Lightbulb Moments

Victoria Gallery & Museum, University of Liverpool

2025

Client
University of Liverpool

Location
Liverpool

Role
Exhibition graphic design

This exhibition signalled the reopening of the Tate Hall at the Victoria Gallery & Museum following an extensive refurbishment. The 400sqm double-height vaulted gallery occupies the top floor of the Grade 2 Listed 1890s building originally designed by renowned Liverpool architect Alfred Waterhouse. The exhibition asks where do great ideas come from?, drawing from the museum’s collections to show how Liverpool has been a great place for many great ideas and to try and understand what it takes to have a great idea.

The design injects colour and visual energy to activate the displays. A visual vocabulary of scribbles and annotations draws from the process of working out ideas. Sustainability and future flexibility were built into the design specification with graphics making use of sustainble plywood, recycled cardboard and label mounts that can be re-used easily and repeatedly. We worked closely with guest curator Steve Slack to bring a dynamic presentation to text and graphic information. Off the main gallery are four alcoves enabling closer inspection of some of the ideas, including a collaborative co-creation project with a local primary school and a celebration of poetry with Liverpool poet Roger Cliffe-Thompson.

Breaking Ground
University of Oxford Museum of Natural History 

18 October 2024 – 1 September 2025

Client
University of Oxford Museum of Natural History

Location
Oxford

Role
Visual identity
Exhibition graphic design

Breaking Ground is the current  special exhibition at the University of Oxford’s Museum of Natural History. It showcases the lives and work of William Buckland and Mary Morland, the 19th-century power couple of palaeontology who are credited with identifying and naming the first dinosaur fossil – Megalosaurus. The exhibition reviews the similarities and differences between their work and how scientists and palaeontologists practice today. It looks at collecting, recording, theory and analysis, and the context of practice including how Mary was excluded from Victorian scientific communities because she was a women.

The exhibition design builds on the principles of the ‘Megalosaurus 200’ visual identity we also created. It was important to ensure the exhibition and its stories were felt to be relatable and relevant to people. Through use of scanned imagery, pattern and texture we created colourful case backdrops based on original watercolour washes produced in our studio, a nod to Mary’s scientific illustrations. We worked closely with the museum’s curators to coordinate object layouts, fixing methods and all graphic substrates, which were specified to be fully recyclable paper-based materials.

Megalosaurus 200 

Client
University of Oxford Museum of Natural History

Location
Oxford

Role
Visual identity

2024 marked the 200th anniversary of the first official naming of a dinosaur: the Megalosaurus. Oxford University geologist William Buckland and naturalist illustrator Mary Morland recorded and studied fossils found in a quarry near Oxford, the most spectacular being the jaw and teeth of what they described as a type of ancient giant lizard. We were commissioned to create a visual identity for the anniversary year to spark curiosity and connect the Megalosaurus story with contemporary earth sciences and geology.

The identity design pairs Mary Morland’s iconic Megalosaurus jaw illustration with a typographic lockup referencing geological rock strata. The painterly background is a nod to Morland’s watercolour illustrations, combined with a colour palette based on the pigments used in her work. The design provides a visual framework for a year of events, exhibitions and projects, for both university audiences and non-specialist family museum goers. 

Beningbrough
Family trail, summer 2025

Client
National Trust

Location
Yorkshire

Role
Graphic design 

Collaborators/Creative partners
Illustration: Millie Nice

Photography by Julia Lofthouse

Beningbrough Hall is a grand Grade 1 listed mansion and estate near York, built in the early 1700s. Its original baroque interiors have been faithfully preserved with the ground floor rooms telling the story of the house and the first floor rooms hosting contemporary and traditional art exhibtions. It is set in an extensive 380-acre estate with formal contemporary gardens designed by Andy Sturgeon.

We were commissioned to design the summer 2025 family trail shining a light on the lives of servants who worked at the estate. We partnered with illustrator Millie Nice to create an interactive trail around the gardens, outbuildings and main house. Visitors have to seek out the servant characters and. find out if they are having a good day or a bad day. Millie’s character illustrations show the servants in context to their jobs, with various hidden tools to find within the illustrations.

Swarthmoor Hall
2024 

Client
Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)

Location
Ulverston, Cumbria

Role
Heritage interpretation
Graphic design

Collaborators
Heritage interpretation: Simon Leach Design
Character illustration: Lisa Maltby
Interpretation fabrication: Standard8
Wayfinding fabrication: NES Solutions

Swarthmoor Hall was home to Margaret Fell and Judge Thomas Fell and is recognised as the birthplace of Quakerism. In the 1650s the Fells gave refuge to George Fox, a travelling preacher advocating for rebellion against religious and political authorities. Their home became the headquarters for the new movement known as Quakerism and Margaret Fell became one of the most important spiritual leaders of the early Quaker movement. Both her and George Fox were imprisoned several times for their beliefs and actions. Swarthmoor Hall presents the story of the early Quaker movement in the place where it all started.

We were tasked to create a new interpretation design strategy to complement the architectural restoration of the Grade 2* listed building. Working collaboratively with the client’s curators and historians we established a character-led narrative experience centred around Margaret Fell, her daughter Sarah Fell, and life at Swarthmoor Hall in the late 1600s. We commissioned Lisa Maltby to create contemporary character illustrations of Margaret, Sarah, Judge Fell and George Fox, to support a more family-focussed story telling. Interpretation comprised individual components set on table tops, desks, ledges and sills. Nothing is fixed and everything is fabricated carefully to mitigate leaving any marks. The graphic language is built upon a grid of dots in a nod to Quaker needlework craft, generating patterns that identify interpretive interventions. Phase one of the scheme launched in 2024.