Projector

We recently completed a brand refresh project for one of our longest running clients - Positive Solutions. The fruits of several months labour can be seen across all elements of communication, ranging from printed items to online media and various marketing materials. A new colour scheme, design style and guidelines were the result of an extensive research and development process which involved close collaboration with our friend; brand guru Mark Johnson (themanwith3heads). We talked to all facets of the company in order to pave the correct route for the brands strategic aims. We were also commissioned to do a nationwide photo shoot of PS clients to show the personal service the companies 1700 IFA’s offer. We captured a range of personalities from various backgrounds and occupations that could convey the variety and breadth of the companies reach and ‘positive’ effect. Big thanks go out to Mark Westerby for the fantastic photography! Keep your eye’s peeled for more details of this and more of our latest work on the Case Study pages of our main website which we’ll be updating soon!

Projector are currently: Enjoying the fact Calvin Harris “Ready for the Weekend” hasn’t come on the Squeezebox first thing on Monday, as it has for the previous three weeks.

Almost fun-day friday! Continuing on with the theme of the Screenprint, I decided to round up my own top 10 Desert Island designer screenprints to (if continuing the hypothetical situation) frame with bamboo and adorn the wall of my makeshift shack to make it that little bit more hospitable. To avoid favouritism, the designers/artists are bereft of a number. Well, I just couldn’t decide which was best, as they’re all winners in my book and I wrote that one.

Sara Ogilvie

Sara Ogilvie is one of my former tutors at Northumbria University and unfortunately during my time there, I didnt quite realise what an amazing talent she has for print-making. With a quite frightening C.V and list of awards Sara’s work is on display at Northern Print, where she is a resident artist.

Michael Leon

Coming from a background heavily based in skateboarding, working with brands such as New Deal and Girl Skateboards Michael Leon has a distinct and very graphic style, his success in design propelling him to working with some great brands, such as Stussy, the art magazine Arkitip and Nike. I’m going to have to save up the Benjamin Franklin’s to get the above print, it’s a beauty.

Hammerpress

Kansas based Hammerpress combine screenprinting with letterpress to produce some really aesthetically pleasing prints. Started initially in 1994, with only one printing press, the good ship Hammerpress have grown considerably into an efficiently run crack print unit with an apparent love for beer and 80s music.

Aesthetic Apparatus

Adding to the list, another talented bunch from over the pond, Aesthetic Apparatus are seasoned screenprinters, very much in the vein of the gig poster, whilst also operating it seems as a design studio.

Jay Ryan

Jay Ryan (also bassist of the band Dianogah, who are pretty pretty good) has a nice distinctive illustrative style and has graced the cover of Shellac’s “Excellent Italian Greyhound” album cover. Jay runs a printshop in Chicago. 

Rob Ryan

No blood relation of my previous entry, Rob-o-cop Ryan as a side to his painstakingly intricate cut outs does also dabbles in screenprinting from time to time. I’m sure you can see that the results are quite beautiful, showing that Rob’s style is just as effective in print as in paper cut out. Currently Rob’s work can be seen in a special solo exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Rose Blake

Rose is a recent graduate from Kingston University in “Lahndan Tahhhn”. Obviously very talented, according to her website she’s also currently doing a masters at the RCA which only the very best get into. Quite a client list also!

Duke Press

The Duke Press are a new and upcoming independent publisher, producing some lovely printwork and collating it in purchase enticingly priced handmade zines. Pictures is “Another Way” by Ryan Todd

Small Stakes

The Small Stakes are what originally got me interested in Screenprinting as a medium. Producing simple, yet effective work for bands I love, they are one of the more design blog popular of the designers/artists I’ve selected.

Brian Chippendale

Brian Chippendale, also ridiculous drumming powerhouse in the band “Lightning Bolt” (who are a true spectacle to witness live) moonlights as an artist. Luckily I was able to catch come of Brian’s work at the Reg Vardy Gallery in Sunderland and it was a neon treat. A very unique colour palette and way of drawing.

Well there you go. Feel free to add your own top 10 screenprints, your top 5, top 3 or even just one below. We always want to know about more great design. So get some comments in!

Projector are currently: Are considerably more streamline after one employee barnet chop.

And now for the concluding part of last week’s screenprint blog epic. After much enjoyable and laborious work at the North’s finest screenprinting studio, Northern Print, over the weekends of the and the 30th of Jan & 6th Feb a final 3 colour screenprint was produced! The character conjured up can only be described as a gene splicing experiment between Jeremy Beadle, a monkey and a Mexican Lucho wrestler gone terribly, terribly wrong. Next time I think I’ll prepare a design in advance! I can’t recommmend the course enough to anyone who wants to dabble in screenprinting as this is an excellent crash course, or a great refresher to get you back into hand printing your work. Hopefully this will be start of a fruitful printing career.

Projector are currently: Having a bit of a desk reshuffle.

Over Christmas time, Dom at the studio was given a lovely present of a screenprinting refresher course by “Mumsy Taylor” to rekindle the desire to do some more hands on work. The course took place at the North’s finest printmaking establishment and gallery Northern Print. Some amazing print work was seen on the walls by some prolific print makers one of particular note being the obviously very talented illustrator Sara Ogilvie.

The course allows each person to design and produce a 3 colour screenprint, which will hopefully give the person enough impetus to then become a fully fledged member of Northern Print. Dom is quite determined to make a go of this and we’re looking forward to seeing his hopefully half decent final piece on Monday of next week. So interweb, keep those peepers peeled for some updates!

Projector are currently: Trying to get a milllion things done at once.

The DBA recently updated their site with a summary video of their The Edge event. If you keep your eyes peeled, at around 27 seconds…you can see our James (tall fellow at the back) lingering in the background! But do not fear, he is not some ghostly pixelated apparition with a red arrow indicating his presence at all times, he is a human being like you and I.

DBA James on Youtube

With Christmas behind us and the turkey and all the trimmings that come with it, we’d like to wish all of you a very Happy New Year.

The studio is as busy as ever. Following on from the recent success of the National Apprenticeship Business, we are currently involved in creating yet another brand identity. We’re working with ‘Proform’ a business which offers coaching to companies and their employees, to improve individual performance, productivity and most importantly, the bottom line. 

The word is an amalgamation of ‘professional and performance’ resembling the company and the target audience. The extention of the letter ‘r’ around the ‘o’ gives suggestion that this is a supporting arm of guidance towards the individual wanting to improve their skill levels and further progress within the company. We’re looking forward to working alongside the client in the new year and produce some strong pieces of literature for the brand.

Projector are currently: Getting used to getting up early again.

Last week I was lucky enough to be sent down South to the little village of London to attend the inaugural Design for Business Association ‘Edge’ event. 2 days of workshops, seminars and trapeze flying – yes, i did say trapeze flying – this was no ordinary event! Other activities included tightrope walking, creating a human bottling production line and having lunch with the great and good of the Design world.

Day one was a series of workshops run by experts in the fields of Project Management, Concept Development, Creative Writing and Pitching. Restricted to attend just two of these, I went for the Project Management workshop  led by David Rivett and Concept Development workshop with Patrick Collister – both very prominent figures in the world of Design. Both workshops were very interesting and I gained some valuable knowledge in the respective areas. I have to say I was also reassured that a lot of what was covered is already in place at Projector – we must be doing something right!

Day two was something altogether different to anything I have attended before. The venue was called Circus Space – the name itself left me a little un-nerved but equally intrigued as to what the day had in store. I arrived early and was shown into what can only be described as a gym with circus objects hanging from the ceiling and soft mats lying around the walls. As the room filled I began to recognise some famous faces from the industry; to name but a few there was Erik Spiekermann, Howard Milton, Michael C Place, Mary Lewis, Michael Wolff, Oliverio Toscani, Tim Molloy and Morag Myerscough – I could go on!

Throughout the day we had direct access to these people and they even joined in on some of the perhaps less educational, but certainly very entertaining exercises along with everybody else. I certainly didn’t expect to see Michael C Place bunny hopping a fellow attendee first thing in the morning!

A number of talks were held throughout the day by some unexpected but surprisingly relevant and very insightful guests. Baroness Susan Greenfield (Director of the Oxford Centre for the Science of the Mind) who explored the links between creativity and the mind was incredibly interesting and it was great to look at creativity from a scientific point of view. Gary Lee (Head Chef of the Ivy) and his team talked about working under pressure and teamwork, they also put together some delicious food samples which disappeared all too quickly!

The design pioneers also took to the stage (and in one case stood behind everyone) to talk about their experiences and impart their knowledge and wisdom. These were great and it’s always inspiring to listen to prominent people in the industry who have succeeded and in many cases led the way. A highlight of the day was the discussion on stage between several of the pioneers about “what does success look like to you?” – again it was great to hear their responses. At one point a discussion between Toscani and Spiekermann developed into an argument, this went on for a while and over shadowed some of the other speakers but none the less it was good to see people so passionate about the industry. Unfortunately this was over too quickly, I would have been intrigued to hear more about their experiences and points of view.

I found the whole event very enjoyable and would highly recommend it. You would be hard pushed to come away without gaining some tips and techniques, not to mention a huge dose of inspiration from listening to such prominent speakers.

It’s almost the work Xmas party time at Projector Towers and pictured here is Steven from our sister company Union Room typifing the festive mood that is rife in the studio.

This may or may have not been Photoshopped. The hat anyway, but the star at the top of the tree came with free lens flare.

Projector are currently: Very Busy! 

It’s been a busy November here at the good ship Projector. But you’ve got to love the feeling of a deadline whooshing past you.

Here’s the first of a few of the projects in the works recently. This is our logo for the National Apprenticeship Business, who are going to be taking a modern and fresh approach to the Apprenticeship sector. The arrow marque symbolises a fresh more radiant change in direction, moving onwards and upwards, from an older path. We’re excited by the flexibility that this graphic gives us and look forward to producing some strong graphical work for NAB in the very near future!

Projector are currently: Preparing for Christmas

Last week we submitted two pieces from two of our designers, Dom and James to the Create Democracy exhibition at Design Event 2009.

Democracy is a challenging new graphic design exhibition forming part of Design Event, the North East’s annual design festival. The aim is to create the ultimate democratic exhibition; designers and illustrators were invited to submit their visual interpretation of the theme of Democracy and only those with the most votes will be featured in the exhibition/book.

The exhibiton will feature the very best of the work submitted to the project via this website, as voted by you. Votes can continue to be cast on the website and at the exhibition, so the art on display will continue to change, making this the most democratic exhibition ever.

So please do go ahead and give us a vote, as the more votes you get, the more likely it is that you are part of the exhibition/book! We’ve provided the links to the two pieces below.

James pointing out that Democracy is essentially a placebo, with democratic countries having problems of corruption and unfair advantage that are still commonplace. Dom’s entry adopts a quote from the band Crass, concentrating on the point that one of the beauties of democracy, even if you hate what it is, you’re free from restraint to create and protest against it.

The exhibition begins on the 16th of October at the Square Gallery next to Newcastle College.

Projector are currently: Getting to grips with the fact it’s Monday!