Manipulate Festival 2025 Posters

Above is a poster that forms part of an identity that I designed for Manipulate Festival 2025, Edinburgh’s international festival of animated film, puppetry and visual theatre, bringing the very best of international and Scottish work to audiences across Edinburgh and beyond. This is the third time that I have worked with Manipulate Arts, the organiser of the festival. 

At the initial briefing for the design, I was told that the festival – like many arts organisations in the current climate – was working on a very tight budget and that there was limited money to spend on marketing material. I suggested various ways that the organisation could save money, including working within the template and layout that I designed for the previous year’s posters rather than developing a whole new design.

Unlike in previous years, when the design featured different images from festival performances across a series of posters, this iteration used a single key image. The festival commissioned an illustrator, Yifei Xiang, to produce an illustration to encapsulate the ideas and themes behind the festival. I collaborated with the illustrator from an early stage to make sure that the format of the illustration fitted the template that I had set up.

Working with a palette of colours taken from Yifei’s illustration I developed a design for the poster that used a coloured gradient background that connected to the gradients that appear in the illustrator’s work. I faded the illustration in to the background colour with the Manipulate Festival logo layered over the top as in the previous year’s poster. 

The layout and design of the poster was then adapted for other marketing material that I designed, including: a printed programme guide; press advertisements; posters of different sizes and shapes; and digital assets. I am pleased to say that this rational approach to designing the marketing material, working with the illustrator at the commissioning stage, and using the basic template from the previous year, meant that the design of the marketing material came within budget, yet still produced a distinct suite of materials to showcase the festival.

Design Process for Manipulate Festival 2025 Posters

I was delighted to be asked again to design posters and marketing material for Manipulate 2025, Edinburgh’s international festival of animated film, puppetry and visual theatre. This is the third year that I have designed for the festival, working with the new marketing manager Graham Webster and the team at Manipulate Arts. At the initial briefing, I was told that the festival, like many arts organisations in the current climate, is working on a very tight budget and that there was limited money to spend on marketing material. I suggested some ways that the organisation could save money, including working within the template and layout that I designed for the previous year’s posters rather than developing a whole new design.

Above is the graphic information (in black only) that appeared on the layout of the posters for the 2024 edition of the festival. For the final printed posters (below), the Manipulate Festival logo along with squiggles taken from the Manipulate Arts identity were given a glowing neon treatment by Jamie Macdonald and presented on top of three different images of performances from the festival to create a series of posters that appeared all over Edinburgh.

The team at Manipulate decided that the 2025 iteration of the festival poster would include less information on it than the previous one – the list of performers was removed, for example – and there would only be one version rather than the multiple versions of previous years. Below is a mock-up of the poster with the reduced information in place showing how it gives much more space for a key image. 

As with the previous iteration of the poster I proposed that the image (as represented below by the white square) should fade in to a background colour behind the Manipulate logo to create a layered dynamism in the layout.

 

This year the festival decided not to use images from the festival but instead commissioned an illustrator, Yifei Xiang, to produce an illustration to encapsulate the ideas and themes behind the festival. The image below shows one of Yifei’s previous images in situ on the poster layout.

I suggested that it would save time and money if the commissioned illustration fitted the format of the layout of the poster rather than re-designing the poster to fit the illustration. At a design meeting with the illustrator and the Manipulate team, I presented the rough poster layouts that I had designed and proposed a square format for the illustration. Below is one of Yifei’s rough black and white sketches of their proposed square illustration in place on the poster.

Yifei often uses gradients in their work so I thought it would be interesting to use a gradient as the background for the poster using colours taken from Yifei’s illustration. I generated a couple of rough designs that I showed to the team, showing how a gradient could be used to tie in the illustration with the layout and design of the poster.

As Yifei refined their illustration further, they sent me a palette of colours that I used to generate different colour variations of gradients. Below is a coloured rough of Yifei’s illustration with a gradient in the background of the poster using colours taken from the illustration palette.

The beautiful final illustration (below) includes much more detail and colour than the initial rough sketches and looks very striking on the poster layout. As I refined the poster with the final illustration in place, I made the Manipulate Festival logo and the other information a little smaller to give more emphasis to the image as well as refining the sizing of the various texts and logos in relation to each other. 

 

After experimenting with various colour combinations from Yifei’s palette for the gradient background and for the title, dates and other information, the Manipulate team and I agreed that the dark blue on the light green background was the strongest combination, creating a pleasing balance with the illustration and offering the most contrast for easy reading from a distance (one of the key functions of a poster).

The layout and design of the poster was then adapted for other marketing material that I designed, including: a printed programme guide; various press advertisements; posters of different sizes and shapes; and digital assets. I am pleased to say that this rational approach to designing the marketing material, working with the illustrator at the commissioning stage, and using the basic template from the previous year, meant that the design of the marketing material came within budget, yet still produced a distinct suite of materials to showcase the festival. 

www.manipulatearts.co.uk

Yifei’s Instagram: @yifeixiang99

Work in progress for Surface Echoes

Surface Echoes is a three year project working with patient communities to find meaningful, thought-provoking ways to make the thousands of voices of those affected by eczema heard. Producing a digital archive of these powerful and moving quotes in different creative forms will raise awareness, promote discussion, reduce stigma and increase understanding of this condition, not only amongst academics to direct their research, but also for healthcare workers to guide their treatment approach, carers and the general public. 

Surface Echoes is an interdisciplinary collaboration involving a range of different creative practitioners.  The creative aspect of the collaboration has shifted and expanded over the course of the project, bringing together a rich variety of talents and expertise at different stages. 

I have been involved with making the collage of the Surface Echoes script available digitally as a PDF, manipulating the scanned version in Photoshop to make it easier to read and understand while still maintaining the scratchy, disruptive aesthetic of the original. I have worked closely with Bev Hood and Catherine Street, reading through the script to analyse how the degraded collaged form slows down the reader to create a more thoughtful reading experience and how that engagement can be improved with subtle typographic interventions.

Below is a detail of the original scan of the college created by Bev Hood and Catherine Street that collects together quotes from people living with eczema; above is a detail of my edit of the scan which will be available as a printable PDF script.

Click here to find out more about the Surface Echoes project on the Ascus website. 

Work in progress for Manipulate Festival 2025

Work in progress with Manipulate Arts for the Manipulate Festival, coming soon in February 2025! www.manipulatearts.co.uk

In Our Lifetime: an anti-imperialist resource

In Our Lifetime: an anti-imperialist resource 

Edited by Hussein Mitha 

Designed by James Brook 

With contributions from Lola Olufemi, Mira Mattar, Hannah Proctor, Houria Bouteldja, Farah Saleh, Amirah M Silmi, Maya Uppal, Ghassan Abu-Sittah, Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri, and Sulaïman Majali

  

Soft cover | 210 x 148 mm | 64 pages | Printed by Gomer, Wales 

This is a publication that I designed for Arika, a political arts organisation that supports connections between artistic production and social change. In Our Lifetime: an anti-imperialist resource was produced for Episode 11: To End the World As We Know It, five days of film, music, discussion and study at Tramway, Glasgow, 13-17 November 2024. The resource includes poetry, essays, questions, prompts, letters and works of anti-colonial imaginary and was edited by the artist and educator Hussein Mitha who I worked very closely with, along with Siobhan Carroll, the producer at Arika. 

The design of the book was informed by the immediacy of the powerful content – I used typefaces that were present in the original manuscripts and employed a light touch to preserve the (sometimes idiosyncratic) formatting and layout of the contributors’ Word documents while creating a subtle sense of order and cohesiveness to the layout of the book. The editor had suggested using a design element, motif or imagery to lighten the text but, once the texts were in place, the ‘internal logic’ of the typographic system alongside controlled areas of white space generated a design where such interventions seemed unnecessary (though I did present an option that used a grey version of the angled black rectangle from the cover as a device to mark the opening of each section which wasn’t used). 

The angled black rectangle on the cover is the same dimensions as the text block which is rotated by 1 degree to create a feeling of de-stabilisation that seemed fitting to the radical content of the book – the title appears as a block of text at the top of the rectangle suggesting connotations of protest posters or banners. This mood is further emphasised on the back cover which utilises the same black rectangle, aligned to the text block with of the inside pages, with the rallying cry of ‘intifada, revolution!’ layered over it like graffiti on a wall. I initially thought that this slogan would also appear on the front cover but the editor preferred the slogan on the back cover only – on reflection, the starkness of the black rectangle with text at the top only is a far more powerful image: a tombstone for imperialism.

The publication had a very tight production schedule but we were able to turn it around very quickly and even managed to get it to the printers ahead of schedule! The printers of the book, the excellent Gomer in Wales, also pulled out all the stops to ensure that the book arrived in time for the event.

 

Pat Fisher: Paintings 2018–2024

Pat Fisher: Paintings 2018–2024

Photography by Keith Hunter

Designed by James Brook

Self cover booklet | 240 x 130 mm | 12 pages | Printed offset by Gomer Print, Wales, on 150 gsm Arctic Matt

Pat Fisher is a curator and artist and a former Director at Edinburgh’s Talbot Rice Gallery, 2004-2016. This is a modest publication that I designed with Pat which records three exhibitions of her paintings in 2024: at Stallanbrand, Glasgow; the Window, Perth; and at Milchstrasse 4, Munich. I went to see Pat’s exhibition at Stallanbrand and fell in love with these quietly considered paintings so I was delighted to work with her on this project.

The artist had a very clear idea of how her works should be presented and came to me with a small exhibition catalogue of Cy Twombly’s work, published by Gagosian Gallery, to use as a model. The size and general layout is based on that catalogue though with a different typographic approach using Gill Sans Nova, a typeface designed by Monotype Studio designer George Ryan, derived from the original work of the influential British artist Eric Gill (1882-1940). I really like this update to Gill Sans, particularly the elegant non-aligning figures which I used for the catalogue captions but not for the cover titling where standard figures worked better with the arrangement of type. 

The typography on the front and back cover is printed in a blue that was sampled from one of the paintings. Like the inside pages, the cover is dominated by white space but, with the coloured typography, I was aiming to create a subtle difference to the inside pages, where the typography is printed in black. I experimented with various colours, including a green similar to the one used on the Cy Twombly catalogue, but, in the end, Pat and I decided that this blue was the strongest colour enabling the text to be comfortably read while also making a connection to the colour palette of the work inside.

The paintings are all centred on the page, two to a page, with captions underneath, also centred. The captions are set over three lines with the title of the painting in bold. As with the cover, there is a lot of white space, giving the paintings room to breathe. For consistency, I removed the backgrounds from the images and added a uniform drop shadow so that the paintings feel like they are all inhabiting the same (virtual) space. The artist and I adjusted the size of the images on the page so that the paintings were proportionally sized in relation to each each other.

It was interesting to hear the artist’s thoughts about paper: we looked at several samples until we found one that felt right – in Pat’s words, one that felt like a ‘fine’ paper. The publication was printed by Gomer in Wales on Arctic Matt, a coated paper with a soft, white matt surface with a natural feel and a slight warmth. Initially, I had suggested a bulkier paper, around 170 gsm, but the artist wanted a lighter paper (and possibly one even lighter than the 150 gsm we eventually selected). In the end, I am happy that we chose the weight that we did as I think that with a lighter paper, we may have had see-through and I think that would have been detrimental to the images on the page of Pat’s beautiful paintings.

Pat Fisher: James Brook is a sensitive and innovative designer. He listens to the client carefully, aiming to enhance the initial vision with his knowledge and skill. The planning process is detailed and generous, James gives his time and ideas readily and quickly follows up with drafts. He is genuinely and creatively engaged in the projects and process and this is reflected in the finished product where is sharp eye and attention to detail is evident, even in the modest publication he designed for me recently. I fully recommend him with no hesitation.

Collective Satellites Exhibition Identity

I was asked to design an exhibition identity for Satellites, Collective’s development programme for emerging creative practitioners based in Scotland. The exhibition, pass shadow, whisper shade, brings together new work by the six participants in the 2024 programme: Clarinda Tse, Emelia Kerr Beale, Hannan Jones, Josie KO, Katherine Fay Allan and Rowan Markson. There was no lead image for the exhibition so the design brief specified a typographic approach using Collective’s font Circular Standard and a palette of colours that formed part of the branding created by Graphical House in 2014. Collective agreed that I could use a complimentary typeface alongside Circular Standard and I worked on a series of drafts experimenting with different typefaces. 

Initially there was no title for the exhibition, just the strapline Collective Satellites Programme 2024 with Satellites as the key word. I’ve always been interested in the tensions generated when a design aesthetic that is rooted in corporate identity is combined with contemporary visual art practice that is inherently anti-corporate – early iterations pursued this idea but on this occasion, I realised this approach was not appropriate. David Upton proposed the title pass shadow, whisper shade for the exhibition and the beautiful poetic feel of those words suggested to me a very different approach to the identity. I found that Freight Text Pro worked well alongside Circular Standard so I used it to typeset the title of the exhibition using the delicate light italic variation to amplify the literary/bookish feel to the words (The title in part comes from an Irish proverb, ‘Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine’, meaning ‘people live in each other’s shadows’). I typeset the list of participating artists in the light version of the typeface and placed them – and the exhibition strapline – in an informal arrangement that gave a sense of movement in the design.

I experimented with various colours and treatments for the background using gradients of colours taken from the Collective branding. The background was looking rather flat and lifeless, so I started thinking about photographs that I had taken on my phone of shadows and light, which I thought might help create texture in it. I’m always a little cautious about using my own imagery in projects such as this, as it could be mistaken for a representation of work in the exhibition. However, once I combined the almost abstract image of shadows of foliage on a wall with the colours and gradients already in place in the background, something magical happened and the design came to life – though I was still apprehensive about using my own imagery. Fortunately, Collective agreed that this was the best treatment and the design fell in to place with the Collective logo, sponsor logos and secondary information typeset in Circular Standard arranged at the edges of the layout.

Although initially designed as an A3 format poster, the design was adapted to suit other formats such as a horizontal advert, email banners, and square imagery for social media. As always, once a kit of parts has been established and finalised it is relatively simple – and also rather satisfying – to adapt them to different uses. 

 

www.collective-edinburgh.art

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust Postcards

Here are two postcards that I designed for the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust. The postcards are A6, 148 x 105mm, and were printed on a 350gsm recycled uncoated stock by Mixam. A modest job but good to work again with the Trust’s director, Rob Airey. Click here to see the book of poetry that I designed for the Trust in 2023.

 

National Galleries of Scotland – The Art Works

Here are some items that I designed for National Galleries of Scotland’s The Art Works, a project to deliver a sustainable new facility to care for, research and share Scotland’s renowned art collection. Working with Holly Yeoman, the Community Development Coordinator for The Art Works, I have designed wall panels for two murals in North Edinburgh, a map to guide visitors, and a leaflet that was produced for a series of community engagement events. Find out more about The Art Works by clicking here.