Aberdeen City Council

Aberdeen City Council: Working with artists and illustrators to produce an wide and varied series of projects largely aimed at Arts Education.

We started our working relationship by producing a series of leaflets released seasonally that advertised the Arts Education Team and what they do. We quickly moved onto a series of 24 exhibition panels - each approximately one metre x one and a half metres showing the varied areas that the team are involved in. These are robust panels that are used at the team's headquarters as well as on traveling exhibitions.

We have also produced a body of work to promote a Music CD called 'Opus Incipient'. We designed the artwork for the CD as well as the production of two very long (5m) exhibition panels for the launch event.

We are also involved in two major events annually - the storytelling festival and the annual launch of a book of short stories as part of the Word Festival.

Storytelling Festival
open|box|design was asked to produce two storytelling festival brochures. The first one was in collaboration with the Award-winning and Internationally recognised Sara Fanelli who produced the excellent artwork for the brochure and the bookmark. The second one was designed in collaboration with an undergraduate Design and Craft Student called Jessica Ricketts who produced the illustrations used on the front cover and throughout the brochure. The festivals are aimed at school children and the events are held in various parts of Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire in the first quarter of the year.

Word-Firsts
open|box|design has now been involved in the production of four excellent books for the word festival. Each book is based on a particular theme (2009's being 'The Writing On the Wall') and contains a series of short stories written by secondary pupils from Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire. These stories are excellent works in themselves and have now been sold at Waterstone's for the second year running. Each year a new illustrator is appointed - the book jacket art on these pages is attributed to Clare Curtis ('The Last Thing I Expected'), April Pressley ('Home'), Gabrielle Reith ('Oor Wey O Spikin') and Jill Calder ('The Writing on the Wall') - all fantastic illustrators with their own personal styles and direction. The constant is open|box|design's involvement which maintains the sense of continuity throughout the series.