Hasta La Ideas

Anthony Burrill, filmmaking duo Stephenson/Bishop and design studio Our Place have collaborated on a new identity and brand film for London Sculpture Workshop, a not-for-profit centre open to creatives working in 3D.

LSW was founded in 2012 by artists Giles Corby and Jessica Mello. Facilities include wood and metal workshops and a ceramics space. Mel Fong Brown, a film and advertising agent, has been using the space to practise metal work since early this year and was recently asked to help the workshop reach a wider audience.

Fong Brown contacted Burrill, who created a new typographic logo and recruited London studio Our Place to make posters, postcards, stationery and signage based on his design. The logo features stencilled lettering, which has been abbreviated for posters.  The black and orange colour palette reflects safety notices in place around the workshop, and business cards have been printed on to greyboard for an industrial feel.

“Anthony came to us with a selection of logo ideas and typefaces to develop further,” say Alex Gross and Ted Heffernan, who founded Our Place with Corin Kenington last year while studying at UAL. “We wanted to adapt the logo to fit more with the sculptural theme of the project, and created a stencil from the basic blocks of the individual letterforms, breaking it up to reflect the physical construction associated with sculpture,” they explain.

“The colour choices were fairly simple, contrasting the black with the orange used in the workshop itself. Texture was a key theme behind our LSW branding, [and] we felt our use of greyboard reflected the space really well and gave the stationary a gritty, industrial, man made look. To complete this we letterpressed the business cards and made three bespoke versions, giving a unique touch to the identity,” they add. “Postcards are based on workshop signage, and are greyboard on one side and glossy white on the reverse to illustrate the process of “construction to end result.”

Business cards

Postcards

As part of the project, Burrill also suggested making a brand film, and contacted architectural photographer Jim Stephenson, who was due to film Burrill for Lightbulb, his weekly video series profiling different makers and their processes, co-produced by Edwin Bishop. The film features interviews with a range of artists that use the workshop and some beautifully shot close-ups of equipment in action. Stephenson says it aims to capture the sense of curiosity he experienced when visiting LSW for the first time.

“I wanted to pick everything up, and click all the switches and buttons on the machinery and play with things. I think the stills and video we did show that, with all the close ups of the tools and such, the peeks round corners and the incredible bits of machinery…I also wanted the video to pick up on the different ways the artists work and where they get their inspiration from, rather than what they specifically use the workshop for, which is hopefully more implied,” he says.

Stephenson also spent a day shooting stills for the workshop, which have been used by Our Place on posters. “On a purely aesthetic aspect, the space is beautiful – the lighting mixes big soft natural sunlight in one space with all these red heat lamps and tungstens coming through the red plastic curtains next door. I could easily have spent a week in there with my cameras,” says Stephenson.

“Since I rarely use a darkroom anymore, I never really do much with my hands apart from turn dials on my camera. It’s all quite clean and clinical, so I love going to places like London Sculpture Workshop where the mess can be celebrated a bit and where people are breaking a sweat to physically make things with their hands,” he adds.

The identity perfectly showcases the industrial side to sculpture: while artists may be using the space to produce beautiful and refined pieces of art, it’s a noisy, messy, hands-on process and everything in the identity, from Stephenson’s stills to Burrill’s stencil, reflects that. LSW will also be launching a new website in the next few months – for now, membership details and info are available at londsconsculptureworkshop.org