Thursday 17 March 2011

Wednesday 16 March 2011

Sunday 13 March 2011

Correspondance

> From: catriona.allison@tayburn.co.uk
> To: wearemammoth@live.com
> Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2011 13:59:55 +0000
> Subject: The fate of the handmade in design...

Hi Andy,

Hope the dissertation is going well.
I had a few thoughts over the weekend, but not sure it as coherent as it could be,
but here it is anyhow:

The fate of the handmade in design.

Every day we try to push our work and our clients in every way; from the creative idea at the outset, through the development stage of these ideas, to collaborating with gifted specialists (from photographers to illustrators, craftspeople to artists, whatever the job in question requires). We always stress the importance of our role as a designer to be "hands on" and involved at every stage of a project right through to the final production, to get the best job possible. This level of physical involvement throughout project is the only way to make great work that benefits and satisfies the brief and everyone involved.

However, we find that the ever increasing expectations of our clients for perfect visuals at the earliest creative stages can often result in this crucial development stage of a creative project being cut short or missed completely. This can be due to a lack of time, budget, or the perceived necessity for this development, with the client often happy to proceed with using increasingly well executed visuals or high resolution stock imagery that has been shown at stage 1. (It is a tricky balance to show great visuals to secure buy-in of a concept, but no so good as to lead the client to believe that further development,cost, time, and craft is required.)

We always try to use real handwriting instead of a computer-generated "Handwriting font",use the original author of a photographic or illustrative style rather than a cheaper copy-cat alternative, and strive to find up-and-coming talent and support our local creative industries. But often it feels as if we are swimming against this tide of time, cost and devalued appreciation our craft.

Examples of work we love to do/have had the opportunity to do this;
Working with the Edinburgh printmakers on hand-screen printed brochures,
screenprinting posters for "Classic Jazz" and "Wine by Design", building a model by hand for the Yard (children's charity), working with illsutrator Perer Grundy for SSE Annual report 2009 etc.

Sunday 18 April 2010