Yorkshire Graphic Design Exhibition

The 14th May sees the start of a small exhibition we've helped curate entitled "Yorkshire Graphic Design I" at Cafe 164 in Leeds, the first in a what we hope will be a series of exhibitions showcasing the work of local graphic designers.

We had a fantastic set of submissions and the resulting exhibition showcases six designers all with their own approach and take on graphic design. You can read more about their work, Cafe 164 and the exhibition here:

www.cafe164.com/2012/04/yorkshire-graphic-design-one-exhibitors/

As a (somewhat ridiculously) proud Yorkshire man this has to be one of the most satisfying projects I've worked on for some time – and not just because we got to create a piece inspired by the Yorkshire rose. It's been great to have an opportunity to be introduced to and showcase a few of the fantastic and talented designers working up north.

We created the promotional images for the exhibition shown here in partnership with Cafe 164 manager & photographer Sara Teresa

You can pop in for a coffee and see the exhibition at Cafe 164 between the 14th May and 23rd of June.

Images from the making of the Yorkshire Graphic Design rose:

Design & Art Direction: Split   |   Photography: Sara Teresa 

Promised Land, Red Ladder Theatre

We've been working with the renowned Leeds-based theatre company Red Ladder on the promotion for their latest production "Promised Land, A Northern Love Story". Based on the 2011 Sports Book of the Year by Anthony Clavane. The show will run at The Carriageworks Leeds from 22-30 June 2012.

Here's a few notes from our design rationale:

- We looked to reflect the the divide between the cultural backgrounds of the couple, signified by two different sides of Leeds, divided by the crease in the page (subtly inspired by the fact that this is an adaption of a book)

- The couple embrace across the divide, but as with all love stories featuring a divide in backgrounds this raises questions in the audience's mind as to if the relationship can survive despite these differences.

- The man in the image holds the Leeds scarf and I've created this to match the book cover - the man walking away down a grim Leeds street now becomes a couple, reflecting the play's adaption of the original book

- The stadium is on the horizon - the idea of the promised land that perhaps never quite lives up to expectations when you get there.

- The stadium features the old Elland Road diamond floodlights - the tallest floodlights in Europe when they went up and a feature of Elland Road very fondly remembered by older Leeds fans. The football stadium also bridges the cultural divide in the image.

- The design is set onto the backdrop of news clippings from Leeds United's campaigns in the 1960's and 70's, providing the background for the main story.

Anniversary Video Interview

This month we're celebrating our 5th Anniversary. As part of the celebrations I was asked to do a short interview talking about setting up Split, life on Quarry Hill and what we've been up to. You can check it out below.

I set up as a freelancer in 2007 not quite knowing what I was letting myself in for. It’s been a fantastic experience and over the past few years I've had the chance to work on some really exciting projects and with some really interesting clients. Here's to another 5!

Special thanks to Richard Spaven for his track Zeebra III.  Check out his album 'Spaven's 5ive' here or visit his facebook.

The Quarry Hill 2012 Family Tree

This week was the first Quarry Hill Social - a get together of all the creative and cultural organisations on Quarry Hill - and for the event we created the Quarry Hill Family Tree.

With nearly 70 businesses, individuals and organisations in such a small area all involved in creative or cultural practices, we wanted to showcase what this small corner of Leeds has to offer. The family tree is designed to raise awareness of all the fantastic creative businesses based on Quarry Hill, help build relationships between these creative companies and give an overview of the work that these businesses do.

Each organisation is listed as a sibling, parented by the building in which they work. There's a family-based nickname for each member as well as a directory with their website and details of the sectors they're enganged with.

Some of our favourite nicknames include:

The Uncle in the Closet (The Wardrobe)
The Dearly DepArted (DepArts)
Aunt Fanny (Leeds Life Drawing)
The Quickstep Mother (Yorkshire Dance)
The Drama Queen (West Yorkshire Playhouse)
The Mistress's Sex Toy (Rabbit Hole)
The Grand Ma (Ma Design)
Good old Auntie (BBC Yorkshire)

The poster is free and you can grab a copy from Cafe 164 in Leeds.

You can also download a PDF of the poster here: http://www.split.co.uk/QuarryHillFamilyTree.pdf

This project was done purely for the love of it and we'd like to say thanks to Yorkshire Dance (www.yorkshiredance.com), H&H Reeds Printers (www.hhreedsprinters.co.uk), Kendell's Bistro (www.kendellsbistro.co.uk) and Creative Aristocracy (www.duke-studios.com) for their kind donations towards the printing of the poster.

Matthew Boune & The Leaf Label

This month sees the release of Matthew Bourne's highly acclaimed solo album "Montauk Variations" marking the start of his partnership with the The Leaf Label. The sleeve design by Split is one part of a larger project we undertook to create a full visual identity for the experimental pianist's work with the label.

Sleeve Design:  The brief was to create not just an individual album sleeve design, but a design that would serve as a format for all future releases on The Leaf Label.

Under the "Matthew Bourne Presents" banner, Matt's releases will be free to feature a diverse and exciting range of different projects and collaborations. We wanted to find a way to give a strong visual identity to his output on the label so representing it as a cohesive body of work, yet allow for each release to be individual and unique. 

Attempting to predict what Matthew Bourne might do in the next moment of a performance is nearly impossible, let alone predicting what form his next album might take. Any overall format for the album sleeves had to be created with this in mind. The typography, layout and information hierarchy are designed to be flexible enough to incorporate all the possible differences in information between releases (though we fully expect Matt to test this to its limits!) whist at the same time being careful to not let the requirements of designing the overall format affect the strength of the individual design for each cover.

The photography is provided by regular collaborator Jon Stanley Austin and his distinctive, gritty style and vintage aesthetic will create a strong-yet-subtle link between all the covers, as well as to the website (see below). The content, subject matter and character of each image will be completely free and will be led by Matt's vision for each release. At the same time - as with Matt's own musical style - the personal, idiosyncratic style of Jon’s photography will naturally help to bring all the individual parts together as a whole.

"The cover design options provided by Split were right on the money, portraying exactly the clarity, focus and identity that we were looking for. I am indebted to Oli for his expeditious replies and design ideas and to Jon for his unique photography. It is an honour to have been able to present Montauk Variations in such beautifully-designed packaging - it seems almost strange with the ease in which it all came together." - Matthew Bourne

Montauk Variations is on sale from the Leaf Label shop here: http://theleaflabel.net/matthew-bourne/ and comes very highly recommended.

Logo mark design: Used to tie everything together, the mark features across both the website and sleeve designs. It is formed from the layout of the black keys of a piano, with the last key shortened to create Matthew Bourne’s initials. Whilst it can be used alongside type wherever needed, the mark is designed so it can also be used in isolation, appearing both abstract and enigmatic – two traits prevalent in Matt’s musical personality.

Website Design: Going live at the end of 2011, matthewbourne.com was the result of a development process to find a site design that reflected Matt's overall musical personality as well as providing a strong online platform to showcase and promote his recording, performance and writing as well as providing The Leaf Label with an outlet for the sale of his material.

The set of five striking full-page background images were again shot by Jon Stanley Austin in a day-long shoot that we spent scattering pages from Matt's scores across the breath of Yorkshire.*

The concept behind the shoot came from Bourne’s combined process as both a contemporary composer and free-jazz improvisor: Once thrown up in the air by the composer, the individual fragments of the music are free to move in any direction, form any shape and come together in any way. No matter how many times the same score was thown in the air, the resulting images would never be the same.

Moving forwards with the design, Matt was heavily involved in the structure of the site, wanting a very clean, simple menu and taking great care over the name and place of each link to ensure the menu that was both highly accessible and a pleasure to navigate .

To accurately reflect Matt's musical personality the site had to be quirky and unconventional in some ways (such as the sideways, rather than length ways scrolling), yet at the same time we needed to ensure that despite this the site had to be functional and be easy to use.

The home page forms a hub for the site with the news and upcoming appearances feeding automatically from the main news/appearances content. Social media links and the mailing list sign up feature clearly from the home page, and the 'share' link in the top corner appears on every page allowing users to simply and quickly link others to any page of the site.

As of the end of February, the site will also feature a shop allowing users to purchase both physical products as well as download audio and video content as well as scores from Matt's private archive.

The full site uses Wordpress as the Content Management System. This gives the guys at The Leaf Label full control to easily edit the content, including all copy, images, shop stock and orders and the pop-up sound player.

You can view the full site here: www.matthewbourne.com

---
* For the environmentally conscious among you - all but two or three pages were collected and taken home with us. We consider the couple of pages we missed part of Matt's continued efforts to help inspire the sheep of the world to reach greater cultural enlightenment.

Nixti - promo image

Just a quick post with the image we created this week for dub step DJ Nixti on the Smudge Music label. The image continues with the concept of "digital origami" we created the album for "Instincts" and it's preceding singles – view the project on our website here.

Nixti's latest release – Black Magik, featuring legendary Jamaican Dub Poet Yasus Afari – will be out very soon. For a preview check out the Nixti Soundcloud.

Jackrabbitt - typeface design

Designed for extreme sports brand Jackrabbitt, this is Split's first full typeface design and is part of an ongoing project to create the visual identity for the community-focused brand.

Starting life as just the word "jackrabbitt" in the logo, we decided to take a leap into the unknown and extend the design into a full working font that the JR guys could use as a display face on their website, videos, apparel etc.

The original letter-forms were designed to be both friendly and accessible but at the same time have a bit of attitude and edge. After a number of versions and a bit of trial and error in the rules of type design we settled on a basic design we were happy with. Then came the hard work of actually making it work as a type face, which is certainly more complicated than we anticipated – with literally thousands of possible combinations of letters that needed kerning* individually the project admittedly became a labour of love for a while. However, I'm happy to say it led to the creation of our very first font as well as a whole new level of appreciation for the work of type designers!

*Kerning involves setting the spacing between each pair of letters and is crucial to making a typeface read correctly.