Minus 9 Design » poster

Embedded Art: Art in the name of Security, 2009

admin — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 18:58:39 +0000

Projects have different ways of developing. The artwork ‘Requiem for the network’ created for Embedded Art: Art in the name of Security (‘an interdisciplinary exhibition focusing on the societal shifts caused by the universal desire for security’) in Berlin in February 2009 was the product of a six-month collaboration between myself and writer extraordinaire Ken Hollings.

View from the CCTV camera

The final artwork was a series of 4 A0 posters that ‘visualised’ Ken’s text (an essay he had written for the Embedded Art catalogue) as a network of connections. It also worked as a reflection of Ken’s process and essence as a writer, connecting what may seem like random “historical events, cultural allusions and epistemological shifts” in an impressive complete story with fascinating insight. The artwork is the result of a true and highly enjoyable collaboration, moving back and forth between Ken and myself. Ken covers the one, two, three, four, five stage process in detail.

Ken watching the artwork while being watched

Making the connections

Its all about the network

Photography by Ken Hollings.

“Graphic design __________”

admin — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 12:45:57 +0000

I ran this as an introduction brief for my third year students on the BA @ CSM. It was a short one-week brief and a simple, effective way to get students comfortable with bringing their own perspectives to their practice.

Here are three very different results:

Ben Lee

Louise Naunton Morgan

Guglielmo Rossi

6,000,000 impressions

admin — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 18:27:53 +0000

6,000,000 impressions: handcrafting the book experience is an exhibition showcasing the process and output of Tara Books, at St Bride Library London. One of the things that make Tara Books unique is their genre of books made entirely by hand.
The enterprise is a fascinating study of craft and mass production. Tens of thousands of titles created in a small workshop in Chennai, India by hand using silkscreen and letterpress and book binding craft techniques are shipped to various parts of the world – LA, Berlin, Moscow, London, Tokyo…. the list keeps growing.

A6 invitation

These are books that, as Gita Wolf, Tara’s publisher puts it, ‘refashion traditional artisanal skills into fine contemporary bookmaking’.

Designing the poster and flyer for the exhibition was fun. Keeping in mind the spirit of Tara’s initiative, the publicity material was entirely (and painstakingly) printed by hand in India on handmade paper. The peacock on the poster is an image by the Gond artist Ram Singh Urveti from the book The Night Life of Trees.

A3 poster

Critical Context Program

admin — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:50:58 +0000

For one academic year (from 2007 to 2008), I ran the Professional Practice lecture series on the MA Communication Design program at Central Saint Martins, London. In practice, this meant inviting speakers of interest to come and talk to the students for an hour on a Tuesday night, on subjects ranging from independent publishing to play. Some nights we hosted a series of small-scale informal film screenings. Part of the delight of running this series meant I got to design a poster to advertise each of the events to the student community. The posters were meant for internal use only, and my constraint was that I had to spend no more than 60 minutes on each.

Often, due to shortage of time & budget, I had to be creative with low-res options available via online image searches or find images in my personal photo library that would suit. These are some favourites.