Accept & Proceed has curated an exhibition by set designer Gemma Tickle as part of a project to turn leftover space at its East London studio into a gallery.
Tickle, who has designed ad and editorial sets for MTV, John Lewis, British Airways and Nike, has created a multi-coloured installation inspired by balloons. Her work will be on display to visitors and passers-by from September 5 until November 8.
“The brief for the project was to create something big, bold, thoughtful and engaging on a stretch of what could be described as a very drab road,” she explains in a video on the making of the project (below).
“[Gemma] is a master of creating objects which are on first glance simple and understood however it’s on the second look that you see there’s another level to the work … with ‘Pop’, she has created a series of objects which represent the essence of fun: party balloons, however, these have been turned on their head slightly,” says A&P creative director Matthew Jones.
Tickle’s exhibition is the third Accept & Proceed have hosted at their studio since late 2012 – the first, a collaboration with Sennep, was inspired by street scenes projected onto the gallery’s walls by car headlights. “We recorded this live, and then re-mixed and re-presented the scenes onto the gallery wall, thereby highlighting something which would usually be missed or overlooked,” explains Jones.
This was followed by an exhibition with architect Carl Turner earlier this year, which featured a deconstructed version of his RIBA award-winning sliphouse that housed plans, scale models and an iPad walkthrough of the building.
After Tickle’s show, the studio will be working on an exhibition with Swiss sound artist Zimoun and photographer Giles Revell.
“We had been in the studio for a few months when we realised just how many people travel up and down the Kingsland Road from Shoreditch to Dalston – the ground-floor of our space is a window onto East London. We always had people shading their eyes and peering in, so thought it would be good to give them something great to look at,” says Jones.
“Every exhibition shown has at it’s heart an intriguing narrative to tell, revealing hidden and layered beauty within the subject matter whilst being appropriately challenging to the norm. We choose people who have similar values to their work as we do. These don’t need to be graphic designers, in fact we think it’s better if they’re not. It’s given us the opportunity to speak to people outside of our usual sphere of work, which has been really rewarding,” says Jones.
Accept & Proceed has also launched a website to promote the project, named 43m3 after the cubic area of the space, and the studio’s designers will be taking it in turns to create window graphics and invitations for each event. As well as brightening up the office, Jones hopes it will lead to a number of collaborations with creatives from different fields.
“Since working with Sennep on the first exhibit, we’ve partnered with them on several live briefs. We’ll hopefully get to work with Gemma in the future on a concept store or pop-up space, and as for Carl, he’ll be the first person we call to look at at our new studio in the distant future,” says Jones.
See Pop! By Gemma Tickle from September 5 until November 8 at Unit 2 Sheldon Building, 1 Baltic Place, Kingsland Road, N15AQ. To find out more about the 43m3 project click here. The September issue of Creative Review is available to buy direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe to make sure that you never miss out on a copy – you’ll save money too. Details here.
A strong line-up is taking shape for The Modern Magazine conference, which will take place in London on October 16…
The event marks the publication of Jeremy Leslie’s book of the same name and promises to be “a celebration of the best of current editorial creativity”.
The conference will take place at Central Saint Martins’ state of the art Platform Theatre and will feature the following speakers (with others to be confirmed):
Tyler Brûlé – Editor-in-chief and Chairman, Monocle (London) Joerg Koch – Editor and Creative director, 032c (Berlin) Omar Sosa – Co-founder and Art director, Apartamento (Barcelona) Richard Turley – Creative director, Bloomberg Businessweek, (New York) Patrick Waterhouse – Editor-in-chief, Colors (Treviso)
According to a post on Leslie’s magCulture site, “there will also be panel discussions including one looking at women’s magazines and a series of presentations about smaller, independent titles.”
There are 200 tickets available, with a reduced rate for students: Day ticket – £140; Student ticket – £90. Additional speakers will be announced on magCulture.
More details on Leslie’s forthcoming book, The Modern Magazine (£28), at laurencking.com.
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Graphic artist Emily Forgot has created a striking abstract identity for this year’s Manchester Weekender.
The identity is inspired by a quote from Jeremy Deller about all roads leading to Manchester, says Emily (real name Emily Alston), and will appear in print and in 3D at venues around the city.
Alston was commissioned by Mat Bend at local creative agency Modern Designers, and is the fourth artist to create an identity for the annual arts and culture event since its launch three years ago. Brighton-based Jamie Cullen created 2010’s pop-art inspired design and Helsinki illustrator Janine Redwell produced a folk-art influenced geometric identity last year.
“I was given total creative freedom but Mat mentioned a quote from Jeremy Deller about all roads leading to Manchester, which I used as a starting-off point. He also emphasised that it was important to convey a festival/cultural feel within the design even if I went down an abstract route,” she explains.
“Taking my cue from Deller’s quote, I liked the idea of giving the piece dimension so it would feel like a city itself with the roads creating the form of the numbers. I created something slightly similar in feel to the Herman Miller poster [for exhibition Then X Ten] I produced last year and was also influenced by the awe inspiring axonometric work of Takenobu Igarashi,” she adds.
“I had about a week to produce the design, so it was a rather quick turn around but luckily, I had a strong idea of the direction I wanted to take early on and it took shape pretty quickly.”
Alston’s design will be displayed in shop and gallery windows and on posters, and a simplified 3D version will be installed at Manchester’s Cornerhouse and Holden Gallery. “I’m really looking forward to seeing this aspect of the project as I love seeing projects come to life within a space and regularly push my work in this direction. Being at the computer for so much of the creative process its nice to see the work become a physical, tangible object,” she says.
It’s a great design with some lovely details, and the latest in a series of fun typographic creations from Alston – she’s also created a ‘hobby alphabet’ print and a typographic cover for Michal Witkowski novel Love Town, as well as a series of window displays for department store Selfridges and a pop-up monochrome office space for Wieden+Kennedy, all of which can be seen on her website.
Manchester Weekender takes place at various from October 10-13. To find out more visit creativetourist.com. The September issue of Creative Review is available to buy direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe to make sure that you never miss out on a copy – you’ll save money too. Details here.
In Super Graphic, Tim Leong presents an infographic guide to the comic book universe. It maps, charts and Venn diagrams its way through facts and figures about characters and storylines – and is utterly charming with it…
The Batman theme, on left, made up of “Batman!” and “Da”; The Joker’s Favourite Question for Batman, on right, is “Why so serious?”
There isn’t a single image of a superhero or supervillain in Leong’s book, but the skill and humour with which he deconstructs their worlds ensures some of the most famous characters, from Batman and Spiderman, through to Magneto and Juggernaut, leap off the page.
People dressed as The Hulk at Comic-Con: just bare (green) skin and padded costume
Stan Lee has author credits on many very famous comics – and some others that you’ve probably never heard of
And it’s not just the superhero landscape that falls under Leong’s analysis: everything from Tintin and Sin City, to Charles Schultz and Cosplay is examined in some way. (There’s even an infographic introduction page which reveals that around a third of the charts and diagrams concern ‘non-superheroes’.)
Detailed guide to the Watchmen, above; and chart showing Changes in Costume Colour
There are graphics revealing Changes in Costume Colour (The Hulk went from grey to green, but Iron Man started out iron-coloured, too?); How Long Characters Stayed Dead; a Chris Ware Sadness Scale, and even a comparison of the respecitve ‘utility belts’ belonging to The Joker and Robin.
The good guys are all about primary colours
Leong clearly loves his subject – and his knowledge of comic books comes across almost as strongly as his unabashed devotion to the medium.
Super Graphic is published by Chronicle (£11.99). Tim Leong is the founder of Comic Foundry magazine and the design director of Fortune magazine, having previously been director of digital design at Wired. More details on the book at Abram and Chronicle’s Facebook page.
The September issue of Creative Review is available to buy direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe to make sure that you never miss out on a copy – you’ll save money too. Details here.
Civic ideas agency Spacemakers has created a mobile town square that will be transported by bike around Cricklewood next month to highlight a lack of public space in the area.
The fold-out square, designed by Studio Kieren Jones, will tour disused spaces in the north London community from August 31 to September 28, hosting a series of free events including a dog show, a film screening and a public dance.
Design agency Studio Hato has designed graphics for the square and will run workshops allowing people to create their own signs for it using pre-cut templates and stencils based on Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calver’s Transport typeface.
The project is funded by the Outer London Fund and is part an initiative to rejuvenate Cricklewood’s town centre. Spacemakers (which also worked on the re-generation of Brixton Village) was initially asked to transform empty shops in the area, but proposed the idea of a mobile town square after discovering a lack of public meeting points.
“Cricklewood’s a very busy community but it’s on the border of three London boroughs and has no library, no town hall, no benches – none of the things you’d expect in a town centre. We came up with the idea of creating a town square and wanted to set it up on a disused site, but the landlord wouldn’t let us, so the only option was to create something portable” says Spacemaker’s Tom James.
The ten metre-squared structure is made out of a five-wheel bike base and steel frame covered in plywood and faux-brick cladding. It has a clock tower with handmade clock, and will house benches and seats made by local suppliers using reclaimed materials.
“The clock tower is a reference to the Smiths clock factory that used to exist in Cricklewood, and to the decorative clock that used to exist on Anson Road, but which was sold for scrap during the war. The structure is both a practical solution – a vehicle to move the kit around – and a folly, providing a civic backdrop, helping to frame the spaces. In a way, I hope this playful solution can be the town hall that Cricklewood never had,” says Jones.
The events programme will reference to the area’s heritage – film screenings will pay homage to now defunct local studios and a library will stock books by local authors – and Studio Hato’s workshops will allow residents to create signs for the space from pre-cut templates using official transport signage colours.
“We thought it would be nice to let residents decide how the space should look and set their own rules for it,” says Studio Hato designer Ken Kirton.
“The original Transport font was first designed for road signs in the UK and has since been used for wayfinding and permissions in boroughs across the country. It seemed a fitting reference for the project, in creating an ad hoc tool kit which references the established official language,” he adds.
On September 27, the square will visit a disused bingo hall, where speakers including architects and creatives will discuss the need for public spaces and how to create and use them.
After its tour, the structure will be donated to local group Creative Cricklewood and will become a permanent local fixture. “It’s a temporary project, but we hope it will encourage a long-term change in Cricklewood,” says James.
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A blissful August weekend brought an attentively curated line-up of sights and sounds, to a glorious northern location, for the arty, musical haven of Beacons festival. With an atmosphere bursting with positive vibes and creative passion, it soon became clear that Beacons was the type of place where you are just as likely to have a chat with a stranger about the who’s who of 2013 need-to-know bands as you are about the what’s what of the latest and greatest design studios.
With the rise of the independent festival scene, and boutique festivals evolving and diversifying to incorporate an increasingly varied bill of creative acts, more festivals are also beginning to place emphasis on a sharper arts programme running alongside the music. Just three years in, with a washout first attempt after severe flooding, Beacons is already starting to establish itself as a frontrunner on the small festival circuit, with an impressive, eclectic bill of art and music, curated with several fingers to the pulse of local, national and international talent.
The compact site on Heslaker Farm, near Skipton in the beautiful rolling hills of the Yorkshire Dales, attracted local creative folk and hipster city types alike. And for four predominantly sunny days, Beacons offered a dreamy, arty alternative festival experience to the mainstream branded big guns on offer the same weekend.
With an arts programme that combined artists and organisations from Yorkshire and beyond, The Space Between was home to a variety of projects and creatives, with films, performance, exhibition space, workshops, demos, talks, and design focused stands, along with other attractions and installations around the festival site.
A enticing selection of handmade products from Yorkshire based artists – including screenprinted posters and cards, bespoke t-shirts and illustrated badges – were on offer at The Pop Up Box (below), a retail project developed by Leeds based creative agency Temp Studio. The project stems from an earlier venture, Retail Ready People, a pop-up creative retail space in Leeds city centre, offering volunteers a chance to ‘redesign their high street’, with a training programme helping develop skills in marketing, retail design and visual merchandising.
The project, a partnership with charities vInspired, Retail Trust and The Empty Shops Network, mixed work from young designers and artists based in Yorkshire with more established local designers, acting both as a shop and social space, with a café and performances from local bands.
The Pop Up Box built on this idea, with a giant handmade wooden box housing projects from young local designers, providing access for emerging brands to sell in a physical space, rather than just online. Beacons was the first stop for the box, and all the profits – after designers have their cut on a sale or return basis – will go into the next space.
As we see a growth in similar projects in Leeds and other cities, despite the need to engage creatives and communities outside of a city’s cultural quarters and in more rural regions, supporting independent retailers and actively encouraging regeneration through creative partnerships in inner city areas still remains integral to projects such as these.
‘We’re still fighting against too much empty space, sky-high rents and the dominance of the usual big retail players,’ says Isla Brown, director of Temp Studio. ‘We just want to help both young people and young designers not to have to knock doors down to get their products noticed and into customers hands.’ Through this portable project, work can be trialled with new audiences and reach a wider market, whilst hopefully sparking some discussion over the temporal nature of many creative spaces.
New for this year, Dawson’s Arthash House, was a space for festival goers to kick back and enjoy independent films, digital art and animation, along with work from local designers and crafts people such as Tony Wright (above), from Oldfield Press, a letterpress workhop based at Altered Egos gallery in Haworth. The stand offered a chance to press your own Beacons poster from a set of woodcut blocks, including a pointing finger dating back more than one hundred years, alongside letterpress prints from local artists.
Wright, (incidentally also Terrorvision’s frontman), had turned his hand from painting to printing, aiming to create work that was still individual and handmade, but ‘easier to let go of’, creating posters and other commissions from greetings cards to labels for chilli sauce. He has also experimented with less conventional letterpress techniques, including creating prints by etching designs onto vinyl records and running them through a mangle.
Having also been involved in a pop-up creative space in Skipton – Derdlab Press, a traditional Victorian printshop and exhibition – the work stands testament to a growing popularity in ‘hands-on art’, as Wright calls it, as despite a demand for cheap, fast, mass-produced print, networks of craft-led design is finding support from local communities, councils and charities.
From woodcut printing to wood carved portaiture with Kyle Bean (below) in the Things to Make and Do Tent, with a drop-in workshop using reclaimed wood to create portraits of icons linking to the festival theme, ‘Visions of the Future’. Bean’s imaginative work as an artist and designer, with clients including Selfridges and the Design Museum, often reappropriates everyday materials and rethinks handcrafted techniques. The portraits were originally a commission for Wallpaper*, when Bean was approached by the magazine and asked to illustrate the contributors for the Handmade issue.
To create the portraits, a black and white contrast image of the face is printed onto carbon paper and traced onto reclaimed wood, and highlights are then carved out with varying sizes of chisels and knives. Carving into the dark weathered surface to reveal light fresh wood underneath creates a stencilled, contrast effect from a distance, with lots of interesting twists and scratches close up. Inviting festival goers to ‘take a tactile approach to making the portraits’, Bean’s alternative illustration workshop gave participants a taster of his inventive handcrafted techniques.
A collective of zine makers from Yorkshire, Loosely Bound, brought zine making workshops to Beacons, sharing techniques on how to create various styles of the self-published books/pamphlets, and recording memories of the festival. The collective are supported by Fabric, a charitable organisation for artistic development in Bradford and the surrounding areas, where the group originally met at an artist networking dinner event. Coming together to share, swap and learn from each other, the group both create new collaborative zines and organise events and workshops to engage a wider audience of people in zine making.
Their name highlights the diversity of zines that members produce, from perzines (personal zines), to photography led, graphic art inspired, written or drawn, with both lo-fi and handmade methods and digital online zines, and covering a huge range of subjects. Take a look at the video below of the workshop in action …
Other attractions and creative activities included DIY t-shirt screen-printing in the tearoom, a series of films including shorts from Aesthetica magazine’s short film festival, and projection bombing across the site with animation and videos from local, national and international artists. Featured in several locations, 12 Months of Neon Love by Victoria Lucas and Richard William Wheater, a sequence of lyrical statements from well-known songs recreated in red neon signage, accented the festival with a nod towards amalgamating the artistic and musical elements.
The support for small arts organisations and emerging businesses, from festivals such as Beacons, is acknowledged by those involved as a significant opportunity to engage people in projects that they may not otherwise have contact with, and build sustainable networks, whilst providing exposure for creative projects in environments that test the boundaries of products and practices beyond online shops and traditional workshops and studios.
Although the arts field may be in its infancy aesthetically, and could perhaps do with a rethink in terms of location – currently situated away from the main arena, to one end of the campsite – Beacons is off to an impressive start when it comes to programming a more progressive and design-focused bill of creative projects and arts attractions, with unfamiliar forms of visual communication, process-led work and digital arts, rather than simply falling back on more traditional festival crafts.
The interest in the arts side of the festival was strong, and with the incredibly friendly vibe, chatting with various festival goers, amongst the indie-electro buzz band fans, underground music lovers and beatheads, there was a substantial rep from arty types, designers, directors and other creative professionals. In the temporary environment of a festival such as Beacons, those attending are often looking for an experience of escapism that is more than just a party, and the demand for a different type of arts programme like this is growing. The arts bill no longer acts merely as a sideshow to the main musical event, but with considered arts partnerships and well curated work, festivals such as Beacons will continue to flourish into cultural hotbeds of creative energy.
On the day GCSE exam results came out this month, a series of print ads for The Prince’s Trust appeared in British newspapers aiming to encourage those students who perhaps didn’t do so well…
CHI&Partners created the series of three iterations, each of which shows an ‘F’ created from a photograph turned on its side.
The line “Turn a bad grade into a career in design/engineering/finance” supports the image formed from a bowl and cup; a cooling tower; and a two office buildings, respectively.
According to the agency, the brief was to inspire those students who had received disappointing GCSE results and emphasise how The Prince’s Trust can offer advice and support for young people to ensure that they can continue to pursue a chosen career.
Creative team: Pete Davies and Adam Rimmer. Creative director: Neil Clarke and Jay Phillips. Planner: Sarah Clark and Georgie Mew. Media agency: M/Six. Media planner: Katie Galbraith. Retouching company: CHI&Partners.
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Graphic novelist and writer Neil Gaiman has collaborated with his fans to create a book of illustrated short stories, as part of a campaign for BlackBerry by AMV BBDO.
The Keep Moving campaign invited the public to collaborate with artists Gaiman, Robert Rodriguez and Alicia Keys, and Gaiman decided to involve his considerable global fan base on social media to co-create A Calendar of Tales.
In February, he tweeted the question ‘Why is January so dangerous?’ to his fans, following with a further question every hour about each month of the year. He then sifted through thousands of responses and chose the 12 best to base his short stories on.
Having written the stories in four days, he then released them to his fans again, inviting them to submit illustrations inspired by the texts, again choosing his favourites to feature in the book. The resulting book is a beautifully bound limited-edition, designed by Sebastien Delahaye and art directed by Sonny Adorjan.
Wrapped in wax paper sealed with a specially designed crest, the stories inside are printed on translucent paper overlaying the chosen illustrations.
January illustration: Down! by Niam
May illustration: A Correspondence with Unwitting Participants by Kit Seaton
October illustration: The Wish by Maria Surducanh
Delahaye also created additional calendar illustrations for each month, which are screen-printed onto the left-hand sides of the spreads.
The campaign also included a series of films charting Gaiman’s progress in putting together the calendar.
Unfortunately the printed book is only available to a select few, but fans can explore the project in more detail on its dedicated website, here.
Want to learn a new skill? Hone your craft? Or just switch off that Mac and do something a little less boring instead for a while? Then our August issue is for you with details on workshops, short courses and a host of ideas to reinvigorate the creative mind. You can buy the August issue of Creative Review direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe to make sure that you never miss out on a copy – you’ll save money too. Details here.
The first major retrospective of designer and architect MacDonald Gill’s work opens in London next month. We spoke to Gill’s family about curating the show and why his work has received so little recognition until now.
In a forthcoming exhibition of MacDonald Gill’s work – alongside maps, posters, logos and typefaces – will be a pair of brown leather children’s shoes. On one sole, a relative has carved MacDonald’s name (Max for short), and crossed out his older brother Eric’s.
A pair of hand-me-downs may seem like an unusual item to place in an art and design exhibition, but these little shoes tell a story – the tale of a designer who followed in his brother’s creative footsteps but whose work has since been eclipsed by his controversial sibling’s.
Born in Brighton in 1884, MacDonald Gill was one of thirteen children. His brother Eric is a famed sculptor and typographer, the creator of Perpetua and Gill Sans.
MacDonald was a talented artist, too – he trained as an architect before designing the alphabet used on standard military headstones, the hugely popular London Wonderground maps and large-scale murals for imperial exhibitions – but while people have formed societies and published biographies celebrating Eric’s work, Max’s was largely forgotten about after his death.
A new exhibition, Out of the Shadows: MacDonald Gill is hoping to change all that and will showcase the biggest collection of Max’s graphic art to date.
The exhibition was curated by Andrew Johnston – the nephew of Gill’s second wife Priscilla Johnston and grandson of designer Edward Johnston – his wife Angela, and Gill’s great-niece Caroline Walker, and is “a cross-section of just about everything he ever did,” says Andrew, including commissioned work, first drafts and sketchbooks from his childhood. Most of the work on display was found in Gill’s former cottage, which Johnston and his wife inherited after Priscilla’s death.
“The house was full of all these maps rolled up in brown paper. I knew a little about Max’s work, but it wasn’t until we discussed the possibility of doing a show and Caroline appeared on the scene researching his life, that we began to dig it all out. Only then did we realise what an important and exciting collection it was. We found artworks everywhere – in wardrobes and under tables, just gathering dust,” he says.
Key exhibits in the retrospective include a number of Gill’s highly-detailed, illustrated maps: in the early 1900s, he designed the official procession map and programme for King George VI’s coronation, wind dial maps commissioned by architect Edward Lutyens and large-scale murals for imperial exhibits in Paris and Glasgow, as well as one for the dining room of Cunard liner The Queen Mary.
His Wonderground maps, cartoon drawings of London, entertained passengers at tube stations throughout the city, and he also designed logos and posters for the General Post Office, as well as the alphabet used on standard military headstones for the Imperial War Graves commission, all of which will be on show.
Spanning four decades, Gill’s work offers a glimpse of Britain on the cusp of huge societal and technological change. In his career, he witnessed two world wars, a great depression, abdication, coronation and the invention of technology such as the radio. His careful lettering and intricate cartoons reveal artistic styles of the time, and his versatility and technical skill.
“Max was extraordinarily talented,” says Johnston. “He wasn’t a great figure drawer – his sketches of humans are very basic cartoons – but he had an incredible eye for detail. His lettering was done by hand and with basic tools – just brushes, pencils, squares and compasses. It could take up to 500 hours to draw a single London Wonderground map, and my aunt’s diaries are full of accounts of Max working all night or staying up until three in the morning,” he adds.
Considering the scale and range of Gill’s work, it’s astonishing to think that until just a few years ago, most of it laid untouched in an empty cottage, and was often wrongly credited to Eric. His posthumous obscurity can be partly attributed to his brother’s notoriety and eccentricity – Eric had an affair with his younger sister, entitled one of his sculptures Fucking and rarely wore pants – but it’s also because of the ephemeral nature of his work, say Johnston and Walker.
“His work represented a time people wanted to forget – imperialism, the war, the great depression – the public had moved on and they didn’t want to look back. It’s only now that people are taking another look and realising just how interesting and beautiful it is,” Johnston says.
“A lot of his commercial work was dated soon after it was made – his posters were only designed to last for a month or so, unlike his brother’s permanent sculptures,” Walker adds.
Walker also believes that MacDonald’s lack of self promotion was to blame. “Eric was a very good self-publicist, although he’d hate to be described as such. He published an enormous amount of his work and was very outspoken and eccentric. In contrast, Max was a very modest man, and really quite self-effacing,” she says.
Some of Gill’s work has already been shown at a smaller-scale exhibition at London’s Kemistry Gallery and a show at the University of Brighton, which was organised and funded by Brighton’s Faculty of Arts. Out of the Shadows will include work shown at both, as well as previously unseen designs, and Andrew and Caroline hope it will help distinguish MacDonald’s style and character from his brother’s.
“My family told me he was a tremendously fun man and very fond of practical jokes. He liked to entertain people, and I think that really comes across in his work – Eric’s is very beautiful but sparse, whereas Max’s is full of colourful scenes, creatures, plants, animals and stunning buildings,” says Walker.
Walker has spent years documenting Gill’s career, but says the retrospective is just the beginning. “I’ve already drafted a biography, and am working on curating an online archive of his work. Max never had a champion – I think that’s partly the reason he received so little recognition – so I want to make sure there is something left of him for future generations,”
Out of the Shadows: MacDonald Gill will open at PM Gallery & House on 20 September until 2 November 2013. For visitor information and opening times, see ealing.gov.uk/pmgalleryandhouse. To see more of Gill’s work, visit macdonaldgill.com
Images (from top): Gill’s London Wonderground map; the alphabet used on military cenetaphs, a pair of shoes owned by MacDonald and his brother; a map detailing the procession route for the coronation of George VI; an Empire Marketing Board map of New Zealand; a Tea Revives the World Map for the Tea Market Expansion Board; a map detailing the country’s bus service; a photograph of Max, and a poster for the General Post Office.
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An impressive line-up of coders, designers, typographers and illustrators are heading to Brighton next weekend for annual web design conference Reasons to be Creative.
The three-day event, which kicks off on September 2, is aimed at designers, coders “and anyone with a creative mind”. Speakers include Stefan Sagmeister, Google designer Fabio Sassion, Microsoft creative technologist Andrew Spooner, Shopify designer Keir Whitaker, illustrator Mr Bingo and typographer Erik Speakerman.
Each day will begin with 20 three-minute ‘elevator pitches’ from up-and-coming creatives, followed by longer presentations and an interactive workshop. Topics for discussion include using audio to connect with web users, building successful e-commerce sites and staying motivated under pressure.
Reasons to be Creative has been running since 2006 and used to be known as Flash on the Beach. It was named Event of the Year at last year’s Critters design and development awards, and founder Jon Davey says he hopes it will leave people “pumped full of motivation and inspiration, and with useful tips and contacts.”
Tickets are on sale until Friday, August 23 and discounts are available for students.
Reasons to be Creative takes place at Brighton Dome from September 2-4. For more information or to buy tickets visit reasons.to
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