Stereographic does plus07
In its second year, the Plus+ International Design Festival is going from strength to strength and is helping to put Birmingham on the map as a creative city. We were thrilled to be part of this and we were keen to contribute something special.
Our first foray into exhibition design per se, we wanted to create something that visitors could be involved in. Walking around viewing work is great but we need to be encouraging people to take part and feel involved in art and design as well. Connecting them to what they are seeing gives people an enriched experience that they take away with them. This in the long term helps promote the art and design world beyond its usual reach.
The Idea
Based on the festival theme "Moving Type" we came up with the idea to provide a blank canvas that, using bright cutout vinyl letters, all visitors could add to and help create an evolving work of design. People could do whatever they wanted - write messages, create pictures, patterns or rewrite and move what people before them had done.
The key was that visitors actually contributed to and created part of the festival, and had fun in the process. We setup an interval timer camera in the corner of our stand to document the evolution of the design over the 5 days.
The Outcome
The results were a huge success. Visitors were a little tentative at first but once some words were up people felt confident about taking part and had a great time doing so. There were times when the stand was completely packed out, with people using chairs to write things at the top of the walls, or kneeling on the floor to write secret messages next to the floor. The stand became so busy that people actually started to write things on walls we hadn't intended them to.
The contributions were great. They varied from the obligatory profanities to inspired illustrations and some great thoughts, words and patterns - but most people just wrote their name. It seems the principle of graffiti tagging is inherent in us all. Given a blank canvas we want to put our mark on it, but we want people to know we did it! Once a few people started, it became contagious.
The most interesting thing that we witnessed was that everyone took pictures of what they did. They wanted to make a record of what they'd contributed, and in many cases they wanted a photo of themselves next to their name.
This confirmed the lasting success of the stand. People were pleased to have been part of something that they would probably be showing to their friends and family.
Thanks
Thanks to everyone who came and contributed.
Thanks to Steve (Cross Signs) for sorting the vinyl.
Thanks to Caroline, Alex & everyone at Type Events for organising things.
Thanks to the letter cutters - Lak & Kavita, Chris, Tim & Ian (Second Home Studios), Andy (fatsuma) and George's mum.
Additional shouts go out to - Paul Antonio, Conway & Young, Ben (Type Tours), Stef, Pete Ashton, Paul Ward, Bobby & Co., all the other nice people exhibiting and visiting (you know who you are), and of course Remi & the mad ginger bloke for the excellent coffee and pastries!
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