Our latest Commission - Trophy design and realisation for the Liverpool Music Awards

Last Saturday we were given VIP tickets to the Liverpool Music Awards as a thank you by director Ellie Phillips for designing and creating 16 bespoke trophies for the award winners on a 7 week turnaround from idea to finished product. 

Ellie Phillips approached Ilsa in late September to work alongside her to create an original trophy which would act as an iconic symbol and be given to award winners, to celebrate the wealth of musical talent we have in this great city. The idea for the inaugural event stems from Ellie's lifelong love of music and a clear gap in the market for a city-based celebration of the cultural impact of the industry. 

It is an event which belongs here and everyone we have spoken to is amazed that it never existed before now.

The event has been in the planning for over a year, the 9 judges were highly respected local and national icons of the industry. From presenters such as BBC radio 2's Janice Long to local cultural press such as Liverpool Echo's Jade Wright. Between them, they selected a shortlist of three acts per category for 16 awards. An online public vote decided the winners, and categories covered everything from best band to best studio.

The awards night was held in the grade two listed, grand central dome in the heart of Liverpool city centre. Janice Long hosted the night and had various local celebrities and supporters of the event presenting the awards, including The Coral’s James Skelly and Mel C from the Spice Girls.



In between the awards there were local artists playing a variety of different music, often in collaborations written especially for the event, the result was an original blend of different styles and genres. For us, this was the best part of the evening. It was a great way to see so many different acts that you may not normally get to see, and certainly in a way you won’t have seen them before. It really made us proud to realise the wealth of musical skill and cultural exploration that takes place around the world by bands and artists who originated from, and were clearly inspired by, the city in which we live. 

The evening had a strong focus on providing a platform for, and encouraging new talent. Esco Williams, Jamie Broad and Sue Hedges are perfect examples of the rising stars in our midst. All three acts played different styles of music, incorporating rap, R&B and piano and vocals, but they managed to blend these styles and their own songs to create a whole new track that was expertly backed with a funky instrumental by Esco’s band the ‘The Kontrollers’.


The whole evening left us with a real sense of pride to see very passionate but less well known businesses and musicians getting some highly deserved recognition. The joy that was demonstrated for receiving such, really overwhelmed us. Ali Ingle for example, who won "Best Male Artist" had his family sat nearby, when eventually, his name was read out, the whole area erupted in cheers, cries and whistles. When he returned to his seat cradling his award, we felt a real sense of achievement. Seeing these amazingly talented people so happy to have received something you had helped create was a feeling difficult to describe and knowing they will cherish and display it for years to come is an honour.  

The whole evening went off smoothly and was executed to a high standard, which is an amazing feat for Ellie (daughter of BBC Radio Merseyside presenter Roger Phillips) who at 25 years of age is a recent graduate of John Moores University. She plans to grow the event nationally, seeing each city hold its own version, broadening the celebrations  and providing further platform for recognition. It is clear to see why we were so pleased to be involved. The story of the trophies actual creation is far less flashy but equally as ambitious. Following an initial briefing discussion we set about realising the symbols that would bring the event to life. Ellie is an energetic and passionate young entrepreneur with a love for her trade and a real value for the power of good design. Her vision was to create something completely unique and distinctive which would eventually become an icon. So there was no pressure!?

Ellie was, within a week of briefing, provided with a broad range of designs that played on her original idea to incorporate a sheet of manuscript paper. In consultation, we selected the design that we felt was most practical to produce and most visually iconic. We then set about design development, we took a further week to generate a host of variations in texture, surface detail, colour and form to provide Ellie with a full range of options for creating the "feel" of the statement. She decided on simple and classic, opting for a gold finish and a hardwood base. 

We were particularly keen to perfect the ribbon unwinding from the manuscript scroll into a structural element to give the impression of "a reveal". We worked with local craftsmen Including Tom Sutton (furniture designer and silversmith) to manipulate the form of the sheet metal and engineers to rivet the joins we perfected a "moving cantilever effect" which gave the impression of dancing. The turning of the bases and beeswax finishing was done in house by myself, Andy and Vera at the studio, After working the sheet to create "musical cut outs" using laser technologies, anodising in gold and engraving the plaques, Vera and I proceeded to create our own bespoke simplistic Jigs in the studio to create consistency and quality in assembly for the finished award.

The final outcome was better than we hoped and has appeared in local and national press being held by each winner from X factor contestants such as Rebecca Ferguson who won "best female artist" to local bands such as the Hummingbirds. Our favorite shot however has to be the one of Ellie Phillips, clutching an extra item created just for her as she was being filmed by ITV. Both Ellie and I are proud of what the awards represent, we both live and work in Liverpool and we like to consider that the trophy formation is a symbol for revealing the often hidden talent within a city which holds strong ties to those that absorb it in their work.



We cant wait until next year to do it all again - perhaps with a new twist?

For more images of the night click here

Creative sightseeing in Liverpool! 2012 Biennial Review

Chosen as the 2008 European Capital of Culture, Liverpool has a long-standing history in creative pursuits and has always celebrated the inspired, the weird and the wonderful, and never more so than this year (and every other year) with the 2012 “Liverpool Biennial”.  The biennial is the largest international contemporary arts festival in the UK attracting over 600,000 visitors. It is generously spread over 10 weeks (not that this guarantees you’ll see everything!) and can be seen in many venues across the city until 25 November 2012. Having worked with the biennial in 2010 and also 2012 consulting on unique merchandise design, we went along to see what all the fuss was about.

The pieces that most caught my eye were in the “Bloomberg New Contemporaries” gallery in the Copperas Hill building near Lime Street Station (an incidentally just around the corner from our studio!). A former Royal Mail sorting office houses the artworks within. “City States”, one of the two exhibitions revealed inside, is committed to exploring the role that “the city” plays in the concept of identities. Cities represented include Oslo, Lisbon, Gdansk, Wellington and Vilnius. Vilnius’ provided the most striking display; an enormous black inflated pillow crammed floor to celling in the car park. It looms above you with malice and extorted feelings of total unrest, it really makes you want to dive forward into its billowing form, such a shame that the creators didn’t think to create sealed “walk in sections” creating a womb like, blacked out maze of cushioned walls.

The art school showcase “New Contemporaries” had an impressive piece by the Argentinian Jorge Macchi. Once in the room you find yourself as if below water, not with any elaborate structures but with deceptively simple exploitation of the optical effect of perceived bending of objects when placed in water. Macchi recreated the effect of refraction by arranging larger than life, precisely bent poles against a two-tone background where visitors can amble in and out of the poles. 

When inside the room there is a real feeling of being watched, its as if half of the structures are leaning away from you as an “unwelcome guest” and the other half are having a good lean over to see what you are up to…

A brilliant and expandable idea comes in the form of this wall print of a well known, dramatic Memphis shelving unit. With the current trend for vinyl wall decoration this could well be the rebirth of interior print!  As a creator I am really pleased that the artist decided to include the wooden construction that they used to produce the print in the exhibition to give the viewers some insight into the process, simply put together using just MDF and syrofoam (and probably several “pressers” to make the print” it was a very cool example of how to make an impact with very little.

 

As a product designer and a lateral thinker, always trying to push the question ‘why?’ and ‘why not?’ I was intrigued to find a Victorian chair reconditioned in lime greens and upholstered with a spiked fabric seat.  The chair sits housed in its own little surreal room covered in blue and white paper ‘tiles’ of geometric faces and mountain and triangles, all looking very similar at a glance. This stand-alone structure was also tiled to the exterior, very simply with just paper prints and “sticky back plastic” a bit of a DIY job but it had a really dramatic and engaging effect, this contrast on each side solidified the experience as a whole. 

Exhibited outside St Georges Hall away from the main galleries and in the heart of the city, Jose Angle Vincench created a series of mobile home trailers, whose transparent doors reminded me of how little privacy a person in exile has, even in the in the tiny space of their own that they may have.   The haphazard way the piece is parked seems to imitates the trundling, seemingly aimlessness of day to day pushing along, putting space between the home land and self.

This is just a snapshot of the inspiring, weird and wonderful talent Liverpool Biennial has for us to see this year. There are many more exhibits and projects which can be seen here: http://liverpoolbiennial.co.uk/whatson/calendar/            

This post is intended to inspire you to book that train, plane or donkey ride and come to Liverpool this month. This year’s selection will inspire, surprise and hoof you right out of your comfort zone at times. And if its not occasionally doing that, then art wouldn’t really be doing its job now would it? 

6 new bespoke projects this month to keep us busy

Its been a while and thought we should update on some of our latest projects and work at the studio. We have all been very much focussed on our recent acquisition of new trade products for the REthinkthings LTD brand and their subsequent launch at Pulse London earlier this year, we have also been very focussed on expanding the retail product offering to incorporate the creative brands of some of the UKs most up and coming design talent www.rethinkthings.co.uk, then of course there was the launch of the carbon fibre pre production version of the flo standing and walking aid at Naidex in May. Even still, we have managed to find time to begin work on six exciting newbespoke design projects - look out for these as they are given the green light by clients to be publicised in the coming months :) - there is a real mix of activities demanded here but its the variety that keeps us keen!

NEW PROJECTS - imagery to follow with client permissions
Creation of a new commercial drinking vessel for an international trade client
Developing a mobile exhibition / pin board for a local SME
Developing a working prototype for a new musical teaching aid for a local start up
Designs for a new walking device (crutch) working alongside an established independent living device manufacturer
CAD models for a fashion shoot prop for one of the UKs most respected conceptual stylists
Bespoke cake stand fabrication for a local cake company

Salone Satellite 2012 - review

The Salone del Mobile in Milan has been running since 1961 and has become a Mecca for anybody interested in design, it is the largest furniture design show in the world and this year had 292,370 trade operators in attendance. As a subsidiary of this there is Salone Satellite, this is where young designers from all over the world get to show their work to industry professionals in the aim to get their designs spotted and taken into production. There were 750 designers exhibiting in this area of the show with the majority of these coming from outside of Italy. This year I was in attendance to see how it differed from UK trade shows and to discover what they considered to be the worlds “best young design talent”. The conceptual quality of the products on show was impressive, despite most items being prototypes, the mix encompassed a wide variety of exhibits which demonstrated a range of advanced processes and new materials mostly in the realm of furniture and homeware. One stand that interested me was Marcantonio Raimondi, Malerba. They use a lot of repurposed and organic materials, keeping a lot of the character of the materials and incorporating it in the product, such as tree branches, very imaginative but it got me thinking about the extent to which they had truly considered commercial application and practicality of use. There were cupboards made from cargo crates and a wardrobe with a wooden replica of a human’s organs inside. Each item, if not realistic or designed for function did have a unique and engaging quality, this certainly made them stand out from the crowd, which I guess is what its all about when launching your own design career. 

Other items which caught my eye included Si Studio’s ‘clipped’ . This originally grabbed my attention as a simple product which everyone would relate to in form but set within a new context to provide a new meaning. The product is in essence a clothes peg, but one side has been extended with a pronged end to accommodate food.

It’s a simple idea, but adds character in a practical way to dining, with it being used as a cocktail stick or to attach bread to a bowl of soup. Having since looked at their website though, the Chile based company have some great products such as their ‘Hello neighbour’ lamp which is cut straight down the middle and ‘Origami Hunter’ series, which are lamps made out of paper and formed in the style of origami to represent various animals heads on the wall a far more humane way to decorate ones walls!The Japanese Umeno design had a wide variety of products on display including coat stands, bins and stools. Their simple and elegant shapes along with the use of bold colours caught my attention. They also have a sense of fun in their designs, with their bin swaying from side to side when in use and the shape of their table leg curving to accommodate a magazine All in all there was certainly a great deal to see at Satellite, and this was just one hall of over 20 to get around! Its good to know that pushing the boundaries of material capability and questioning the veryday is still at the forefront of most new designers minds. Having questioned many of them however on their pricing and commercial processing intentions it was disappointing to realise that many hadn’t considered how their items would make business sense which rather belittles the vision to challenge the existing when making the new virtually impossible to realise.The Milano Satellite flies in the face of what is expected at the many UK design led trade shows even those with sections for younger designers where the focus from trade visitors is always on having the product ready to sell rather than purchasing IP whilst prime for development, perhaps this is due to the decline in UK manufacturing that less people are keen to become involved in R+D here, or perhaps it signifies British values and lack of regard for the creative industries? A selection of other awe inspiring bits from Saloni Satellite below:     

x

New work for new clients and new product launches for REthinkthings LTD

Over the last year I have been working on 5 new and exciting design briefs for clients alongside 4 brand new products for the REthinkthings Collection and have done a range of tradeshows with the 5ml design collective including spring fair, Pulse, Liverpool, Tent and Home.

Much of the work for clients has been confidential in the idea generation stages hence why I have had to stay hush hush on the publicity front, however each project is unique, exciting and allows me to stretch my skillset.

We (myself, my interns and my freelance staff) have worked on cutlery designs for Jme, street furniture for broxap, mobile street food kiosk for can cook, analogue hearing aid for a private client and some merchandise exploration for Liverpool Biennial. Below is a taster of what some of these projects have involved...

To see images of the new products for rethinkthings LTD click here http://www.rethinkthings.co.uk/blog.html
To see what shows 5ml have been to in the last year click here http://www.5-ml.com/tradeshows.html