Robin Redbreast

Just dropping in to say check out this gorgeous pic of a robin I took earlier! I was walking by the river taking pics for a website I'll be designing next week - I needed textures to work into an intro page so I got shots of moss, bark, stone and carpets of old autumn leaves. I was at the same spot yesterday, munching on a flapjack from these lovely people, and this little critter started hopping around my feet, pecking up the crumbs I threw him/her. I was hoping to see the little fluffball again today and, lo and behold, s/he posed beautifully.

See You Next Tuesday

The organisers of the above event, organised in collaboration with Eve Ensler's V-Day, had a bit of a panic on when they were left without a graphic designer a week before their programme was due to go to press. Yours truly duly stepped into the breach and made them something rather nice.

It's a concertina programme/flyer that folds down to A7 (half a postcard). My brief was that it should be dramatic, colourful and generally "badass" - and that was pretty much it - I had a free rein.

I had to come up with a design that I could put together quickly and that would be coherent and vibrant. I was supplied with some awesome images including the above portrait taken by the very talented Emma Jane Richards, and, using a couple of strong typefaces, the colours orange, turquoise and gold, and a bitmap halftone pattern (those would be those dotty things in the background of the headline in the above), I got going. I used the panels of the concertina to differentiate between events while still making it feel like a big happy family of shows.

One side of the flyer was pretty much taken up with a group of shows organised by Funny Women so I wanted these to feel slightly different but still part of the whole. Hence, still the coloured panels, same typefaces etc but a slightly different header style...

And the most important event of all, the performance of the world-famous Vagina Monologues, would go on the back of the flyer when folded. That was the play that started the whole V-Day thing off - a day to promote the end of violence against women - and is, I guess, the proud parent of this whole festival.

The beneficiaries of the festival are the women of the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, specifically, the women of the City of Joy camp - a place for female victims of violence to recover, physically and psychologically, from their experiences; a place for them to become empowered with the ability to help others in that situation.

Naturally I am proud to have been associated with this heart-wrenching cause - if you can get to see some of the fantastic events at the New Player's Theatre please do.