James Brook / Design

Towards the Improbable City

The Improbable City

Published by Edinburgh Art Festival, 2015

Edited by Sorcha Carey and Emily Gray

ISBN 978 0 9929909 1 6

48 pages with soft cover with pockets front and back containing a set of 8 postcards

Book size 210 x 165 mm; postcard size 105 x 148 mm

Printed by Allander, Edinburgh, on Cocoon Preprint 100% recycled paper with Colorplan smoke grey cover; postcards printed on Cocoon Offset 350gsm

☞

The Improbable City is the second book that I designed for the Edinburgh Art Festival. The book accompanied a programme of commissions that ‘celebrate the work of visual artists who vividly conjure alternative imaginary worlds through their work, and considers how it is often the improbable which illuminates the real’. The programme included work by leading and emerging Scottish practitioners and includes new work by three international artists showing in the UK for the first time.

Above are a series of iterations exploring ideas for the cover of the book which layer various glyphs with settings of the word ‘Improbable’ against backgrounds of different textured papers. The final design for the cover of the book was printed on Colorplan Smoke Grey with a map of the old town of Edinburgh by Hanna Tuulikki. The printed version of the book includes a glyph of a pointing hand on the title page to create the feeling of a guide book or travel guide; I later learned that this symbol is known as a ‘manicule’ (from the Latin root manus for ‘hand’ and manicula for ‘little hand’) or fist.

The set of postcards was an attempt to include last-minute images of the installations that were being created specially for the Art Festival and that were still being made when the book had to go to print to meet the deadline of the opening of 29 July; as the postcards had a shorter production time we hoped to include images of the finished installations that were not ready in time for the book. The postcards slot in to pockets on the front and back cover.

There are eight postcards in the set with work by the seven artists featured in the exhibition – Charles Avery, Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, Julie Favreau, Emma Finn, Ariel Guzik, Kemang Wa Lehulere, and Hanna Tuulikki – as well as an eighth postcard by Neil Mulholland, which features a text written in response to Marvin Gaye Chetwynd's work. The reverse of the postcards featured another manicule and the legend ‘Postcard from the Improbable City’, further strengthening the idea of a book as a guide for visitors to ‘The Improbable City’.

Work in progress with Gareth Fisher

Work in progress with Gareth Fisher, artist and President of the Royal Scottish Academy for a catalogue for an exhibition at Summerhall Lab Gallery, Edinburgh, 8 March – 6 April 2025.

Manipulate Festival 2025 Final Bits

Some final bits of work that I designed for Manipulate Festival 2025, Edinburgh’s international festival of animated film, puppetry and visual theatre. Above is the slide that I designed that was projected as a background at the various discussion panels and film screenings that took place duiring the festival. Illustration by Yifei Xiang. Below is the advert that I designed which appeared in The Skinny magazine. It’s always exciting to see things that I have designed on my computer appearing in the non-digital world!

Friends of the Institut français d’Écosse Leaflet

This is a leaflet that I designed, along with other printed items, for the Friends of the Institut français d’Écosse. Based in Edinburgh, the charity was formed twenty-five years ago to support and promote the deep ties between Scotland and France. Drawn from across Scotland and run by a management committee which meets regularly, their aim is to raise funds on behalf of the French Institute.

As part of the design work that I have been undertaking, I have updated and digitised the Friends logo – which was originally designed by Dalrymple – to include the additional word d’Écosse. The original logo was typeset in Caslon Doric but I have re-typeset it in Founders Grotesk, a more freely available typeface. For the leaflet, I selected Minion Pro as a complementary typeface to be used alongside Founders Grotesk.

6 page DL roll folded leaflet | Finished size: 99mm x 210mm | Flat size: 297mm x 210mm | Printed By Halcyon Print on 150gsm offset

Manipulate Festival Lanyards

Here are some lanyards that I designed for Manipulate Festival 2025 which starts today, Wednesday 12 February. Go Team Manipulate!

Manipulate Festival 2025

Here are the posters that form 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. It is always exciting to spot the posters as they appear around Edinburgh in the run-up to the festival.

Manipulate Festival 2025 Assets

Here are some of the other assets that I designed for the Manipulate Festival 2025 including digital screen posters, vinyls, and press advertisements, showing how the original design was adapted for different formats, sizes and shapes and for different types of information.

Manipulate Festival 2025 Programme

This is the Manipulate Festival 2025 programme guide which uses a variation of the design of the poster (see previous posts) as a front cover, alongside a gradient background taken from the poster design with colours from Yifei Xiang’s illustration. In order to fit a lot of information in a small space, the typography sets up a hierarchy of information for the various events of the festival including use of symbols to indicate wheelchair access etc. The programme guide is 8 pages, double gatefold, folded to A5, it is printed on an uncoated paper.

Work in progress for Friends of the French Institute

I have been working on a leaflet and other printed items for the Friends of the Institut français d’Écosse. Based in Edinburgh, the charity was formed twenty-five years ago to support and promote the deep ties between Scotland and France. Drawn from across Scotland and run by a management committee which meets regularly, their aim is to raise funds on behalf of the French Institute.

www.amisifecosse.org.uk

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.