I’m delighted to announce I’ve been commissioned by City of York Council to create a site-specific piece of public artwork for their new offices on Toft Green.

As a designer working so often with paper and the transiency of the internet it’s a great honour to develop a piece of work that could outlive me (gulp).

I’m in good company as well, 5 other artists will be developing work for this fantastic space; Jo Fairfax, 
John Newling, 
Susannne Davies, 
Rachel Welford and
 Bright White.

I look forward to updating the blog with more detail very soon – ML

One & Other also wrote a good article about the commission click here for that

As an alternative to setting traditionally unachievable resolutions for the New Year, I can strongly recommend the following approach:

1) Make a list of your ‘intentional’ top achievements from 2011, they can be big, small, business or personal. Reflect on them, realise how jolly clever you are.

2) Make a list of your ‘unintentional’ top achievements; great things that happened but you did not plan for. Reflect on them, realise that no matter how much you plan, shit just happens.

3) Look at both lists and ask what lead to these achievements, what random connections, friends of friends, dumb luck and good old hard work brought them into being.

4) When planning for the year ahead, think what environments, happenings, links and chance meetings you can set up to create more ‘intentional’ achievements.

In short, take time to smell the roses and don’t forget to sow new seeds.

We’ve just developed a new identity for UK alt-rockers Modern Day Chicane. We’re also working on CD and Digital packaging for their new EP release.

Event signage by LazenbyBrown | Image courtesy of Paul Richardson

We had a incredibly inspiring day at TEDx York, the variety of speakers and delegates and overall quality of the event was flawless, we were inspired to write an entry and then we read Heather Niven’s (Creative York Manager for Science City York) blog and thought – Yeah! that’s what we thought! So here’s Heather’s account of a fantastic day:

Yesterday’s TEDxYork conference at the Ron Cooke Hub orchestrated by Pilot Theatre and supported by Creative York, left me feeling exhilarated about future possibilities for the creative and arts industries in this new age of interactive, augmented and ubiquitous technology.  Tools are maturing and are becoming easier to use, more sophisticated and the era is moving beyond ‘technology for technology’s sake’ into one of a hugely expanded and accessible rich creative  palette, which can be used in multi-locations with many people,  shared instantaneously.  TEDxYork was an illustration of how important the Arts are to innovation and development,  as much as Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM).  We spent the day putting the Arts into STEM (Hence a new STEAM age).

To me this is mindblowing!

Within 7 hours yesterday we communicated and shared ideas with Adelade-Au, Christchurch-NZ and Canada.  We experienced 360 degree gaming, made hydrogen racecars, and reused old phone chargers to make mood lamps with the Jam Jar collective.

BabaIsrael showed us multi-location dance using projections and gauze, to create live interactions between dancers in Manchester and NY, which looked hauntingly beautiful and created an electrifying atmosphere.

We recognised the power of stories, through Alan Lane’s inspirational talk and understood how this might affect future game plots and interactions with Maria Arinbjarnar from  WeEnrich introducing her emergent software story engine  technology.  We even shared our own stories with Alexander Kelly in his inspirations exchange, which were told at the end to conclude the day.

Bill Thompson was a real highlight for me, with his talk ‘The Internet ate my brain’ looking at how the brain has evolved, that capacity for learning spoken language is hardwired into the brain but that reading is a relatively new phenomena and needs to be taught/learned.  His argument is that if the areas of the brain weren’t used for reading they would be utilised for something else and that by using many forms of digital technology (often at the same time) neural paths and specialisations may change, but that this isn’t necessarily an unnatural response to change and isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  We adapt and change to suit our environment – our brains innovate.

These are a few highlights of the day, with other amazing talks by Daniel Bye (about his imaginary friend he put on ebay!) Kristin Alford, and Yatterbox to name a few.  The recordings will be available on the TED.com website soon, and also through Pilot Theatre (watch this space)  A full Programme and more info on all the speakers can be found here

Here’s a link to Heather’s blog

Over the past few years we’ve been putting together a strong presentation to offer alternatives to the practice of unpaid speculative pitching.

We believe now is the time for local design agencies and client businesses to agree on an alternative working model that does justice to themselves, their clients and the originality and quality of their ideas. You can join the DBA focus group event we’re holding on the 12th July (details below) and get involved in the debate.

These statements lie at the core of our new presentation,
we’d really like to hear your thoughts on them;

1) It doesn’t do justice to the project or the client
Designers are asked to produce visuals from a brief without any deep understanding of their clients business. By default, the designers thoughts are based on limited understanding, cautious assumptions, courageous intuition, relative experience. Faced with a selection of superficial visuals, the client will choose the best one of the bunch and progress with a project.

2) It attracts the wrong type of design agency
You have to question an agency that has time to work for free. If they are a busy agency they will be juggling free pitch work with that of fee paying client’s work – not a conducive environment for creating fantastic design work. It also exploits younger agencies who are keen to build their portfolio but might not have the experience to really fulfil a project in the long term.

3) It’s not ethical
The professional bodies who promote high service standards in the design industry including the DBA (Design Business Association), BDI (British Design Innovation), CSD (Chartered Society of Designers) and The Design Councilall strongly discourage the practice of free pitching.

4) Design is a professional service
Just as you would expect to pay a Solicitor, Business Consultant or Architect for their experience, ideas and a days work, the same goes for a design.

5) It gets us off on the wrong foot
A healthy relationship with your design agency is one based on respect and understanding from the start. We’re in this for the long haul and not looking to make ‘quick wins’ from clients. We aim to exceed service expectations and by working with a view on a long-term working relationship, craft a range of marketing material that our clients (and we) can be deeply proud of.

We’re working with the DBA (Design Business Association) and Owen from United By Design to develop a design agency focus group event to discuss pitching and other issues facing the design industry. Details are as follows:

Date: 12th July

Time: 12noon – 3pm

Format: Lunch and networking on arrival, speaker, open discussion and tour of design facilities at York St John University

Guest Speaker: Tom Foulkes, Global Head of Marketing at BuroHappold

Venue: The Phoenix Centre at York St John University
(venue 27 on the attached campus map)

Book: To book a place on this free event please email studio@lazenbybrown.com

We were commissioned by The Rowntree Society to create an installation to mark the 100th anniversary of Joseph Rowntree becoming a Freeman of York within the ‘white cube’ projection space at the Ron Cooke Hub, the centre of the new Heslington East campus of the University of York.

The piece consisted of over 30 7680 x 1200 pixel panoramic phases created as reinterpretations of some incredible archive footage from many sources including, The Rowntree Society, Nestlé, The Ryedale Folk Museum and the Imagine York archive.

Many of the audience had deep connections to Joseph Rowntree himself and had seen some of the archive photography before, but due to the treatment of the piece and the environment in which they they viewed it, many people commented that they felt they were seeing these pictures for the first time.

We’re immensley proud of the piece and look forward to how the material can be used in the future to honour the legacy of this remarkable man.

For a 360° panorama of the introduction of this piece in the space please click here

Image Credits:
Société des Produits Nestlé S.A
© City of York Libraries, Archives and Local History Department
Ryedale Folk Museum
City of York Council, Mansion House and Guildhall
The Rowntree Society
York 360°

For a while now we have been considering membership of dba – and now we’ve joined. For now check out the site until I write up a post on what it means for LazenbyBrown – and more importantly what it means for our clients; all good!

http://www.dba.org.uk/

Proud day! Our good friend and erstwhile collaborator Keith Hopewell (AKA Part2ism) is in York for the opening of this 1995-2011 retrospective exhibition at Bar Lane Studios. If you’re in the vicinity give your eyes a treat and check it out.

Here’s a great interview by Mike Leigh Cooper

You can get more info at Graffuturism here

Or from Bar Lane Studios here

A while back we had the pleasure of meeting James Naish of York’s Naish Estate Agents. They actually do a bit more than that, being Solicitors and Chartered Surveyors to boot. Having all those services under one roof seems like a very neat, hassle free way of buying property to me! Anyway, James came back to see us and we are now working on some ‘things’ for him. I’m not giving too much away though, only that Mat’s initial ideas look a bit special. Watch this space.