With projects spanning curating, strategy, brief-writing and commissioning we’re not exactly a conventional design agency or creative consultancy. We think we’re best explained by the work we do – so here’s a few examples from 2009 and 2010.
Distillery and heritage experiences, William Grant & Sons: ongoing consultancy
We’ve been working with the family owned William Grant & Sons since mid-2010 on a number of strategy and masterplanning pieces. They were the first working distillery to open to visitors way back in 1969 and now they’re thinking about what the future might bring – new ways of bringing visitors into contact with their rich stories about making and craftsmanship. These are multi-disciplinary design challenges, and we’ve worked with interactive designers All of Us and architects Urban Salon at different points.
The Design Museum: Collections future development/exhibition strategy
The Design Museum is at a pivotal point – with a move to a new building on the horizon in 2014 they’re gathering their energies and formulating plans for growth. We’ve been involved with the Design Museum over time in different ways, from reviewing their web and digital strategy to curating and commissioning exhibits. Our deepest involvement has been with their Collection; through 2009 we produced an in-depth study looking at possible future directions. We worked with them to develop their vision of the future museum and then devised and tested the feasibility of multiple creative strategies (including consideration of museum positioning, visitor interests, display and interpretation strategies and more practical things like acquisition budgets and storage & conservation).
The Incidental: strategy and commissioning for the British Council
After a strategy piece which reviewed how the British Council could best serve their community at the Milan Furniture Fair, we steered them away from a static exhibition towards a ‘new media experiment’, which we commissioned and delivered twice – once for Milan 2009 and, building on that success, repeated for London Design Festival.
The Incidental was a daily printed news sheet, map and website which offered fair visitors, exhibitors and special guests an information channel and platform via Twitter, Flickr, paper, pens and bicycle couriers. A whole host of the most interesting people possible contributed to the development and execution including Matt Jones, Schulze & Webb, Abake, Jerome Rigaud and Damian Barr. Hundreds of tweets, lots of comments and a happy by-product – the social hub that was the editorial office – made the hard work of designing and editing a daily newsheet completely worth it.