From the Archive: EAF Platform Covers, 2015-2021

Thse are covers that I designed for Platform, Edinburgh Art Festival’s annual showcase supporting artists in the early stages of their careers to make and present new work. I originally developed the Platform logo and identity in 2015 and there were four iterations of that design. Each iteration has a different arrangement of the cover elements alongside a new cover colour, sampled from the imagery within. In 2019, the Art Festival invited me to refresh the Platform identity to create a new look that draws on elements of the previous designs while offering a fresh new take with an image from one of the four artists on the cover.

Cover of Perspectives Magazine

This is the cover of the first issue of Perspectives, a magazine that I have designed, published by Haileybury School. The publication was developed from a desire to showcase the school’s heritage, current academic and cultural issues and new research about the school’s collections. It has been established in order to examine its role in a variety of cultural practices and issues, and to think critically about the way in which it interacts with other cultural institutions locally, nationally and globally. 

For the design of the magazine, I worked closely with Toby Parker, the Director of Learning and Research at Haileybury. Through a series of conversations and exchanges of visual material, I developed a design that makes some nods to Haileybury’s visual identity but which is distinct enough to stand alone. 

The design is based around a flexible layout that can accommodate different types of information, giving each section of the magazine its own distinct identity. The basic layout is a three column grid with type arranged on one or two columns giving a variety that helps differentiate each article. Titles, body text and images are often hung from a guideline that runs through the magazine giving a sense of order which is occasionally broken to create emphasis or visual energy. I have used type at different sizes, weights and combinations to create interesting titles and headers, arranged in sometimes playful ways with the text and images. 

My initial thoughts for the choice of typeface was to use a serif and sans-serif that have been designed to work together – I initially considered Meta Pro and Meta Serif Pro or Freight Sans Pro and Freight Text Pro. The school’s branding is based around the typefaces Calluna and Calluna Sans, so, although not a requirement to do so, it made sense to use these typefaces in the magazine. Calluna has some interesting characteristics that are revealed when the typeface is used at a larger scale, as on the masthead.

Images are prioritised in the magazine: some were specifically chosen to be placed within particular articles but I was also given another set of images to be placed throughout the magazine to act as punctuation and to create an alternative dialogue that runs alongside the main articles. It was wonderful to be given a free rein to arrange these images and I hope I have placed them in a way that creates another level of reading in the publication.

The plan is to publish the magazine quarterly with issues in Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. Each issue will be themed, with this one titled ‘Innovation’. The magazine is being launched on 14 May and we are already working on the next issue. The magazine is 210mm x 245mm and is printed on Edixion Offset by Gomer in Wales.

Poets on the Attack Poster

This is an A3 poster that I designed for Poets on the Attack, an event at the The Royal Scottish Academy, performed by Alan Riach and Corey Gibson that looks at the flyting* between two of Scotland’s greatest modern poets, Hugh MacDiarmid and Hamish Henderson. The poster features an image of a painting of the poets by Alexander Moffatt RSA and is typeset in the new, designated RSA typefaces, TT Ramillas and Usual Sans, alongside the new RSA logo, designed by brand consultants Eido Studio. The QR code leads to the events page on the RSA website. As well as a poster, I also designed an A5 flyer for the event. 

*Flyting or fliting is a contest consisting of the exchange of insults between two parties, often conducted in verse.

www.royalscottishacademy.org

Cover of Ewan McClure Inside and Out Catalogue

This is the cover of Ewan McClure: Inside and Out, a catalogue that I designed for The Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh. Ewan McClure is a painter who studied at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen; he practises observational still-life and landscape painting as well as portraiture; his work hangs in private and public collections including The Robert Fleming collection, Princeton Theological Seminary and The Royal Scottish Academy. 

The artist lives and works in Kirkcudbright, known as the ‘artists’ town’ – while I was working on this catalogue, I had a short holiday in the town, witnessing at first-hand some of the views that have inspired the artist. The image on the front cover is a detail of Kirkcudbright, Summer, a painting from 2021, which is very typical of the works in this exhibition.

As well as views of Kirkcudbright, the exhibition includes still-lives alongside paintings of the artist’s travels in Sweden. The final section of the catalogue, Veiled Light, really attracted my interest: these experimental departures for the artist are painted on various panel surfaces with patterns of defects, such as cork tiles and mosaics of jigsaw puzzle pieces. For the back cover (above), I selected one of these paintings Light and Moisture, a landscape painted on polyester mesh, as a foil to the more traditional painting on the front cover. The mesh-like fabric of the painting has a translucency which allows for a design in the space behind to show through the matrix of holes, creating an almost 3-D effect which, although difficult to reproduce in print, I hope is revealed in this close-up detail.

The book is typeset in Clarendon URW, Minion Pro and Freight Sans Pro. It is 190mm x 240mm and is printed on white silk paper with a matt finish by Pureprint.

Ewan McClure: Inside and Out is at The Scottish Gallery, 16 Dundas Street, Edinburgh EH3 6HZ, from 5 May to 28 May 2022.

scottish-gallery.co.uk