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FAE Film
Category: DESIGN
Positive Vibration began as a DJ and live music event hosted at the Kazimier and Kazimier Garden in Liverpool. This annual reggae appreciation meet-up soon evolved into a fully-fledged festival hosted in the Baltic Triangle, with the inaugural one scooping up the UK’s Best New Festival Award in 2016 and developing a cult following.
I oversaw the design and branding of PV from Vol. 2 onwards, utilising incredible artwork by Taj Francis in several poster designs as well as my own artwork for beer labels, tickets, infographics and on-site decals. I also shot and edited a promotional video made up of footage from the original award-winning Festival in 2016.
| logos, print media, infographics, video |
I first encountered Bring The Fire Project in 2013 after their performance lit up Threshold Festival. As Liverpool’s first and finest flow/fire-arts collective, they appear regularly at key events and festivals across the city, many of which I have documented for them.
As well as making videos, I designed their logo, which is usually displayed very prominently against the black hoodies they often wear at the events when not dressed in costume. The symmetrical design shows two hooded figures cradling a burst of flame, with magenta used as a feature colour for the word FIRE and the flame itself.
| photos, logos, poster, videos |
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Hope Street Ltd
Based in Liverpool, Hope Street Ltd. was an organisation dedicated to the development of artists, artforms and arts in the community.
I designed printed material for Hope Street Ltd, On The Verge Festival and their Emerging Artists Programme, as well as documenting that year’s apprentices and producing a promotional video to showcase all that they had achieved.
| printed media, photos, video |
As the designer for Rebel Soul, I was responsible for the branding and visual identity for three successive ‘Voodoo Ball’ events from 2014-2016. Each event had a highly distinctive motif, complete with costumes, acts and on-location theming, to make the ‘Alternative Halloween’ Ball one of Liverpool’s most iconic nights out.
2014’s event had a Mexican-inspired ‘Day of the Dead’ theme, utilising heart, skull and flower imagery and the deathly visage of La Catrina.
2015 explored the Latin American legend of El Coco (the ‘bogeyman’) with a poster designed to emulate horror and B-movie artwork from the 1950s.
2016’s ball depicted a dystopian 1980s Afrofuturist saga set between three factions – the Afropunks, the Afrolords, and the mysterious Afronauts.
As well as the poster designs themselves, I was highly involved in the events’ overall look and theming, from the icons used for 2016’s factions to teaser gifs, and artwork for accompanying events (such as the Wake the Dead Parade and Day of the Dead family event).
I also produced promo videos for both the 2015 and 2016 events.
| posters and assorted media, video |
Lyric music video created for Tim Burgess and the O Genesis label for the first track of his album ‘Same Language, Different Worlds’ with Peter Gordon.
An homage to two cultures, the video has both Japanese and English lyrics in a reverse scroll down the screen, along with stylised tetris piece outlines falling in the background and a blocky waveform pattern reacting to the audio input.
Clips from the video were broadcast live on Channel 4 during the show Sunday Brunch in September 2016.
| motion graphics / editor | dur. 3m 51s |
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Le Mans 2016
I was fortunate enough to attend the 84th running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2016 – a marathon endurance race for prototype and GT cars run once a year at Circuit de la Sarthe in France.
A long-held childhood dream of mine was to stay up for the full duration of the race; after visiting for the first time in 1993 as a 6-year-old, where I was blown away by the electricity and excitement of a full-blooded race through the night, I was finally able to realise this ambition, 23 years later. This is what I saw.
| photos | Camera / Editor | 1m 40s |
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Radio Exotica
Radio Exotica are Liverpool-based DJs who showcase world music played on vinyl. They’ve performed at many festivals, including Glastonbury, and host their own events highlighting music from countries and cultures across the planet.
The original logo I created portrays a spinning record mounted at the same 23.5° tilt as the Earth, resembling a mounted globe. I re-skinned the logo on numerous occasions to highlight different countries, regions and musical genres for various events.
| Design evolution & logo re-skins |
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Michael Kirkham Photography
A simple and contemporary logo design for Liverpool-based photographer Michael Kirkham (no relation!).
MK is a very common two-letter combination used by countless organisations (plus Milton Keynes), so I adding a sharp cut and emphasised the sharp angles of the M and K . With close-to-square proportions and a chunky monotone silhouette, this MK remains legible even at small resolutions or when overlaid onto a busy photo.
| logo design & photo examples |
As part of my role as director of the Liverpool-based events company Rebel Soul, I designed a number of gig posters as well as overseeing the company’s overall branding & merchandise ‘look’ and the occasional video.
The logo itself was derived from a piece of artwork by our good friend, sound wizard and musician Adam Hanley, framed inside a reuleaux triangle similar in shape to a plectrum. The bespoke wordmark is fluid and flowing, evoking the rounded fonts commonly used in vinyl and record culture.
Each event we put on had a very distinct vibe, ranging from the acoustic sanctum of a Scandinavian seafarers church, to an open-air carnival of all things Jamaican. Several of the events became distinct entities in their own right – Positive Vibration and The Voodoo Ball for example.
| seasonal logos & event posters |
From the fifth Threshold Festival onwards, I oversaw the creation of a new aesthetic every year bar one until the tenth and final edition in 2021, designing logos, posters, merchandise, artwork and more.
The 2015 event used the theme ‘Contrasting Geometries’ which was embraced at every level, from designing a bespoke typeface, to geometry-inspired ‘Threshyheads’ (above) and even the decision to use the roman numeral V instead of 5.
| logos, print media, posters, promo |
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Vixur
As lead designer for Threshold Festival’s ‘contrasting geometries’ theme in 2015, I worked on a typeface design that would be able to bring all the branding together, regardless of colour, shape or style.
Inspired heavily by the work of early 20th-century artist and designer Cassandre, I created a font similar in approach to his highly geometric type Bifur (1929), but with more of an emphasis on clarity and flexibility. Ultimately, three versions of ‘Vixur’ were designed, A & B as complimentary styles which could be overlaid to create the iconic two-tone effect Bifur pioneered, and C, a more legible version of Vixur A that can be used as a stand-alone font – for ease of use and convenience.
Vixur was used throughout Threshold 2015’s branding, in the logo design, poster designs, branding, merchandise & printed media. The font was adapted into several distinct styles over the course of the marketing campaign, including various offset & patterned versions of A+B for different aspects of the festival, notably for the visual arts branding as well as partner posters.
An article about Vixur appeared on the FACT website to tie in with their Type Motion exhibition, although sadly it has since been taken down.
| 3 Fonts combined: Vixur A, Vixur B & Vixur C |
Categories
Kingdom
An iconic design for powerful Liverpudlian rock group Kingdom. The resulting design contains classic rock, military & fantasy elements.
| design evolution, logos |
For the 2013 Threshold Festival I was given a brief to design a triangular programme to be handed out to all attendees, containing all the music & art listings, information and a map of the venues. The unusual shape requirement was in part a tongue-in-cheek response to the Festival’s trend-setting usage of Liverpool’s Baltic Triangle, and also a gentle nod to the butterfly motif used that year.
After experimenting with various angles I settled on a 7-sided design which could be printed and die cut from an A3 sheet, then folded into a pocket-sized booklet. The concertina-fold layout meant that each double page (day listings, map) could be viewed separately without having to unfold the entire programme.
The design was subtly revised for the next three festivals, with key information being moved to the inside contents of the programme and the listings moved to the rear. A new map was required in 2014 as further venues were added, so I ended up making a 3D model of the Baltic Triangle which could be adapted as needed.
Several of the programmes, including the more conventionally-proportioned art exhibition leaflets, are still available to browse on issuu here and here.
| Bespoke 7-sided Festival Programme Design |
