Posts from 2012
Silk Pearce designer, Ian Coote, has discovered an old picture card of Benjamin Britten. After moving house Ian stumbled upon the unusual find in an old chest of drawers, left behind by the previous owner.
“It was a real coincidence because I had just completed the Friday Afternoons website which is in celebration of Britten’s centenary and encourages young people to enjoy music,” explains Ian.
The Friday Afternoons project is being run by Aldeburgh Music in partnership with the Britten-Pears Foundation.
The picture card was issued with Brooke Bond Tea and was no 46 in a series of 50. The Benjamin Britten illustration is by Angus McBridge and text by Virginia Shankland.
Benjamin Britten co-founded the world renowned Aldeburgh Festival in 1948.
Find out about Friday Afternoons
Silk Pearce has designed and launched a new website for Aldeburgh Music’s Friday Afternoons programme. The new project is to encourage schools to take part in a nationwide singing initiative in celebration of Benjamin Britten’s centenary.
www.fridayafternoonsmusic.co.uk has been designed to make it easy for schools and young people to join in and learn more about Britten’s life and music by singing his Friday afternoons song cycle.
“The challenge was to include lots of interactive features in the site and we are really pleased with the end result, ” says Rob Steer, senior designer at Silk Pearce.
The site was designed to allow teachers, no matter what their musical or technical background, or availability of IT equipment, to get involved. They can listen to recordings of each song, download teaching resource packs, backing tracks and lesson plans, upload audio or video clips of their own performances, or review other schools recordings.
Ann Barkway, project manager at Aldeburgh Music, says “Silk Pearce has designed a striking and integrated look for all of our Friday Afternoon communications. Many teachers have already told us it is exceptionally easy to use, needs no specialist skills and has everything to encourage young people to sing.”
“The whole website works alongside the other promotional material we’ve designed too,” adds Rob Steer.
Silk Pearce has designed a distinctive visual identity for Friday Afternoons, all the resource packs, literature, T-shirts and other promotional items. The branding uses a series of differently coloured circles – one for each song – giving a fresh visual approach with a contemporary feel.
View the full press release here.
Silk Pearce has designed the signage of the London Women’s Clinic’s fertility clinic in Cardiff. Recently relocated from Cyncoed Medical Centre, the clinic is now based in its own premises in Windsor Street, a prestigious city centre location.
The signage is based on the corporate identity of the London Women’s Clinic, using an egg to represent an ‘o’ in ‘London’ and a sperm to represent the apostrophe in ‘women’s’. It’s a clean and simple design that effectively illustrates the nature of the clinic’s work.
Silk Pearce’s new website design for Wysing Arts Centre has been developed to demonstrate the centre’s breadth of work. Wysing, based near Cambridge, is one of the leading research centres for the visual arts in Europe.
Ian Coote, designer at Silk Pearce, reviews the new site’s pages
The new site www.wysingartscentre.org appeals to new audiences and raises awareness of its renowned programme of artist residencies, retreats, exhibitions, educational events, and support for artists, arts professionals and the wider community.
The new dynamic and engaging design uses horizontal scrolling pages with arrows at the edges to tempt users with more content and encourage them to interact with the site. This unconventional approach allows Wysing to showcase larger images and video of artists’ work and other activities, while also adding a timeline and multi-layered dimension to several key pages. The new site has been built with an easy-to-use, highly flexible content management system enabling Wysing staff to quickly add new images, text and pages.
Wysing’s new website allows large images and videos of artists’ work to be showcased
“We have so many different programmes running throughout the year at Wysing – from intensive retreats and residencies, to large-scale gallery exhibitions, right through to new outdoor commissions across our site. And that’s before we even talk about all the work we do off-site and within our many external partnerships.
“It was difficult to see how a website could rationalise all this activity and transform it into something readable and understandable. But Silk Pearce has more than delivered and given us a new easy to use website that really does bring all our activities together in an engaging format,” said Donna Lynas, director, Wysing Arts Centre.
Ian Coote, designer at Silk Pearce added, “The nature of Wysing’s website redesign was complex due to the wide range of information and features that had to be incorporated. But at Silk Pearce, we are experienced in handling website projects and were able to design an appealing and engaging website that fulfilled the client’s brief.”
Visitors to the new site can also listen to recent talks and events, sign up for e-bulletins or join the mailing list, review the Centre’s Facebook, Twitter and Flickr feeds, make a donation to support its work or visit the online shop.
View the full press release here
Favini’s launch of its eco-friendly paper range, Crush, has captured the imagination of the press, both in the UK and in Italy, where the creative paper is manufactured.
“We have been particularly surprised by the level of media excitement in Italy”, says Chris Brown, Favini’s marketing and export sales director. “We expected Crush to be covered by influential Italian newspaper, Corriere Dell Sera, and Wired Italia, but we are delighted that it has captured the imagination of a much wider audience.”
Photo credit: Bruce Head Photographer
Jack Pearce, Joint Creative Head at Silk Pearce says, “The novel production technique of using residues of coffee, olives and other fruit has helped to capture the media’s attention, but what’s really put Crush in the spotlight is the creation of an eco-friendly paper that is both beautiful and appeals to the high-end market.”
With phenomenal demand for the paper, Silk Pearce is now producing a selection of videos illustrating the process of production. This includes a short video showing the unusual way the organic materials were crushed during the making of the promotional brochure.
Silk Pearce has worked alongside Favini, the specialist Italian paper manufacturer, to develop and launch a unique new range of creative papers. The innovative and enviro-friendly paper range was introduced at Luxe Pack Monaco, where it was awarded the 2012 Luxe Pack in Green award.
“Silk Pearce has been instrumental in helping Favini develop our Crush papers and we are delighted the range has been so strongly endorsed with the Luxe Pack award,” said Chris Brown, marketing and export sales director at Favini.
The Crush range is aimed at corporate literature, perfumery packaging and other high-value applications and incorporates co-products from food manufacturing processes such as citrus fruits, corn, olives, coffee, kiwi fruits, hazelnuts and almonds. Elements of each different material are visible on the surface of the papers giving a distinctive texture and appearance.
Photo credit: Bruce Head Photographer
Silk Pearce advised Favini on paper colours and surface finishes, as well as naming the range and designing the graphics, swatch and other promotional materials.
Photo credit: Bruce Head Photographer
The Crush brochure features beautiful photographs of fruits and nuts being crushed and includes a detailed graphic, illustrated by Peter Grundy, explaining Favini’s patented manufacturing process and its links with process co-products.
Illustration credit: Peter Grundy
The Crush range has created a great deal of media attention and has appeared in Packaging Europe, Print Week, The Drum and the East Anglian Daily Times.
View the full press release here
