I have been busy designing printed items for Dovecot Gallery's excellent Magne Furuholmen exhibition,
Peeling a Glass Onion, which opened on 6 March. I have designed private view cards, posters, banners, print adverts, and leaflets, all sharing a common identity. The identity is loosely based on Dovecot's new branding guidelines, which include a new suite of logos, a typeface, and suggestions for its usage. I have previously worked with these guidelines for a full-page advertisement for Dovecot Tapestry Studios, in August 2014.
I'm a big fan of Magne's work and love his use of typography in paintings, something that, in my own fine art practice, has preoccupied me for many years. My initial idea was to create a logotype that echoed Magne's playful use of typography, grouping together the artist's name, exhibition title and dates, using multiple sizes of type to create a 'hand-drawn' feel. I worked through many iterations, eventually settling on a closely-set combination of Helvetica Neue set in various weights and sizes that, as a group, would become a recognisable 'brand' that echoes Magne's work without pastiching it.
In my previous work for Dovecot I have used Univers and, more recently, Akzidenz Grotesk. Helvetica Neue seemed to suit this project, echoing the letterforms in Magne's work; and, when set with tight leading, the letterforms sat well with each other - particularly the descender of the 'g' and ascender of the 'h'. This logotype was initially accepted by Dovecot but I was then asked to re-work it, using Callibri, Dovecot's preferred typeface. I actually like having some parameters to work with, and, although I was sceptical at first, I re-set the layout in Callibri and was pleasantly surprised at how well the elements of the logotype sat together. With a bit of tweaking we were good to go.
This folded leaflet was actually the last item I designed and had a very short deadline as it was printed just before the exhibition opened. The brief was to create a checklist of works in the exhibition (there are no labels on the walls) that includes titles, dates, materials, dimensions and price - as well as funding logos, charity information etc. The images are presented as thumbnails matched to the grid either by width or height and all given equal weight on the page regardless of size or format. Information about each work is presented as simply as possible in a hierarchy of information, using only one shift of weight and style to highlight the title and with non-aligning numerals to aid the reading experience. The leaflet was printed by Allander in Edinburgh on 160gsm Vision Superior.
