origin: martyn evans

The Deptford Project

admin — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 14:35:44 +0000

Last Summer, the artists and designers who work on site at The Deptford Project came together to build an outdoor cinema. It was part of a programme of activity to make the site come alive. Full houses every night enjoyed the Silent Cinema experience in a programme of films that included Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and American Werewolf in London.

London’s grooviest café is a 1960’s commuter train carriage that we converted and installed on a development site in Deptford High Street, South London. It’s there to kick start and breathe life into a regeneration process, two years before our clients, Cathedral Group, begin to develop a building on the site designed by Richard Rogers.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Designed by Morag Myerscough, it’s had global media coverage and has turned a dirty, unloved and derelict railway yard that was blighting the local community, into a crazy, high profile, creative hub that is now a much-loved part of the High Street.

In the run up to the construction phase a programme of art and design projects on the site, curated by a team at the café, will build an amazing story, putting the area on the map and enriching the developer’s sales process. Instead of going to market with only the promise of a new shiny building, they can tell a story of a vibrant place, rich in culture that is already established as a cool place to live.

Design for London

admin — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:49:54 +0000

Millennium Mills is only one of the empty buildings in London’s Royal Docks. We’ve just completed an project there looking at how we might use some of the empty spaces and buildings to start generating some interest in it as an area due for massive redevelopment.

Our plan is to create a programme of temporary activity as a catalyst for change in the very early part of the formal redevelopment process…

…bringing attention to a part of London that doesn’t yet have a clear personality.

Below is the Tate Institute, built by Henry Tate in 1887 as a social club for his workers at the Tate and Lyle plant that’s still across the road. It closed in 1933, was a library until 1961 and now sits empty, rather forlorn and forgotten. We’d love to get our hands on it and open it up…

North Woolwich train station (below) has been a museum since it closed as a working railway station building in the 1970’s. Another amazing building, empty, dead and crying out for use.

Aram Store and Gallery

admin — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:40:04 +0000

This is the first piece of Bauhaus furniture ever designed – Walter Gropius’s F51 Chair. It was part of an exhibition of furniture made by the German manufacturer Tecta at Aram Store for The London Design Festival in 2010. In the Aram Gallery Ineke Hans had her first ever UK solo show. We’ve worked for Aram since the store in Covent Garden opened in 2002.

Aram Store in London’s Covent Garden

Our campaign for Aram Store and The Aram Gallery maintains the reputation of one of London’s most famous design brands. Aram Store is London’s largest and most beautiful contemporary designer furniture store. We handled the opening in April 2002 and we’ve worked with the Aram family since to keep it at the forefront of the London design world.

We run a highly efficient press office, delivering strong, consistent media coverage, create events to promote the store and its products and run publicity campaigns to promote the store’s regular promotional campaigns.

Aram40 Peter Blake

To celebrate the company’s 40^th anniversary 40 of the best known and most respected names in international design, architecture and art were asked by the Aram family to design a rug – amongst them, Zaha Hadid, David Bailey, Ron Arad, Peter Blake and Jasper Morrison. We ran a high-profile, international media relations campaign to support an exhibition at the store.

Stage by Jamie Hayon at Aram Gallery

We have helped to establish The Aram Gallery – the entire top floor of the store – as one of London’s most vibrant design galleries.

Her House Gallery

admin — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:00:04 +0000

We’ve been working with Morag Myerscough to promote Her House Gallery since it opened in its original Clerkenwell location in 2003. Her latest show in December 2010 was an exhibition of her personal collection of vintage chairs, displayed as a backdrop for a collection of textiles and ceramics by architect Vicky Thornton.

Morag Myerscough is one of the most respected designers in the UK. Our campaign helped to build the reputation of her studio, Studio Myerscough, through the promotion of its work and we launched Her House – the development of Morag’s home into a gallery and retail operation. We handled product placement, exhibition publicity and feature development. Since she moved her gallery and studio to Hoxton, we have continued to collaborate on many projects including our work for CABE and Design for London. Morag designed The Deptford Project.

Morag in Her House Clerkenwell

Telegraph Magazine

CABE:Grey To Green

admin — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:52:31 +0000

To highlight the critical lack of investment in our cities’ green infrastructure we commissioned these beautiful maps from designer Morag Myerscough. They depict Liverpool, Gloucester and the London Boroughs of Hackney and Islington by their greenery rather than as normal, by their roads and buildings.

London Burroughs of Hackney & Islington

We created a campaign to encourage local authorities to switch public spending from ‘grey’ projects like road building and heavy engineering projects to ‘green’ schemes like street trees, parks, green roofs and waterways as a way of addressing climate change more effectively, improving public health and making our communities more beautiful.

Exhibition

As nobody has effectively mapped England’s green spaces we commissioned artist Morag Myerscough to use a combination of computer technology and painstaking hand rendering to create a series of maps that give a clear sense of the quantity and distribution of the green infrastructure in three UK locations.

A nationwide roadshow and media relations campaign spread our message across the UK.

CABE:Design Skills Scholarships

admin — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:55:00 +0000

We run the CABE Space design skills scholarship programme – an annual initiative to help inject design awareness and good practice into the professions that create and manage urban public space.

The scheme offers grants to fund work or study trips abroad, to enable people without any formal design training to experience good practice first hand and gain practical understanding of delivering and managing well-designed public space.

Urban farming, Chicago

Priestmangoode

admin — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:58:01 +0000

Mercury is Priestmangoode’s concept for the UK’s new high speed train. This Autumn we launched a campaign for them to persuade the Government that a new Great British transport design icon is just what we need to showcase British design and engineering in an increasingly competitive global marketplace.

Mercury - Priestmangoode's UK high speed train concept

Click here to view the embedded video.

Our work for Priestmangoode, one of the UK’s leading multidisciplinary design groups, revolves around a campaign to build their reputation as experts in their field and extend their experience into new business sectors alongside an international media relations campaign to promote their work in product, environment, transport and packaging design.

The Health Manifesto is the first in a series of publications we have created that allows Priestmangoode to raise the design debate in a number of industry sectors. Original design work offering clever solutions to big problems are included and a promotional campaign, including extensive use of the web and online communication channels, is proving highly effective. The Recovery Lounge (below) is a concept for a day surgery recovery suite at an NHS hospital built with the knowledge learned from Priestmangoode’s extensive experience in designing luxury airline interiors.

The Priestmangoode Recovery Lounge

Click here to view the embedded video.

We have been promoting their own product design output, including Waterpebble (below), an innovative water-saving device for the shower, and we are building a programme of international speaking engagements for the principals.

The Mayor’s Great Spaces

admin — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:00:47 +0000

Design for London commissioned us to build a strategy for The Mayor of London’s programme to support good design in new public spaces across London. Our initial branding work, in partnership with Studio Myerscough, was designed to roll out as a communications campaign including a major new awards scheme for public space design.

The Forgiveness Project

admin — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:55:27 +0000

May 2010: Archbishop Desmond Tutu speaks in London for The Forgiveness project. In a world where retaliation and revenge grab all the headlines, The Forgiveness Project is an organisation working to help build a future free of conflict and violence by encouraging people to explore the nature of forgiveness. Central to the organisation is The F word: images of forgiveness, a powerful photography exhibition which tells the stories of people whose lives have been shattered by violence, tragedy and injustice and who are learning to forgive. We helped launch the organisation in 2004 and have continued to support it ever since.

: Francis and Berthe Climbie

More information from The Forgiveness Project

The Old Truman Brewery

admin — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 13:43:03 +0000

In 1998 the Old Truman Brewery was an 11 acre site of empty buildings. We gave it its name, developed its brand identity and created a programme of activities to build its reputation as one of the most cutting edge parts of London. Many of the events we created have gone on to become commercially successful ventures in their own right.

The Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London

Among other things, we helped to conceive and produce the first Designersblock – a contemporary furniture and product design show that runs alongside 100% Design. Created as a way of showcasing the Brewery’s empty spaces as potential places to work, the exhibition is now one of the most talked about shows in the London Design Festival calendar. The building was fully let within six months.

Designersblock, September 1998

We also created Fashion East and Free Range – two events conceived as a way of showcasing The Old Truman Brewery’s event spaces and maintaining its reputation as a centre for emerging cutting-edge design. Fashion East, a programme to support emerging talent in British fashion design, is now an established part of London Fashion Week whilst Free Range has become Europe’s largest graduate art and design show.

Freerange, July 2001