Designed by James Brook for National Galleries Scotland, Edinburgh, 2023
This is an identity I designed for the exhibition Alberta Whittle: create dangerously at Modern One, National Galleries of Scotland, the largest showing of the artist’s work to date. The exhibition included digital collages, watercolours and new paintings and was an opportunity to see the artist’s tapestry, Entanglement is more than blood, and film installation, Lagareh – The Last Born, which the artist presented at the Venice Biennale in 2022, commissioned by Scotland+Venice.
The A0 poster was the starting point for the identity and is based on brand guidelines developed by DNCO, a branding agency based in London and New York. I was asked to develop three possible routes for the design using the new logo, brand colourways and bespoke typeface, Caslon Doric NGS. This was the first time that the branding had been put in to action and formed part of the National Galleries of Scotland major rebrand for 2023, which went live at the end of March, just before this exhibition opened.
Working closely with the NGS marketing team, the curators of the exhibition, and the artist and her gallery, I developed and refined three design approaches, eventually settling on one featuring the visually arresting still taken from the artist’s film, Lagareh – The Last Born as the lead image (this was my favourite image and the strongest of the set of images I was given to work with, so I was delighted everyone got on board with it).
Once the design of the poster had been finalised I adapted the design to fit the other elements of the brief: a totem (free-standing signage board), 800mm wide x 1510mm high; a private view invitation; and a roadside hoarding, 17,600mm wide x 1220mm high. The posters, hoarding and totems were produced by large format digital print and signage specialists Mackinnon Slater in Edinburgh, and I was very grateful to Colin Mackinnon for his help and advice during the production of the assets, especially the hoarding which is possibly the widest item I have ever designed!
