Raleigh Bicycles

Can you remember your first bike? I can, mine was a Raleigh. That Herron head badge featuring Nottingham England meant a great deal to me when I was a kid. When I studied my Masters in Brand Development at Bath Spa University in the UK, Raleigh was my chosen case study. The brand has a very long legacy and a big stake in cycling history. I began my research process by gathering as many books or articles on the company’s history as I could find. Diving into a bit of desktop research gave me a basic knowledge of the brand’s history which enabled me to engage local retailers in conversation. Once I was confident I had developed enough understanding I then approached Raleigh themselves and spoke to an experienced member of staff working at Raleigh. I reached a stage where certain questions couldn’t be answered over a phone or through informal chat so I carried out an independent research trip to Raleigh’s home city Nottingham and spent several days researching the Raleigh archives.

Studying Raleigh taught me how a brand with a great proposition, a robust business model and killer design can produce products that lasts in the public memory. Raleigh Bicycles was established in 1885 and continues to endure as a household name.

Anchor / Unbox Fellowship 2011

UnBox is one of those festivals that everyone should attend in their lives; at lease once. Hosted in a leafy part of New Delhi, the festival is a meeting ground for authors, journalists, artists, musicians, designers and thought makers. As part of my fellowship with Design Impact, I was asked to host a one week Unbox fellowship for the festival around the theme of children’s welfare. Taking part as fellows were four talented graduates from India’s prestigious National Institute of Design.

Working with some of the senior staff at NGO Manav Sadhna, I was able to plan and host a week long charrette in the Gandhi Ashram. The charrette was designed to deep dive into the lives of the children engaged with the Earn n Learn programme.

During the week we met with community stakeholders, spent a night with some of the Earn n Learn children, shared conversations with their family and friends before jumping into ideation, persona development, scenario development and further ideation. We presented this work live and impromptu in Hauz Khas village in Delhi and invited attendees of the festival to add their own thoughts and opinions on children’s welfare.

Socialchute

SocialChute is as a small local brand with big potential. Founded by two smart young entrepreneurs working in digital media, SocialChute provides a service for time poor SMEs who need to learn more about how they can grow their business online.

During my first conversation with the client, they stressed that they really liked the analogy of a parachute. They saw it as a metaphor for security and safety and felt it was an important symbol to hold on to. My preliminary research revealed that the parachute is in fact a common trope in logo design so I needed to work hard at finding something unique to say. I began thinking it through from a few different perspectives before developing a concept based on the idea of ‘look up; you’re covered’. The mark immediately took shape, revealing something distinct and elegant that could be extended across a variety of media.

Moving Education

When you were in school did you swing on your chair? Or perhaps you used to jig your foot up and down or maybe play with the pen in your hand? It would be quite normal if you did, it’s simply the body’s way of regulating your concentration levels.

I was seconded by the NCAD, Dublin to work on a European funded project based in Cologne, Germany. One of my main contributions to this project was helping to name, design and implement the moving education brand.

The name carries two messages: progressive education; more movement in the classroom please! When I was thinking about the typography for the word mark I was really trying to avoid using Christian Schwartz’ type face Stag but in the end I just gave in, it was the perfect face for the job…well almost. In order to convey the feel of movement, I began working with the italic but the feedback I was getting from fellow team members was that it wasn’t cursive or fluid enough. So I began chipping away at some of the terminals on the serifs until I was able to bring it somewhere we were all happy with; a small little touch that made a big difference.

moving education was subsequently developed into a global student competition which I helped set up and manage. The heavy lifting on all of the digital work was carried out by the extremely capable Michael Schmitz at Generative Gestaltung.

People Library

Portrait photographs are great material to work with. Combined with nice tight typography, portraits can help affect a powerful message that people instantly connect with, for better or for worse. People Library was a project headed up by Dr Nuala Flood and happened as part of Designing Dublin. Dr Flood was examining the disconnect between citizens and the civic authorities. People Library sought to champion certain members of a local community and featured local politicians, civic authorities, local police and street maintenance. To develop a voice for this suite of posters, I treated each of these portraits by introducing a noise or grain like quality into the image. I was looking to capture something that was very real and stripped down. To amplify this even further, I added a layer of typography that was deliberately physical and helped dissect the image, so the image could be carved in half by a participant’s statement. You can read more about how this project was developed in Designing Dublin : The Compendium.

Vanadium / Elements

One of my favorite writers when I was younger was Primo Levi, a survivor of Auschwitz and considered to be one of the great literary witnesses of the 20th century. Levi’s candor and sobering reportage has always been a huge inspiration for me and so when I was invited by Trinity Science Gallery to produce a poster for their show Elements I immediately turned to Levi’s story Vanadium, which can be found in his book of short stories: The Periodic Tables. In his story, Levi describes how, working as a chemist in the aftermath of the war, he came across a German resin manufacturer whom he had known during his time in Auschwitz. In the written story, what ensues is a tense correspondence between the two men, Levi expressing his anger; the German supplier assuming an arrogant and unrepentant position. In reality however, this is not how things played out. Through my research I discovered that Levi was not as candid as I had once assumed instead he was a master story teller, favouring narrative over actual facts. Ironically, when I was designing this poster I was exploring the notion of spiritual forgiveness, words emitted from the darkness, and I was also trying to find a way of relating sound to print, something I had previously explored with my work with Metronoids. Both the graphic and the dialogue that appears in the poster represent Levi’s actual voice, taken from a BBC interview in which he shares what really happened between himself and the German resin manufacturer.