Daughters of Penelope Logo



This is the logo I have designed for Daughters of Penelope, Dovecot Gallery's Edinburgh Art Festival 2017 exhibition. Daughters of Penelope 'interweaves the work of artists who are investigating women’s stories and textile histories with the unique story of women’s work at Dovecot, providing a new structure within which both can be held, re-examined and strengthened.' The logo appears on the posters and invitations with the impressive list of artists featured in the exhibition below it.


Proof of Platform: 2017 Leaflet



Here is a proof of the leaflet that I have designed for Platform: 2017, an opportunity for artists at the start of their career to make and present new work in the Edinburgh Art Festival programme. The artists – Uist Corrigan, Rebecca Howard, Kotryna Ula Kiliulyte and Adam Quinn – were selected from an open call, accessible to artists working across Scotland, by artists Jacqueline Donachie and Graham Fagen.

This is the third year that I have designed the leaflet, using the logo and identity that I developed in 2015. This iteration has a different, centred arrangement of the cover elements and introduces a new cover colour for 2017, Pantone 2052 UP.

Platform: 2017 runs from 27 July – 27 August and will be held at a new festival venue, The Fire Station, Lauriston Place. Originally a Victorian Fire Station and run as the Fire Museum in recent years, it has been acquired by University of Edinburgh for the expansion of Edinburgh College of Art.

More information can be found here.





Proofs of ‘The Making of the Future: Now’ Book



I am very excited to see the proofs of The Making of the Future: Now, the book that I have been designing for the Edinburgh Art Festival 2017 commissions programme. The Making of the Future: Now 'invites artists to reflect on two important anniversaries for our city – the foundation of the first Edinburgh Festival in 1947, and the publication in 1917 of Patrick Geddes’ The Making of the Future: A Manifesto and a Project. Separated by a generation, both were born directly out of the experience of global conflict, and a strong belief that artists could play a critical role in helping societies to imagine new and better ways of living.

Presenting new projects by Scottish and international artists at sites in around Edinburgh’s Old Town, The Making of the Future: Now pays homage to the physical and intellectual legacy of Geddes and the festival in our city, and makes a claim for the continued relevance of their ideas today.’

Artists include: Bobby Niven, ZoĆ« Walker and Neil Bromwich, Toby Paterson, and Shannon Te Ao with 'Garden Residencies’ from Neil Bickerton, Alison Scott, Daisy Lafarge, and Deirdre Nelson.







Whilst I was in the early stages of designing the book, I was very pleased to be invited to visit the Patrick Geddes archive at the Special Collections department at the University of Edinburgh Library to see at first hand some of the fascinating collection of archival material held there, including Gedde’s incredible photographic survey of Edinburgh. My typographic cues for the design of the book were taken from some of the printed material that I saw in the library, and from other printed material, including the 1917 pamphlet of The Making of the Future: A Manifesto and a Project held in the Archives and Special Collections of the University of Strathclyde Library. I was drawn to the unconventional space on either side of the colon on the title of the 1917 pamphlet and used this as a starting point for the typography of the book; the typographic rule that sits beneath the title was inspired by the design of book (see below) about Patrick Geddes in the University of Edinburgh Library (I was thrilled to see that this book carried a bookplate a that said it was from the library of Hugh MacDiarmid).



The cover image of the book is by Toby Paterson, and is a detail of a plan study for The Sociology of Autumn, his new project for The Making of the Future: Now, developed for Chessels Court, just off the Royal Mile. Paterson’s work takes its title from Geddes’ 1895 essay of the same name, in which Geddes finds ‘in Autumn its secret: that of survival yet initiative, of inheritance yet fresh variation’. I am very much looking forward to seeing Toby’s new project for the Festival as I am a big fan of his work and I am delighted that we are using his image on the cover.





I love the journey of the book: how it develops from initial ideas and sample layouts and spreads; how these designs are then populated with copy that, over time – via marked-up PDFs, notes, emails and conversations – is edited and proofed; how images are changed, re-positioned and refined; how from designs made on a screen the book slowly begins to take on a physical presence through paper proofs and printouts; and how through decisions made about paper stock and finishes the book begins to live. It's always exciting to get flat proofs back from the printers – I enjoy the unexpected juxtapositions of images that crop up when pages appear next to other unconnected pages on the same plate; it's always useful to see a bound digital proof (as in the wirebound example above) that shows the book at actual size with the pages in the correct order: as close to the final physical object as it gets.

The proofs have now been approved and the waiting begins. The book is being printed in Edinburgh by Allander and – if all goes well – the book will be delivered on 24 July ahead of the opening of the Art Festival on 27 July. Fingers crossed!

Click here to read more about The Making of The Future: Now
Click here to visit the Edinburgh Art Festival website 


Dovecot What's On Guide 5



Dovecot What's On Guide | July-December 2017

Designed by James Brook for Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh, 2017

210 x 148 mm | 12 pages with half cover
Printed by Allander, Edinburgh, on Vision Superior

This is the fifth edition of the Dovecot Gallery What's On Guide that I have designed. The guide is twelve pages plus cover, which is cut away on the front to reveal half of a full bleed image. A mixture of full-bleed images, half-page images and thumbnails are used throughout in contrast with pages of simple, pared back typography printed on the clean white of Vision Superior, an uncoated paper that has a pleasant tactility. The format and template remain the same as the previous editions but is always tweaked to accommodate new types of information.

















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