Designgrotto

Work / Graphic Design

Design Grotto

Words by Alex Bec, Friday 14 December 2007

This weekend sees the opening of the very first ‘Design Grotto’ at the beautiful Somerset House. Vicky and Jess have managed to get together with some of the best young designers in the land to bring you festive stalls, creative workshops and gifts for under £20.

Will and I will be setting up the Santa’s Grotto for the event asking everyone ‘If you could get anything for Christmas, what would it be?’.

Work / Graphic Design Graphic designer Timo Lenzen fuses hyperreal, architectural forms with vivid colours

German graphic designer Timo Lenzen merges crisp, stylised 3D forms with harsh, vibrant gradients to make posters with punch. Inspired by highly graphical works by Franco Grignani and architecture by Ricardo Bofill Levi, many of his designs have a sense of immense scale and space, while being bold with simple forms and colour.

Jenny Brewer — 28 September 2016
Work / Graphic Design Our Favourite Places is promoting the creative wealth of innovative Sheffield

Eleven is a design and visual communication studio based in Sheffield with its design inspiration and output firmly rooted in its home city. Priding itself on design that combines “high levels of craft, execution and clarity”, Eleven create accomplished products promoting the creative wealth of the Yorkshire city.

Lucy Bourton — 27 September 2016
Work / Graphic Design Shannon Jager, a graphic designer combining the technical and the thoughtful

Shannon Jager is a graphic designer whose work in layout design, art direction and UX and UI design creates a broad and accomplished portfolio. Not only do her previous clients include publications such as Quill & Quire, The Walrus Magazine and Elle, Shannon has her own publication which she completes whilst pursuing an MA and working at Pentagram Design under Eddie Opara.

Lucy Bourton — 26 September 2016
Work / Graphic Design Martin Müller designs covers for Specious Books that don’t, but could, exist

“The project was inspired by the dilemma graphic designers and illustrators are so often faced with in commissioned projects – all your efforts won’t heighten the quality of a poorly written book,” says Martin Müller of Berlin-based Dicey Studios. “And more importantly, why become an accomplice in spreading preposterous, even malignant works by helping to give them a more appealing visual form?” Martin’s response to this was to design a series of speculative and absurd book covers for the likes of Martin Heidegger, Beyonce and Canadian president Justin Trudeau.

Owen Pritchard — 22 September 2016
Work / Graphic Design Going Down Swinging, the publication visually representing literature

Going Down Swinging works across platforms to promote and produce a high quality publication that supports artists and writers. As a digital, print and audio anthology of creativity since 1979 they have become one of Australia’s “longest-running and most respected literary journals”, creating a platform for “writers and artists telling stories worth sharing”.

Lucy Bourton — 21 September 2016
Work / Graphic Design Väg: a new identity for Swedish band “owned” by design agency Snask

Stockholm-based design agency Snask has designed an identity for rock band Väg, a band that co-founder Fredrik Öst “bought” after a raucous rock and roll night out. The logotype is designed around the name of the band, which means ‘road’ in Swedish, written in bulging bubble type. “We wanted to get the feel of psychedelic 70s rock obviously. We looked at a lot of record sleeves from that period and genre as well as gig posters and found that nice roundy feel,” explains Fredrik. “We then had the logotype cut out in wood and painted in different colors. We really like sleeves when there’s an effect as you slide out the album. So we had the plastic protection cover screen printed.”

Owen Pritchard — 21 September 2016