Archie Brennan: Tapestry Goes Pop! Poster

This is a poster that forms part of the identity that I designed for Dovecot Studio’s Archie Brennan: Tapestry Goes Pop! exhibition. Archie Brennan (1931-2019) was a pop artist, weaver, and bodybuilder – a former Mr Scotland – who changed the course of modern weaving and is considered one of the greatest unrecognised pop artists of the twentieth century. In the exhibition, the curators argue that a reason he was unrecognised is most likely because his medium of choice was tapestry. Dovecot’s exhibition, co-curated with National Museums Scotland, tells the story of this much-loved Edinburgh native in the first major exhibition of his work, bringing together over 80 tapestries as well as archive material. 

I had great fun designing this identity and it was wonderful to get a sneak preview of some of the works from the exhibition. For the lead image – which appears in a circle so it can easily be adapted for use in lots of different formats – I decided to go with a detail from Brennan’s 1973 tapestry, Muhammad Ali, one of many tapestries that he made featuring the famous boxer. The colours that form the identity are sampled directly from the photograph of the tapestry and, after presenting the curators with several colour options, we settled on this dark blue as the main colour, with a lighter blue used elsewhere for emphasis.

The exhibition title is set in Stencil, a typeface often associated with pop art – Tom Phillips, an artist who has collaborated with Dovecot Studios and whose work appears in the exhibition, uses a stencil typeface extensively in his work and Brennan has also used the typeface in his wonderfully witty and inventive 1978 tapestry, Burn. For the title, the colours are once again sampled from the photograph of the Muhammad Ali tapestry. 

The rest of the text is set in Clarendon, a typeface that sits well with Stencil and also captures the nostalgic mood that appears in some of Brennan’s tapestries such as My Victorian Aunt from 1967. I had originally planned to use a contrasting sans-serif typeface for the text, particularly for the body text that appears on the exhibition labels, interpretation panels, and the book that accompanies the exhibition but, in the end, after some experiments with other typefaces, I found Clarendon, particularly in its light version, to be surprisingly readable for extended bodies of text. 

The poster has been designed to be printed at A4, A3, A2 and A1; it sits alongside a cohesive suite of marketing and publicity materials that I have designed including graphic images for use on social media, roll-up banners, and outdoor banners. The team at Dovecot have also adapted my design for use on other items. I will post separately about the exhibition graphics that I have designed as well as about the forthcoming book that accompanies the exhibition which I am currently designing, edited by Kate Grenyer and Lisa Mason.

Archie Brennan: Tapestry Goes Pop! continues at Dovecot until 30 August 2021 – you can find out more about the exhibition here.