Newsletter created as a memento to Accenture Ireland’s Corporate Communications Day. Organised and art directed by us, the day focused on the company’s identity with employees’ wishes, dreams and innermost secrets all revealed. The publication was awarded at the Art Directors Club New York, while the event won a Business to Arts Award for Best Use of Creativity by a Business in 2008.

Logo and poster design for Experimental or New, an exhibition space exploring new ideas and inventive use of materials situated at the Aram Gallery in London. New entries are simply added to the existing show, replacing current pieces and creating an on-going exhibition. We designed a poster/template of all exhibits and new arrivals overprint the piece they exchange.

Logo for an organisation, that promotes architectural events (talks, exhibitions, walks) in the city of Münster, Germany. The shape combines the three dimensional nature of architecture and the ‘show off’ aspects of marketing.

Illustration and design for Bell Helicopter’s CD, Blade. The illustrations play on the album’s title by using a series of helicopter blade diagrams. Bell Helicopter is the musical playfield of artist Conor Kelly.

Design of www.bettinavonzwehl.com for fine art photographer Bettina von Zwehl. Reflecting the predominantly ‘portrait nature’ of her work, we designed the site as an online art book, with centred imagery and a strong visual emphasis.

Worldwide events programme for the British Council. Anticipating the multiple journeys the programme was about to undertake, we designed it as a pocket-sized travel guide, with a borderless world map, and an extensive appendix including a calendar, international holidays, an international table of signs, and a metic/imperial conversion table.

Logo design for Business to Arts, a Dublin-based organisation facilitating creative partnerships between businesses and the arts. We wanted to create a mark that was both playful and serious, and could happily sit in either a corporate or artistic environment. We merged the initials ‘A’ and ‘B’ in a single ligature, a solution that was bold, simple and anticipated the ‘rough’ treatment the logo may endure in the hands of third parties. Our design was awarded at the Tokyo Type Directors Club.

Design of the Business to Arts Awards call for nominations, and launch of the redesigned Business to Arts identity. In order to familiarise people with the new ligature logo we laid out an A1 poster with every other possibility we could come up with. The only combination missing is the logo itself.

Each year, Ireland’s best collaborations between business and the Arts are celebrated in an Award ceremony. We designed the Winner’s Brochure for the 2008 and 2009 Allianz Business to Arts Awards.

(copy to come)

New Stream, a project operated by Business to Arts.

German architectural firm Bolles+Wilson approached us to develop a visual identity and design for their new webiste, featuring an interface which would ‘handle’ their comprehensive list of case studies and allow visitors to search by different parameters. We developed a playful yet funtional navigation, resembling the nature of Bolles+Wilson’s architectural approach. The result is an entertaining and informational website.

Design of the project report for Portrait of a Bank, a film by Coutts & Co, The Almeida Theatre and Arts & Business. Responding to the brief of creating a film with a corporate and organisational use as well as artistic integrity unto itself, it was directed by Boz Temple-Morris, and collaborators including artist and workshop facilitator Roddy Maude-Roxby, photographer Marcus Tate, film editor Paul Carlin and composer David Benke.

We designed the logo for a new, online hair & beauty store. Using the initials ‘C’ and ‘G’ we created a very handy ampersand ‘&’ for grouping things together.

Design of offline communications for Cupid & Grace, a new online hair and beauty store. Promotional material focuses on dos and dont’s of getting ready, staying in, enjoying yourself at a wedding or going on a successful holiday.

We have been designing the DAAD’s annual Funding brochures and posters since 2001. In 2007, we developed a new direction which played on the often frustrating nature of tracking down funding opportunities. Designed with Stefania Tomasello. Photography by Tom Merrell.

The DAAD asked us to design a promotional item which expressed its work as a sponsor of academic exchange between Germany and the UK. We designed a postcard set with overlapping aspects of British and German life.

Design of DAAD’s newsletter of events.

Germany has a rich tradition of fairy tales but what would a modern one look like? We designed the material for DAAD’s ‘Create A Modern German Fairytale’ competition. Entrants can respond by any medium they choose. Click here to visit the site and for information on how to enter.

Concept and design for DAAD’s student competition. Playing with the idea of graphic design as an organising and structured discipline, and Germany’s reputation for organisation and efficiency, we invited participants to respond to the title ‘Very German’. We used a list of technical specifications to create a colour swatch of 837 wrong and 3 right ‘German flag colours’.

Design of the promotional material for DAAD’s annual competition. Participants were asked to respond to an imaginary encounter between a famous German and British personality in a chosen location. The material was designed as a list of names one could mix and match with endlessly different results.

Logo design and visual identity for Fake Theatre Productions. The visual identity carried through the ‘fake’ theme, with ‘fake’ contact details on the business card, ‘fake’ links on the website and a logo with a ‘fake’ ™ sign.

Book series design for ‘Fluffy’ by Simone Lia, a comic about a stressed architect called Michael and a bunny rabbit called Fluffy. Fluffy thinks Michael is his dad. Michael has explained this isn’t the case. But Fully is in denial. We have been designing Simone’s stories since 2001, and all four volumes were recently collected in a single volume by Jonathan Cape.

Book design for German Art Now published by Merrell Publishers to coincide with the exhibition held at the Saint Louis Art Museum. The exhibition focused on the works of 14 contemporary artists, including Georg Baselitz, A.R. Penck, Gerhard Richter, Andreas Gursky, and Thomas Struth to illustrate the range of the German response to their country’s destruction, division and reconstruction after World War II.

Programme of events for all German Institutions in London during the German EU presidency from January to June 2007.

We were asked to submit a stamp design for Valentine’s Day by the German Post Office. The result uses a classic symbol in the language of stamps (perforation) and therefore gives it a new lifeline.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe famously kept numerous diaries and notebooks, so when the Goethe-Institut London approached us to design their events programme, we decided to do the same. Each volume uses a different person’s handwriting. Our design was awarded at the D&AD UK Awards.

The Goethe-Institut London asked us to redesign their programme of events as a response to the latest Royal Mail pricing changes. In keeping with the notebook idea of our previous design (see above), we printed each issue on a light and delicate lined paper, with fluorescent highlights for important dates and information, and a gold cut complete with gold staples for a classical finishing touch.

The Goethe-Institut central office asked us to come up with a suitable design to celebrate the eleven German-speaking winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature. We designed eleven tiny books, measuring just 74×105mm with extracts of each writer’s work, and packed them in a card slip case.

Design of the promotional material for the Heinemann font collection, a font tested and developed over an eight-year period, and designed to address the specific difficulties arising from dyslexia or learning difficulties.

Book design for Helfried Kodré, published by Arnoldsche Art Publishers. Responding to Kodré’s modernist and architectural forms, we developed a truly modernist design based on a Josef Müller-Brockmann grid.

To mark their tenth anniversary, the Helen Hamlyn Centre at the Royal College of Art asked Frank, their first-ever Research Associate in Communication Art & Design, to review a visual record of the past decade and make a selection of images that capture the spirit of their ongoing work in people-centred design.

Frank undertook a one-year research project on packaging at the Helen Hamlyn Centre at the Royal College of Art and sponsored by the Packaging Solution Advice Group (PSAG). The report looks closely at small print on packaging, and highlights its importance as a key design challenge facing an ageing population. The approach consisted of isolating existing small print from its context to highlight its deficiencies and testing alternative approaches with a user group of older consumers drawn from the University of the Third Age. You can view the full report or the outline of the findings which was published in Baseline No 34/2001.

Logo design for Holy Mountain, a production house that sees the dawning of a new approach to work.

Development of a visual identity and website for Holy Mountain, a production company bringing together well established practitioners from different backgrounds, in collaborative and exploratory projects. The website was built with a content management system.

Visual identities developed for Business to Arts, Boz Temple-Morris, Holy Mountain, Dominique Vézina, Kai Schuebel Architect, Lola GP and Thurm & Dinges.

Series design for the Italian Cultural Institute’s programme of events. To contrast the entirely typographic bulk of the programme, we used the introductory pages as a gallery of images by writer/photographer Dave Foster. Further Italian touches include a generously sized serif typeface for the copy, latin numerals for pagination, and an elegant pocket-sized format. Awarded at D&AD (UK) and the Art Directors Club New York.

Series redesign for the Italian Cultural Institute’s programme of events. We collected popular Italian sayings and printed them in letterpress with Ian Gabb. For each issue, the director pulled a saying out of a bowl to use for the programme’s wrap-around poster/cover (see below). To contrast the colourful outside, we designed the content as a purely typographic black programme, complete with matching staples. The posters were featured in an article on poster design in The Times.

Poster series featuring popular Italian sayings. The posters were designed and printed in letterpress in collaboration with Ian Gabb, and used as wrap-around covers for the Italian Cultural Institute’s programmes of events (see above). The posters were also featured in an article on poster design in The Times.

Website design of www.kbnk.de for Hamburg-based kbnk Architects. The driving idea was to give the viewer control over the way in which the site is viewed. Case studies can be sorted by type of building, chronology, height, size, cost, or even colour adding a more playful note to the navigation. All images stretch to fit the browser window using the available space efficiently, while a click on the logo takes this idea further by dropping all navigation entirely.

Concept, design and production management of a promotional brochure for the creative industry of the Stuttgart region. All aspects of the publication were sourced locally – from the inspiration for the colour spectrum to the paper supplier, Kurt Weidemann’s Corporate S + E typefaces, Thomas Herrmann’s photography and the printing – all celebrating the creative talent and industry in the area. Remaining faithful to the concept, all the design and layout work was done from our Stuttgart studio. Clients included IHK Region Stuttgart, Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart, MFG Baden-Württemberg, Stadt Ludwigsburg, and Medien Region Stuttgart.

Logo design for Languages Work, a project aiming to improve awareness of the true value of languages in the workplace and beyond. The project is operated by CILT, the National Centre for Languages and supported by the Department for Education.

CILT, the National Centre for Languages approached us to develop a brand and a UK-wide campaign for languages. After interviews, desk research and consultation with a steering group, our designs were tested in focus groups and a direction was chosen. Posters, postcards, a CD, a Teacher’s booklet and Factsheets were drafted, designed and printed. They were sent to schools across the UK in an Activity folder. The Languages Work brand has been going strong for seven years, with new material produced annually for English and Welsh schools.

The identity was tested in focus groups, interviews and desk research and a brand was agreed upon. A Style Guide was drafted to govern its use in all media.

Poster and postcard campaign funded by DAAD and the Goethe-Institut London, promoting German in British schools and universities. Set in bold, upper-case letters, the posters drawn on the wealth of German stereotypes, and acknowledge the contribution of the British tabloid press in their persistence. Unsurprisingly, the press took to the campaign pretty well, which enjoyed a whole four years of life, and was awarded at the 100 Best Posters 2001 awards and exhibition in Berlin.

As a goodbye to the four-year ‘Learn German’ campaign we were asked to design a final set of posters and postcards for the 2006 World Cup in Germany. We couldn’t resist playing with the wave of enthusiasm taking over the press, so we confidently announced England as favourites to become ‘Fussballweltmeister’ 2006. Gary Lineker received a complimentary copy, but unfortunately he didn’t get the chance to air it. The campaign was discussed on the BBC World Service (play audio file below), and featured in The Guardian, The Independent, Sky Sports, Spiegel Online, BBC London, The Times, Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR), Deutsche Welle TV, Sky News and Play Loud!.

A three-year project to develop a visual identity for the annual reports of mechanical engineering firm, Lenze. We travelled across five European countries with photographer Lars Svenkerud putting our ‘democratising’ photographic system into practice. All employees were photographed standing up and facing the camera, within their working environment. The portraits were all reproduced at the same size, and used as the visual introduction to the report.

Design for the “eleventh album from one of Germany’s finest guitar pop bands” – Loretta. ‘Grand Final’ is “wonderful Americana pop, perfectly emphasizing Andreas Sauer’s art of songwriting with French horn, Wurlitzer, brass and strings.” (Rolling Stone)

A collection of work by some of the best narrative artists including Benoît Jacques, Marjane Satrapi and David Shrigley. Using the comic ‘language’ of paneling, our design boxes all artwork and captions, while the problem of displaying two comic pages in a single book page is overcome by dipping the second to meet the end of the first. We designed the book in collaboration with Tom Gauld, whose giant robot features on the front cover, while Simone Lia’s morally-outraged sweet corn kernel dissmisses the entire publication as rubbish on the back. Reviewed in eye magazine.

Published by the Royal Institute of British Architects, this volume looks at remodelling as a distinct discipline that considers the challenges of interpreting existing buildings. Drawing on an international portfolio of case studies, it explains the theory behind the ways in which architects and designers remodel and adapt buildings.

Poster invitation for the MA Graphic Design Summer Show at the Royal College of Art in London. By adapting a Dadaist manifesto, the collective voice of the graduating year was expressed in a appropriately clear and ambiguous manner.

Catalogue design for the Communication Art & Design department at the Royal College of Art. Each contributor was given an A4 sheet of paper to use however they liked, with all text referring to the work set on the reverse. Produced unbound, this catalogue can be used as an index to find a particular piece of work, or deconstructed and treated as a collection of separate images.

Commission to design the Royal Mail Millennium stamp, replacing the regular 1st class stamp for the duration of one year. A slight adjustment of the perforation marks, sees Her Imperial Majesty depart from the left of the stamp, to re-emerge on the right.

Website for second hand record shop in Stuttgart. Designed with a complex content management system for up to 200,000 online records in mind and programmed and developed in collaboration with Emenes, Inarax und Longplay45.

Design of Eva Jiricna’s Staircases which looks at the evolution of staircase design throughout history, and focuses on key international examples. The book design reflects the function of this architectural feature by using the grid to create steps in the layout, taking the reader from one page to the next. A full page illustration is used as a divider for each of the six themed chapters.

The Department for Education approached us to develop a logo for The Languages Ladder, a voluntary recognition scheme designed to credit people for their language skills. The scheme traces people’s progress through different levels in Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing. We designed two alternative logos to illustrate the concept. The logo bleeds off the top or bottom of the page accordingly.

A single-level website thomas-herrmann.com for Stuttgart based photographer Thomas Herrmann with a strong visual emphasis. Navigation is subtle and playful yet efficient in order not to get in the way of the images.

Two posters for engineering company Thurm & Dinges 30th anniversary dinner. Designed as two separate invitations, the first poster informs the receiver of the date, while the second one announces the reason and the venue. The randomly overlaid numbers in the first poster are followed by an orderly build-up of years set at an axonometric angle.

Design and production management of publications for Tom Gauld, including the Hairy Monster Guide, Guardians of the Kingdom, and comics from his Three Very Small Comics series.

Book design and production management of artist’s monograph Tone Vigeland. The volume by Art Publishers Arnoldsche features an extensive body of work covering nearly fifty years. Our design brought together modern and classical elements with choice of typography and material. The resulting book was also shortlisted for the prestigious Stiftung Deutsche Buchkunst (Most Beautiful Book Award) in Germany.

Logo design for a range of services provided by Tugman Architects and Designers, using the initial letter T as the building block of each logo.

Posters designed at the Faculty of Design in Darmstadt to promote various lectures, screenings and workshops. Our letterpress poster for the screening of Gary Hustwit’s documentary ‘Helvetica’, was awarded at the Art Directors Club Germany.

Books resulting from the various projects and workshops ran by Frank at the Faculty of Design at Darmstadt. Dear Lulu, a publication testing print on demand companies, set with James Goggin from Practise won a cube Art Directors Club in New York.

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