000-05-11T12:51:00.002+01:00

Design Jack is the working name of Martin Chester, a graphic designer based in Edinburgh, but working throughout northern Britain. Trained at the City of Bristol College (so practically) I've been working as a freelancer or in paid employment as a full time graphic designer for getting on seven years.

Clients included, Litfest (Lancaster) and its publishing imprint Flax, Poetry Can (Bristol), Sir Francis C Scott Trust and related trusts, Shadowtrain (publisher) Handstand Press, North West Playwrights, theatre companies including Boojum, Ms Diva Productions and Freerange Theatre Company, and many, many more.

Why Design Jack

2000-05-11T12:36:00.006+01:00

Occasionally I get emails to me at martin@designjack.co.uk that begin with Hello Jack. A reasonable mistake, I think, but one that makes me think I should explain the name I use as a designer.

I think the design bit is pretty much understood. Jack was used in middle English to refer to a man whose name isn't known, or perhaps doesn't matter. In nautical terms, the jack was an unskilled seaman on old sailing ships, the expendable doer of work – hence Jack of all trades.

So, carefully back tracking for a moment, it doesn't mean I'm unskilled, but is rather a reference to the idea that design is a back ground trade (for the most part). As a designer, I work to make your project communicate with its audience, look attractive, be usable, rather than for my name of glory. It is an acknowledgement of myself as a worker rather than an artist.

...the great thing about graphic design is that it is almost always about something else. Corporate law. Professional football. Art. Politics. Robert Wilson.
...Not everthing is design. But design is about everything.

Michael Beriut,
Warning: May Contain Non-Design Content
in Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design
(Princeton Architectural Press, 2007