Reflections on
Creative landscape
(Dublin, Ireland)
I primarily looked at studios based in Ireland discounting ‘Irish’ studios such as Daly & Lyon and Pony (London) and The Stone Twins (Amsterdam) that contribute significantly to the global design lexicon.
When approaching the exercise of identifying the design and design resource landscape in Ireland I was struck by how not only how small the graphic design landscape is in Ireland (disproportionate to the number of Irish designers and studios practicing elsewhere) but also how the landscape has been dominated by independent studios since the 90’s as a reaction to the established agency models that had existed since the 1960s and had dominated the Irish design landscape. This spirit is one that continues today and how it’s interesting how these players (David Smith Atelier)that were established in the 1990s have not only influenced the design input of the city but also contributed to the education of younger design practices (Post Design) through both the 3x3 natives and the 100 Archive.
POST STUDIO
ATELIER DAVID SMITH
WOVE
PLUSPRINT
COOPER HOUSE
LETTERPRESS WORKSHOP, NCAD
Design Studios
POST Studios
Post Studio partners with people to help identify and solve the right problems by providing pragmatic design services. We do this across physical and digital outputs for clients large and small.
https://www.poststudio.ie
– Thought:
As a mid-sized agency POST is not constrained by a singular design style or approach. Their output is varied and stretches across primarily cultural and start-up/ and service industry touch-points. The core collective of Post is an example of design practisers that have benefited from improved programmes of education (NCAD/ DIT/ IADT) and access to international work experience and collaborations with global design agencies (Bielke & Yang, Norway).
Atelier David Smith
Intelligent, ambitious, restrained, meticulous, well crafted, and memorable have all been used to describe Atelier's award-winning designs.
Atelier is the studio practice of designers David Smith (AGI), Oran Day, and their associates. An independent design practice that distinguishes itself from many commercial practices by working almost exclusively — as designers and consultants — with public and cultural sector organisations, and within design education, on a project-by-project basis. Since its inception, the practice has established an enviable reputation for the quality of its design work. The success of the studio’s work is the result of collaboration with diverse and ambitious clients and the valued input of national and international associates. Despite a diverse creative output the studio advocates a clear and simple approach for all projects; one which is grounded in analysis and objectivity. From such pragmatism emerges original and distinctive solutions.
https://www.atelier.ie/about
– Thought:
David Smith is a senior lecturer, IADT and has been responsible for producing a generation of designers through his innovative 3x3 programs with place 3 young designers in 3 studios for 3-month internships annually in Ireland and his involvement in the establishment of the 100archive. The working dynamic of David Smith and Oran Day and their continued programme of individual enquiry which strives to produce work that combines strong type treatment and efficacy of good material choices and print techniques has continued to inspire and produce design and designers of the highest calibre that work across both the Irish and global landscape.
Wove
We bring the design to the heart of organisations and their challenges. Helping them move forward and make positive impact.
While not strictly a graphic design agency, it’s interesting to note that WOVE grew out of a traditional graphic agency model, studio AAD and is a good example of how graphic designers can think beyond their own medium and use the skill sets they have learned to become key practitioners in the areas of service design and design thinking.
https://www.wove.co
– Thought:
Wove was born out of the desire of Scott Burnett to move away from the end result of Graphic Design and place design thinking and education at the forefront of how they interacted with clients through their design agency, Studio AAD. Part consultancy, part creative lab, part design studio Wove serve as an example of how a modern Irish agency can work with the commercial, cultural and educational landscape and create a creative and commercial value that speaks to modern Irish thinking.
Production Studios
Plusprint
Plus Print brings a level of expertise to your project that comes from over 30 years in the business.
We are collaborators, working with a diverse, creative bunch of people.
Working with a variety of clients from the arts to the private sector, we believe in innovation and adapting our methods to ever-changing industry demands. This means that we can offer you the best printing solutions currently available.
http://www.plusprint.ie
The Cooper House
The Copper House provides personalised fine art digital printing/artwork scanning and framing services to artists, illustrators, and photographers in Ireland and worldwide.
We are Ireland's longest established photographic and fine art printing studio, working with a variety of photographers, artists, curators, and galleries every single day, making the finest museum quality archival pigment prints and frames.
We are a Hahnemuhle Certified Studio and we supply a range of Hahnemuhle Fine Art Papers as well as our own range of in-house papers manufactured by the leading German mill.
https://www.thecopperhousegallery.com
Letterpress Workshop, NCAD
The Letterpress Print Workshop in the Department of Visual Communication is the only working letterpress facility in third-level education in Ireland. It had it origin as a small printing workshop at the College’s previous location, Kildare Street, but moved with the Department of Visual Communication to the Thomas Street campus in the early 1980s when the facility was greatly expanded under Bill Bolger, the then Head of Department.
It is used by students on a daily basis for creative projects and also as a teaching tool to introduce the fundamentals of typography. Ireland’s first practice-based Masters student in the visual arts, Joe Gervin, undertook his MA in the Print Workshop; samples of his work and that of many other students can be viewed in the Gallery section of this website.
http://www.ncad.ie/
Irish Design – How did we get here
Dutch Graphic Design Emigrants
Modern Irish Graphic Design or the birth of the professional designer emerged in the late 1950s and 1960’s borne out of an influence of a small number of Dutch Designers such as Guus Melai and Jan de Fouw who moved to Ireland in the 1950s. Along with their increased professionalism, these Dutch designers left a legacy of Modernism that in the long-term was far more influential within education and crafts movements (A number of them went on to have influential roles in Irish art and design education and were involved with both NCAD and what we now know as IADT/ Irish design reform Movement of the 1960s which led to the Kilkenny Workshop Reports.) The legacy that followed within the educational sector and the increased frustration that followed with the established agency models of the 1970s and ’80s fostered a spirit of independence in the ’90s that continues today and allowed emerging independent practices to become the standard of influence that can now be identified as Irish Graphic Design.
Ref:
Irish Times, 2015: https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/dutch-designer-in-ireland-in-the-1950s-1.2321063
Creative Ireland/ Conor Clarke: http://www.creativeireland.com/articles/clarke.html
Sorcha O’Brien, Kingston University London: https://www.herts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/187573/8_OBRIEN_MADE_IN_IRELAND_WVC8_2017_Final.pdf
Stephen Averill
There are a handful of designers who have a longstanding relationship or association with musicians or bands. Peter Saville and New Order or Raymond Pettibon and Sonic Youth usually come to mind but Stephen Averill’s work for U2 spans nearly 40 years and had a more global reach and prolific output considering the brand he was connected to. Arguably out of his creative output, Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby, etc it is his BOY Single cover, a single image of a young boy that creates a graphic and visual punch. It’s about youthfulness and a certain naivety and the playful hiding of the words U2 in the boy’s hair shows a willingness to explore abstract thought in a ‘conventional’ picture could be seen as a continuation of the emergence of Dutch Design influence in Ireland (austere, graphic, visually arresting and yet playful). The image ultimately captures a Dublin of the ’80s that saw its youth abandon its shores and those few that remained (Stephen Averill) continued to create a narrative across the cultural landscape that has left its mark on the arts, design, film, and music to this day.
Ref:
Irish Times, 2014: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/art-and-design/steve-averill-s-life-in-irish-rock-from-the-sleeve-to-the-stage-1.1955142
DEAF Music Festival
DEAF (DUBLIN ARTS MUSIC FESTIVAL) encompassed a full week of music, art installations, and multimedia performances that ran between 2001 and 2009. Arguably while the festival had a significant musical footprint globally, it was the graphic design work of Niall Sweeney and PONY that really brought the idea that good graphic design could be an integral part of the city landscape and that more importantly it could be executed by homegrown talent (albeit from a base in London), Arguably, the week-long covering of the city in Niall’s highly typographic and colour dense artworks during the early 200’s has had a direct influence and legacy on the creative output of current independent studios and education pathways.
Ref:
PONY: http://www.ponybox.co.uk/
CANDY Magazine
CANDY magazine was a design and illustration magazine set up in the late 2000s by Richard Seabrooke, Bren B, and Aidan Kelly. CANDY’s focus was to introduce Irish creatives to international talent, showcasing quarterly emerging design, illustrations, and photography practices while giving space on a global platform to the best of Irish talent creating an intersection of international and Irish creatives been exposed to each other work just as a global design scene was starting to take shape. It felt important at the time giving the context of the social and financial upheaval that Ireland was going through, transitioning from an island state towards the now. CANDY gave birth to the series of Sweettalks which exposed the creative scene in Ireland to international designers at a series of talks held in and around the city which eventually mopped into the internationally acclaimed OFFSET. Just as DEAF has laid the groundwork in the early 200’s CANDY took the baton and established a lasting collection of ongoing conversations that help shape what Irish design is within the greater context of graphic design and illustration on a global level.
Disclaimer:
A bit of a cheeky inclusion as I designed the last two issues of CANDY.
Critical Reflection
Whilst exploring Irish design raised a number of interesting points that I feel have provided me with an insight on how to develop my approach to my MA studies and output and my interest in pursuing an educational career in design practice.
How has the history of graphic design practice reflected Ireland’s changing society/ economy?
What is the relationship between design and Ireland’s changing culture?
What is the future of educational design practice in Ireland?
Padlet notes Wk 2
Feedback to Rosie Connell on her Practitioner design approach:
‘Have a look at https://colorlibrary.ch as a resource for image treatment. It can provide some unique results that are generally for print use but can be used digitally. Migrant magazines utilise this technique. ‘
‘I'd also consider the underlying grid and the relationship between each column and image to create a more hierarchal approach to the overall layout. The 'Green' as a colour choice, reminds me of Swiss and dutch approaches to colour use through simple duotone or monochromatic imager, highly effective in cutting through the noise.’
Ref:
https://www.neoneo.ch/graphicdesign/nof-nouvel-opera-fribourg-2/
Feedback to Rosie Connell on her question “Is butter a carb’:
’I see food very much as an experience pertaining to sensory design. A view supported by Marc Hassenzahl (Prof. User Experience and Ergonomics" at the Folkwang University in Essen, Germany), is to consider experience as a memorised story of use or consumption emerging from how a user makes sense of the world, a transformation onboarding the user in a story that will change the way he lives (acts or feels). Therefore the argument could be made that food clearly fits into the wider scope of an experience design sphere and its output and practice can therefore be classed as 'creative practitioners'.’
Feedback to James Shaw on Composer + Coding:
I'd argue that this is one of the future routes of design practices, the intersection of sonic-scaping, coding, visuals, and neuroscience to create a unified user experience across brand and cultural touchpoints. The likes of Brian Eno have been at the forefront of these investigations.
Ref:
https://digitalcommons.buffalostate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1035&context=history_theses
Design Practitioners
Listening to Mazier Raine and Susanna Edwards provides a real insight into the history of design practice and more importantly for myself some of the key milestones in which significant design practices were established that still carry through to the now, the idea of the corporate world of graphic design and the logo becoming an important tool in marketing (Pentagram). And yet against this backdrop, you had the works of Sister Corita and Jamie Reid which was the anthesis of what corporate design was trying to establish at the time. Somewhere in amongst all of this what has emerged is the idea of the modern designer, one that is both at ease with corporate work but who is happy to side-step this main area of practice and focus on self-initiated commissions. As Mazier put it, ‘they’re interested in the idea of ‘not changing the world, but their little bit of the world’. And perhaps this local and global approach ‘GLOCAL’ provides an answer or path for the future of design and design education– that we need to stretch back to the idea of craftsmanship and knowledge and put that at the heart of the community that we live and operate in weather than striving to create work for communities that we’ll never touch or see.