DIY Art

DIY Art 

Designed by James Brook for Edinburgh Art Festival, 2020 – ongoing 

Booklets  | 297 x 210 mm | variable page count 

Printed by Edinburgh Copyshop on 120 gsm matt digital stock 

I have been collaborating with Holly Yeoman of the Community Engagement team at Edinburgh Art Festival on DIY Art, a series of activity packs from EAF and selected artists, that invite people to get creative at home. The instructional creativity kits give insights into an artist’s practice, showing how to use their processes and techniques to create unique artworks.  

For the series, I created an identity that has a DIY/homemade aesthetic but is underpinned by a cool, pared-back rationality that reflects the previous work I have done with the Festival. The brief was to create a simple contemporary design that was flexible and could accommodate different types of information but that would still present a cohesive series appealing to children, teenagers and adults alike. Produced during lockdown, a major consideration was that, although a number of packs were being printed and distributed by the Festival, most would be downloaded and printed at home so I took care to keep the artwork within standard print margins and not to use areas of unnecessary flat colour that would drink up lots of ink! 

As a starting point, the Festival gave me some examples of activity packs from other arts organisations to look at, which gave me some clues for the initial direction of the design, particularly the choice of typeface: a common feature of the packs was the use of simple, geometric sans serif typefaces. Having assembled a list of appropriate typefaces I then started to think about the DIY element and how this could be expressed in the design. I was thinking about rubber stamps, potato prints and other DIY printing techniques so I started to investigate display typefaces that carried this aesthetic. Using an initial selection of typefaces I developed a series of logos, eventually settling on a circular motif, hopefully reminiscent of a potato print. I presented a shortlist of iterations using different typefaces to the team at EAF and we finally settled on Metallophile Sp8, designed by Mark Simonson, not only for the logo but also for the typesetting of the text inside. 

The text and images for the activity instruction pages from each artists are quite different, requiring a different approach for each pack, but all packs have elements that are consistent, and are underpinned by the same grid, making a cohesive, connected series that also respects the artists’ very different practices.

www.edinburghartfestival.com

 

DIY Art Home Creativity Kit Housemates by Sofia Niazi

DIY Art Home Creativity Kit Waiting Painting by Alexa Hare

DIY Art Home Creativity Kit Wow Orange by Naomi Garriock

DIY Art Home Creativity Kit Hello by Peter Liversidge

DIY Art Home Creativity Kit Feeling Lost Feeling Found by Pester & Rossi

DIY Art Home Creativity Kit Drawing: Explore and Expand by Louise K Fraser

Drawing: Explore and Expand is Edinburgh Art Festival’s first home creativity kit made with, and for, people with visual impairment. The design of this pack follows the design of the previous activity packs but with some differences that make it accessible to visually impaired people; following guidelines and feedback from the artists involved, I adapted the design to suit these needs. One of the major changes was that the pack needed to be downloadable as a Word document so that users could have the option to increase the type size (or change it completely) to suit their needs – as Metallophile Sp8 (the typeface used on the other packs) is not freely available, I typeset the document in Century Gothic, which closely resembles the basic structure of Metallophile but is available on most computers. Century Gothic has a taller x-height than Metallophile as well as a clarity of letterforms and distinct differences between characters – the document is typeset at 16 points so, even without scaling, it should be comfortable for readers with visual impairment.

Holly Yeoman, Community Engagement Manager, Edinburgh Art Festival: I have been working with James since 2020 to develop Edinburgh Art Festival’s DIY Art home creativity kit series, which through their strong identity, visual appeal and easy-to-use format, designed by James, have supported us to introduce artist’s practice and process to audiences, helping us to maintain and grow our audience through the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic. I always look forward to working with James. 

Merlin James: River Book

Merlin James: River 

Published to accompany the exhibition Merlin James: River at Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, 2020

Interview by Louis Block, The Brooklyn Rail 

Photography by Jack McCombe 

Designed by James Brook 

Soft cover | 165 x 240 mm | 80 pages | Printed by Allander, Edinburgh on Galerie Art Matt  

Merlin James: River is a book I designed for the Glasgow-based artist, Merlin James. The book accompanied a solo exhibition of new paintings by the artist, at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. contemporary art gallery in New York, which ran from 21 November 2020 to 23 January 2021.  

I have worked with Merlin before: firstly, in 2013, on the book that Merlin wrote about the work of the Franco-Russian painter Serge Charchoune, published to coincide with an exhibition of Charchoune’s work that was shown at Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh and the Smart Art Museum Chicago; and, more recently on the monograph about the work of Merlin’s late partner, the painter Carol Rhodes, that was published by Skira, Milan in 2018.  

This is a wonderful body of work of paintings and drawings, mainly of the view from Merlin’s home and studio on Carlton Place, overlooking the River Clyde in Glasgow. It was a pleasure to work with these images that became very familiar to me as the book took shape. The book is printed on Galerie Art Matt 170 gsm with a cover of Galerie Art Matt 300 gsm, a coated matt paper with a tactile quality that has allowed the detail in the works to shine through. The book is typeset in a combination of Meta Serif Pro and Meta Pro with pared back typography and layout that prioritises the artist’s paintings and drawings. 

www.sikkemajenkinsco.com

Merlin James: James Brook is a terrific book designer and a pleasure to work with. I have been involved with three publications with him, of different kinds, one with a major international publisher. He’s rigorous but intuitive, flexible and versatile. He always listens closely to the client’s ideas and prioritises them. Nothing is too much trouble. He understands and communicates well with printers. I look forward to collaborating with him in future. 

A Drama in Time Learning Resource

A Drama in Time is a visual poetry resource by poet and performer Courtney Stoddart that I have designed with Holly Yeoman of the community engagement team at Edinburgh Art Festival. Courtney Stoddart has created a series of creative writing activities to help secondary school pupils explore the lesser discussed parts of renowned poet Robert Burns’ life and to use their understanding of Edinburgh and thoughts on their identity to imagine the future, by creating a visual poem. 

The activities have been inspired by Graham Fagen’s artwork A Drama in Time, and the quote the artwork takes its title from, by Edinburgh city planner Patrick Geddes (1854-1932) – “a city is more than a place in space, it is a drama in time”. The artwork and its title invite us to think of the people, sites and events which create the city’s sense of place: past, present, and future.

Available as a download, the PDF has been designed in a landscape format so that it can be printed and also be displayed by teachers on a smartboard as prompts with pupils writing/drawing on paper or jotters.  

 

The resource can be downloaded here.

More information about the resource here.

Holly Yeoman, Community Engagement Manager, Edinburgh Art Festival: I have been working with James since 2020 to develop Edinburgh Art Festival’s DIY Art home creativity kit series, which through their strong identity, visual appeal and easy-to-use format, designed by James, have supported us to introduce artist’s practice and process to audiences, helping us to maintain and grow our audience through the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic. I always look forward to working with James. 

Oor Mad History Book

Oor Mad History: Ten Years On 

Published by CAPS Independent Advocacy, 2021 

Designed by James Brook 

ISBN 978 1 399910 02 6

Soft cover | 235 x 165 mm | 128 pages | Printed by Gomer, Wales, on 150 gsm UPM Offset with a scuff-free laminate cover of 350 gsm Claro Silk  

Oor Mad History is a book I designed for CAPS, an independent advocacy organisation which provides collective advocacy to different groups of people with mental health issues across Lothian. The book celebrates the community history of mad activism and collective advocacy in Lothian, 2010-2020, and follows a book celebrating the organisation’s first ten years, published in 2010, which captured people’s memories and stories from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. This new book shares the memories and experiences of people who have been involved in recent years and looks at what has happened in local collective advocacy and activism from 2010. 

For the design of the book, I collaborated with members of the Oor Mad History collective advocacy group, who steered, through a series of consultation meetings, how the book would look and feel. The group took inspiration from books and book covers they liked, sending me images of covers which I used as a starting point to work up various options for the cover. The initial brief for the cover was to create a celebratory feel, so, based on an idea for the cover by one of the group – a painting that featured bunting – I created a design based on abstracted bunting with a palette of colours sampled from the painting.

The group felt that the bunting was a little too celebratory for the cover and didn’t reveal the complex issues faced by the group, which are not always positive. The group suggested that an idea of key words and phrases associated with the collective advocacy movement, presented as graffiti on a brick wall, might be more ‘provocative’ and might tie in better with the activist side of collective advocacy and the struggle to have their voices heard. I presented several versions of this idea along with an alternative typographic treatment that created a wall of words – this was the version that the group felt was strongest and we went with this idea for the cover, with the bunting appearing on the inside of the cover and on the title page (below) where the title was accompanied by a sub-title, A celebration of collective advocacy and mad activism in Lothian 2010-2020, to give a context for the bunting. 

The book is typeset in various weights and styles of Adelle Sans for the headings, subtitles, page numbers, and other information alongside Freight Text Pro for the body text. The main body of the book consists of interviews with people who have been involved in mental health advocacy over the last ten years but the layout also had to be flexible to accommodate different types of information. The colour palette that I developed for the cover is used throughout the book with a colour for each chapter as well as splashes of colours throughout and enlarged coloured ‘bulletpoints’ to create interest and to break up the text. Many of the images were of fairly low quality and couldn't be printed at a large scale, so I placed them on coloured backgrounds to create a scrapbook feel and to give the images a strong presence despite being relatively small. 

The book is printed on an uncoated paper – I had a lot of discussions with the group about paper choices and showed them examples of paper types before arriving at this choice, keeping in mind that an uncoated paper might be more sympathetic to some of the lower quality images. The previous book, charting the first ten years of the organisation was printed on a silk paper with a gloss cover so this new book offers quite a contrast whilst still maintaining a connection with it as it is designed at the same size. 

You can find out more about CAPS here.

 

Oor Mad History collective advocacy group: Our group worked well with James. He took on board our colours, designs and ideas for the book. We wanted the theme to be a celebration of the 30-year anniversary of CAPS Independent Advocacy and James came up with designs based on our thoughts and ideas. We were super-impressed with his portfolio and knew he would do us proud. He has taken the idea of a graffiti wall and run with it and has also included a wonderful bunting design on the inside covers. He has included lots of colourful photos as part of the book design. All in all, he has done a fabulous job of making our book look amazing.

Moyna Flannigan MATTER Book

Moyna Flannigan: MATTER

Artist’s book published to coincide with the exhibition MATTER at Ingleby Gallery, 

Edinburgh, 2021

Photography by John McKenzie (except page 19 by Peter Tijhuis)

Designed by James Brook

Soft cover with dust jacket | 210 x 155 mm | 48 pages | Printed by Gomer, Wales, 

on UPM Offset

This is MATTER, a publication that I designed for the artist Moyna Flannigan. MATTER formed part of the artist’s exhibition, MATTER, at Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, which ran from 2 October to 18 December 2021. Supported with a grant from Creative Scotland, the book is largely composed of a series of paintings on paper and canvas – some of which appeared in the exhibition – that have been arranged on the page in various combinations, sometimes as complete works and sometimes as fragments, to create a narrative that, through repetition and other visual techniques, makes links between different works.

As well as featuring Moyna’s paintings and collages, the book includes texts written especially for the publication by the artist, combining words and images to form a collage of interconnected ideas. The book is typeset in Azo Sans and is laid out on a subtle underlying grid that gives structure to the typography but doesn’t detract from the artist’s work. For the titles, I created an outline version of Azo Sans that reflected a preliminary sketch by the artist of how she wanted the book to look. 

The book has a wraparound dust jacket; the cover of the book and the inside cover are printed in Pantone 226UP, a luscious pink. Reversed out lettering on the front cover echoes the text on the dust jacket. MATTER is printed on UPM Offset, an economical white paper that takes ink well and that has a pleasing texture – we printed a subtle tint of yellow on every page that softens the whiteness of the paper and is more sympathetic to Moyna’s work (it also gives the feel of a  more expensive paper!). It was a pleasure to work on the book with Moyna and we are both delighted with how it has turned out: this is one of those projects – evolving from a series of discussions with the artist – that came together easily and feels just right.

www.moynaflannigan.com

Moyna Flannigan: Making a book, especially one about your own work, can be a stressful experience, but not if you’re working with James. He is in complete command of what he’s doing. He designed and produced my artist’s book MATTER on time and on budget using an excellent printer, and, at the same time, was thoughtful and respectful of my work and how I wanted to see it on the page.