Sensational Butterflies at the Natural History Museum is open! I designed and artworked the exhibition graphics for the show. It's a live butterfly experience, so it's something of a departure for me. Happy feelings.
The show runs from 31 March to 17 September 2017.
See the full story about the design here:
http://chutneychorus.com/#/exhibition-natural-history-museum/
(post by Tanya)
Horniman Museum and Gardens approached me to create this identity for the temporary closure of their galleries while they create the new (and very exciting) World Gallery.
Rather than talk about the design as I usually do, I thought I'd talk shop instead. The 'design' part of my work takes up about 20% of the total time spent on any job. And the rest? It's all technical, technical ... and technical. But what does that mean?
It means thinking about how visitors enter and move around the space: what will they see from where? How legible will the graphics be from a distance?
It means thinking about how a job will be installed: will the vinyl go outside the glass (sticky back) or inside (sticky front)? (The larger part of this job went inside the glass to avoid the cost and inconvenience of scaffolding.)
It means working to accurate dimensions, or 'dims' as we call 'em in the trade. The dims have to be accurate down to the millimetre and include all fixtures and fittings or things can go seriously awry ... imagine trying to cover an A4 book with a standard envelope. (Oh dear.)
And most of all, it means a lot of work in Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign. Here's a quick overview of the digital work that went into the project:
Each of these processes takes time and much like creating anything, you have to take a few runs at each stage before you can clamber over the top. And here we are on the other side of the job. Nice.
http://www.horniman.ac.uk/about/anthropology-redisplay
(post by Tanya)
Here's what's going on or coming up for Tanya:
1. Lead 2D design for the Natural History Museum show Sensational Butterflies, a live butterfly show held in the grounds of the museum. It runs from the end of March until mid-September 2017.
2. Various projects for Museum of London. These include animated GIFs and print design to market talks and events, and teachers' packs for the education team.
3. Working alongside Alice Graham (curator/project manager), she is working on Agatha Christie: A Life in Photographs. This is the third leg of the tour, showing at the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff from June 2017.
p.s. We've added our 2017 New Year's greetings anime to our GIF page. Look out for the spinning rooster head and you've found it:
https://chutneychorus.com/gifs/
These two shots were taken in January and December this year and are pretty representative of one part of my work process. Printing test strips for exhibition graphics is crucial to test colours, resolution, legibility from a distance, aesthetics and all that other good stuff.
They also represent different roles I can play in an exhibition project. The dinosaur was a retouching job only, I wasn't involved in the exhibition or marketing design. On the other job I was the sole designer, meaning I took the brief, presented a number of concepts to my client and once we'd finished distilling the design, I artworked the resulting x25 pieces for manufacture. (The latter is still with the print house so I'll post pictures once it's installed).
Want to know more about artworking and the crucial role it plays in the design process? Read this little piece I wrote a while back:
http://chutneychorus.com/blog/design-artwork-and-a-dogs-dinner
(post by Tanya)
You may not know this but the wonderful Horniman Museum hold an equally wonderful Farmers' Market every Saturday. To raise its profile, their marketing team asked us to design them a new identity. Mike had the brilliant idea of putting their most popular museum exhibit, the Victorian walrus, on top of a cheese 'berg. His initial sketches were a little too wrinkled and blubbery so our clients asked us to smooth it out, making it look authentically 'over-stuffed'. There are two further 'bergs to be unveiled but we're sitting on those for the time being!
On seeing the flyer, we overheard a 3-year-old boy say "I want to lay on a big piece of cheese" ... best feedback ever.
http://www.horniman.ac.uk/visit/events/horniman-farmers-market
It's been a busy few months. Tanya has been working on a number of projects for Museum of London and Museum of London Docklands: interpretation for the permanent galleries, adverts (print and digital), printed marketing, learning resources and touring exhibition brochures. We're also working on two chunky projects for Horniman Museum & Gardens – we'll share details soon.
When things get this busy, a trip out of the city keeps things in perspective. In the grounds of Knole House, Sevenoaks, we came face-to-face with these locals. Watching them climb through the ferns was the perfect reminder that there is so much more to life than design ...
In celebration of Team GB coming second in the Olympic medal table, we're sharing this fine piece of merchandise from the 2012 Games. Apparently this was part of a little-known campaign to elevate scoffing fry-ups to Olympic level.
The Tokyu Milano cinema, ice rink and 58 lane bowling alley complex opened in 1956 and contained the biggest movie theatre in Japan. We're not quite sure when this fabulous signage was installed but as the place was closed in 2014, we really hope it was rescued.
