X chosen for D+AD

My poster for the Illuminating the Alphabet exhibition in 2004 has been picked for the D&AD Annual 2005.

The exhibition, of 26 posters "illuminating" each letter of the alphabet, was shown at the British Library as part of the London Design Festival. It was a joint project by writers' group 26, of which I'm a member, and the International Society of Typographic Designers, of which Thomas Manss is a member.

"X Stories" was the first project on which Thomas and I collaborated, and it went so well we've worked together on commercial projects since. So it's all worked out rather well.

If you'd like to read the stories on the poster, click here for a PDF (2MB). You can also buy the book of the exhibition, with an article by yours truly, via my Bookshelf.

Community Links

Hot off the presses today is the Case for Support I've produced in partnership with designer Piers Rutterford. This fantastic charity helps over 50,000 disadvantaged people a year in Newham – one of Europe's most deprived Boroughs. Their work is inspiring and inflential: when Gordon Brown announced his £450m Children's Fund for tackling child poverty, all six examples in his presentation were drawn from Community Links' work and publications.

And yet, the organisation is on a constant financial knife-edge, with less than three weeks' reserves in the bank. So they asked Piers and me, along with John Baguley of the International Fundraising Consultancy, to help them establish an annual fund of £300,000. This will give them a firmer footing, and help them expand. But it means convincing individuals to give significant amounts of money, every year from here on in.

To see our response to this challenging brief, click here for a PDF of the brochure. (It's a 3.4MB file compressed to 2MB with Stuffit.)

Going round in circles at Barbican

2004's 26 Letters exhibition, for which I created the X poster with Thomas Manss, was followed up this year by From Here to Here, an exhibition and book inspired by London's Circle Line. Like last year's project, this was a highly collaborative effort. London Underground's Platform for Art team got together with writers' collective 26 and students from the London College of Communication to create works for the London Design Festival.

I was invited to work on Barbican, home of what must be London's most notorious labyrinth. Everyone we spoke to thought immediately of getting lost amid the Barbican Estate's maze of passages, walkways and exits.

So we decided to test the myth. Armed with a tape recorder, we asked passers-by on the estate for directions to its many landmarks - St Giles' Church, the Girls' School, the Conservatory. It's fair to say that most of those we asked were pretty uncertain. One person even confessed to having trouble finding her way around even though she'd lived there for ten years.

One of the best sets of directions we collected ended up as this spoof signage, carefully Photoshop'd by LCC student Kenny Osinnowo. You can see a copy of the poster, along with all the others, at Embankment station until December. And you can find out more at the project website.

The project also spawned a book, also entitled From Here to Here, excerpts of which were turned into a mini-exhibition of their own as part of the main show. It was brilliantly executed by designer Sue Rogers and 26 member Nick Asbury, and if you missed it have a look at the website they created to go with it. You can also click here to buy the book from Amazon.

A new voice for Goldsmiths

In February 2005, The Partners asked me to help in the rebranding of high street jewellers Goldsmiths. The Partners had already created the new corporate identity, and wanted me to give the brand a new, more sophisticated tone of voice. So I did, and it was very well received. The Partners and I have now created a range of in-store literature for Goldsmiths, and I've worked directly with the client on their new website.

Click here to see the rather nice Christmas brochure we produced for 2004. (I wrote the intro and gave it its title, but didn't write the copy lines on the spreads.)

Click here to see the brochure I wrote about diamonds: their cut, clarity and colour, and how to look after them.

And click here to read some very kind words from Trisha at The Partners about my work on this job.