Grime’s Graves, prehistoric flint mines
2024

Client
English Heritage

Location
Norfolk

Role
Interpretation/Exhibition graphic design

Collaborators/Creative partners
Exhibition design: Simon Leach Design
Architecture: Mawson Kerr
AV design: Heritage Interactive
Illustration: Rebecca Strickson
Production and printing: Standard8

Photography
English Heritage, Mawson Kerr, Simon Leach Design

Grime’s Graves is an internationally significant prehistoric landscape. The 90-acre site is a scheduled monument with SSSI protection for its equally significant local ecology. The strange grassy lunar-like landscape was named by the Anglo-Saxons after their god of war, Grim, whom they belived was buried there. But the site dates to c.4000BC when it was one of north-west Europe’s largest active flint mines. We worked with Simon Leach Design and English Heritage over a period of two years to re-think and redesign the overall visitor experience, which included new outdoor interpretation trails, a new exhibition in the visitor centre and a completely new immersive audio-visual experience inside one of the larger mineshafts. 

The new interpretation is tailored for ‘culture-seeking’ multi-generational family audiences, perhaps visiting for the first time, and local ‘explorer’ groups. It is presented through the lens of archaeologists and people-centred storytelling. A playful family trail encourages people to explore the landscape and a unique immersive underground digital experience brings to life the stories buried underground and in the ancient rocks. A timeline of key events is laser engraved into the outside of a new timber building that caps the entrance to the underground mines, and inside features hand-drawn life-size illustrations of Neolithic miners. The separate exhibition in the visitor centre employs a mix of photography, illustration, objects and graphic design to provide wider context and understanding about the site.

Turn It Up: The power of music
Science + Industry Museum, 21 October 2022 – 21 May 2023

Science Museum, 20 October 2023 – 1 September 2024

Client
Science Museum Group

Location
Manchester and London

Role
Exhibition graphic design

Collaborators
Exhibition design: All Things Studio
Exhibition build: SetWorks
Graphic production: Omni
Special playground exhibit: Amigo & Amigo
Sound deisgn: Ay-pe

Press articles
The Guardian, 24 October 2022
Secret Manchester, 24 October 2022

Photography © The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum, Drew Forsyth, David Sudlow Designers

Turn It Up: The power of music was a multi-sensory exhibition exploring people’s relationship with music and how it affects our bodies and minds. It considered why certain music can make us feel different emotions and how it might influence what we buy, as well as how it can be used to boost health and wellbeing and improve sleep. The first half of the exhibition looked at the innate human urge to create music and where our ingenuity and technological innovations have led. The second half was more reflective, thinking about the effect music has on us as individuals.

We worked closely with the exhibition designers All Things Studio and the museum’s curatorial team to design a visually playful and sonically immersive exhibition. The graphic design took inspiration from György Ligeti’s experimental electronic composition Artikulation and its graphic score created by Rainer Wehinger, using colourful blobs and squiggles to reflect changes in timbre and pitch. These  visual characteristics were redeployed in 2- and 3-dimensions to define pace and space through the exhibition. The design uses a limited palette of environmentally sustainable and responsibly sourced materials comprising cardboard tubes, papers and coloured wood fibre panels. The typographic design is wrapped up in Ekarv’s principles of writing text for visitors in multi-sensory environments.

Radical Clerkenwell Reinterpreted
Marx Memorial Library

25 September – 20 December 2024

Client
Marx Memorial Library

Location
London

Role
Interpretation/Exhibition graphic design

Collaborators/Creative partners
Interpretation/Exhibition design: Simon Leach Design
Production and printing: Standard8

Radical Clerkenwell Interpreted is a community co-curation project with the Marx Memorial Library in Clerkenwell, London. Local residents were invited to explore the library’s archives to find stories that resonated with them or that they wanted to find out more about. The library has an extensive collection of radical social history – encompassing antifascism, workers’ rights and campaigns for equality – with deep ties to the local area, which has been at the forefront of social struggle and activism for centuries. The project marks the launch of the library as an active exhibition space and venue for the local community. 

To capture and display the output of the community work we created a set of hanging banners. In a nod to the building’s legacy being home of radical publisher 20th Century Press, we created a bespoke headline typeface with letters cut from newsprint and distressed using analogue methods before being restored digitally. We embraced hand-made design, using newsprint and printing textures to create a distinct visual language across the graphics, with the use of torn strips of paper as caption devices, and a single spot colour palette for all typography.

Breathe in, breathe out
The British Library 
30 June – 26 November 2023

A project with Simon Leach Design
Curated by Eva del Rey and The British Library
Exhibition build by Standard8
Photography by David Sudlow Designers and Simon Leach Design

This is the first of three installations at the British Library testing new ways of showcasing the library’s collections. Breathe in, breathe out is a soothing soundscape specially curated by Eva del Rey and mixed by Gosha Shtasel. It features an eclectic selection of audio from the library’s sound archive, ranging from spoken word and poetry to music, birdsong and crashing waves. It is conceived as an oasis of melodic calm at the heart of the Treasures Gallery, for visitors to experience sound in new ways.

The installation is a space within a space. The structure has openings on three sides for people to flow in and out. The inner walls are lined in cork and the graphic design  around the outer walls is designed to provide context and intrigue. The colours and typography are a visual response to the soundscape and the setting, exploring concepts of hidden grids, scale and rhythm in sound and vision.

The Painted Hall
Old Royal Naval College
UNESCO Greenwich World Heritage Site
2019

Client
Old Royal Naval College

Location
London

Awards
Museum & Heritage Awards Best Conservation project 2019
RIBA London Conservation Project of the Year 2019
RIBA National Award 2019
Highly Commended Selwyn Goldsmith Award for Universal Design 2020

Role
Interpretation/Exhibition graphic design

Collaborators/Creative partners
Exhibition design: Simon Leach Design
Architecture: Hugh Broughton Architects
Conservation architecture: Martin Ashley Architects
Painting conservation: Paine & Stewart
Digital-audio guide design: ATS
Exhibition production and printing: Scena, Displayways
Printed interpretation books: Team Impression
Special stone obelisk installation: Building Crafts College

Photography
Phil Durrant, David Sudlow Designers, Simon Leach Design

The Painted Hall sits within the Old Royal Naval College on the south bank of the River Thames in Greenwich, London. It was originally designed in 1696 by Sir Christopher Wren with his assistant Nicholas Hawksmoor as a commission by Queen Mary II and King William III to create a Royal Hospital for injured and retired sailors. The 4,000 sqm painted interior was by Sir James Thornhill between 1707 and 1726. It is considered one of the most important Baroque painted interiors in Europe and often referred to as the ‘Sistine Chapel of the UK’. The site is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and its buildings are Grade-I listed.

Over a period of four years we worked with Simon Leach Design and the wider project team to reinterpret the paintings and design a new visitor experience. We planned and conceived the interpretative masterplan and subsequently developed and delivered designs for both the Painted Hall, new King William Undercroft and Sacker Gallery. Our design comprised various items including bespoke furniture, moveable mirror tables, braille and tactile renderings, handling objects, printed guidebooks, activity bags and touch-screen digital guides. During the painting conservation visitors were able to join scaffolding tours to see the paintings up close and life-size details have been faithfully reproduced in the graphic design scheme.