Hasta La Ideas

Three graduates sought to introduce their new studio to locals via a neat bit of window dressing, providing passers-by with unique prints – and a business card

Butcher’s Hook is (or perhaps that should be wil be) a three-member design studio and gallery based in an old butcher’s shop in London’s Portobello. The studio has been formed by Benio Urbanowicz, James Coltman, Josh Blanchett and Dan Jones, students from Kingston and LLC, all of whom graduate this summer.

The threesome have vowed to spend 10 per cent of their time working on local community projects and to this end plan to operate a ‘walk-in studio’ once a week, where anyone can walk in with any sized brief, “which we’ll be over the moon to work on”, they say. “We would like to become a design studio for people. All shapes and sizes of different people.”

In order to introduce themselves to the local populace, Butcher’s Hook set up a digital display using an old Nintendo Wii remote, custom made Infa-Red yellow pencils, a wireless doorbell, a printer and a few extra ingredients.

“We gave away free art made by the user themselves, with the option to receive a digital copy sent to them,” they say. “We had a great weekend, where over 150 people got involved, through their own choice… and every single one went home to find our business cards printed on the back of their own masterpiece.”

As well as launching their studio, Butcher’s Hook has also entered the project into the D&AD Student Awards in response to the brief Make Your Mark.

Regular readers may recall that Urbanowicz also won our recent BFI competition to design a book cover.

CR in Print

Thanks for visiting the CR website, but if you are not also reading CR in print you’re missing out. Our April issue has a cover by Neville Brody and a fantastic ten-page feature on Fuse, Brody’s publication that did so much to foster typographic experimentation in the 90s and beyond. We also have features on charity advertising and new Pentagram partner Marina Willer. Rick Poynor reviews the Electric Information Age and Adrian Shaughnessy meets the CEO of controversial crowdsourcing site 99designs. All this plus the most beautiful train tickets you ever saw and a wonderful behind-the-scenes look at Thunderbirds in our Monograph supplement

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