Glasgow painter, Helen Flockhart, latest body of work ‘Linger Awhile’ explores the human side to the historical leader Mary Queen of Scots, exploring the way gender determined events in her life. 

Mary Queen of Scots was known not only for her political status, but also for her textual skill – whether authentic or imagined. During her 17 year imprisonment Mary wrote often, we used elements of her script and scattered the typographic detail throughout the book. The typeface was chosen to evoke classic decorative French fonts, a nod to Mary Queen of Scots heritage. The essay was typeset using traditional canons of page construction used in Medieval book design, we contrasted this with the contemporary setting of the painting titles, offbeat and staggered.

Glasgow Doors Open Day is an annual event hosted by Glasgow Building Preservation Trust: a programme of events that is curated in celebration of Glasgow’s architecture, culture and heritage. 

In our second year of working with the festival, we delivered the printed material for the festival. Working with a new body of photography, we simplified the layout to create an clearer, more accessible layout, to allow a strong focus on the imagery.

Fashion Foundry is a year long program for emerging fashion designers in Scotland. The vision is to provide the tools and knowledge to progress successfully in the industry.

We worked with Fashion Foundry to provide Art Direction and Print Design for their 2018 graduating designers. 

The aim of the project was to direct a creative vision that was consistent across the shoot, publication and exhibition design whilst allowing each designer a voice and identity throughout. This narrative was achieved simply through the use of coloured backdrops, styling and model poses to reflect and enhance each designers story.

Kirsty Whiten’s most recent body of work, ‘Icon Oracle’, focuses around the theme of ritualisation and personal transformation.

Working with these themes, we introduced a translucent paper stock into the perfect bound artists book. This heightened the feeling of vulnerability and transformation. We wanted the audience to engage with the artworks on various levels and pulling back and revealing on the artwork from the haze of the transparency became the ritualisation and unveiling of the layered works.   

Recoat curate art projects and exhibitions, create commissioned art and design work and run education programmes within community projects. We delivered the design elements of the ‘This Will Ruin Everything’ 10 year celebrations. This began with an identity which went on to inform the book design, exhibition design, merchandise and promotional material. We wanted to retain an essence of Recoats urban art routes and utilised letterpress printing and mark making to create texture to the pages. 

Ruth Elvira Gilmour is an Artist based in Glasgow, who makes objects and jewellery in response to materials processes and texture. We worked with her on her latest project ‘Nothing is Solid’, arranging the photographic research and documentation of studio processes into a coptic bound book. Every addition was bound by hand to maintain quality and craftsmanship and to mimic the hands-on nature to Ruth’s work. 

Glasgow Doors Open Day is an annual event hosted by Glasgow Building Preservation Trust: a programme of events that is curated in celebration of Glasgow’s architecture, culture and heritage. We worked with the festival to redesign the complete festival identity and all festival material and merchandise. The aim of identity is to convey a message of pace and connectivity amongst the audience and the built environment. The words are to be viewed as locations and stopping points along the route of the festival with the staggered placement allowing for an organic, angular pathway to be formed and bridge the type together. 

Architecture Fringe is an independent contributor-led series of events and projects across the arts, which explores architecture and how it makes a difference to our lives. We collaborated with festival organisers to deliver this years brochure and exhibition design. We looked to the festival venue for inspiration, utilising hardware synonymous with building materials as a backdrop to the exhibition information. 

Soil City is a long term project initiated by Open Jar Collective; a group of socially engaged artists and designers operating within co-operative principles. They believe that artistic practices can contribute meaningfully to the development of new perspectives on culture and the environment through the sharing of ideas and possibilities for change. The aim of this project was for Open Jar Collective to explore the relationship between healthy soils and healthy people.

Launching at Glasgow International, Soil City is a space for conversation, participatory research and knowledge exchange. By engaging with the citizens of Glasgow and a wider community of scientists, artists, activists and academics, they hope to gain a better understanding of the relationship between healthy soil and healthy people.

We were commissioned to create the visual identity for application across the exhibition and event space, as well as printed matter including project publication. We built the idea based on the concept of strata lines and the visual impact of layered soils; utilising hand generated marks to reflect an natural, organic aesthetic in an earthy colour palette.

Kirsty Whiten is one of Scotlands most distinctive artists who’s body of work explores themes of anthropology and personal identity. Her work challenges conventions and taboos, particularly in relation to gender and sexual politics.

Wronger Rites: The Quing of the Now People is a body of illustration and creative writing which focuses on the Now People; a fictional tribe who perform rituals that are celebratory of their genders and sexuality. Each project has an accompanying poem to personify these rituals.

Working closely with Kirsty, we designed this art book with heavy regard for the common anthropological themes in her work. Our research into anthropologists note taking inspired the development of a custom typeface for the project. We customised an existing sans serif typeface (GT Walshiem), referencing the flourishes and gestures from our research, to deliver varying options of the uppercase alphabet that were used throughout the book.

This project was produced, in collaboration with Erin Bradley-Scott, to commemorate the library at Glasgow School of Arts Mackintosh building following the fire which destroyed many rare and archived books.

We salvaged a 1960’s hard bound, back-catalogue of Vogue Italia. We celebrated the beauty of the water and fire damaged pages and created a magazine, to replicate the original format, that showcased the unintentional found collages.

This publication was shortlisted for the Anamorphosis Prize.

You can read more about it here.