designing the other way round



After having created an interactive cover for the printing magazine AGI we had a half-page ad to play around with and decided to use it to promote a secret club, so it seemed interaction was, once again, key as we wanted the ad to be half about us and half us, if that makes sense - we wanted to advertise without stepping out of the creative realm we were advertising, so interaction it was. being pressed for time, we looked to the advent calendar we had made in December for recyclable ideas and we chose to revisit the most minimal of animations: The Thaumatrope.


a minimal bit of planning of format and communication.


Annabelle's sketches for the Thaumatrope.

What would make sense would be to have the illustrator design the image for the 'trope and the the designer do the ad, and that was how we started, but what made this design process interesting was that after initial sketches, we swapped.


Kenn baring his chest to create the thaumatrope.

Not only did we swap roles, we also pretty much swapped the order you usually make these things in, starting a rough layout in Illustrator (of course initial ideas had happened in the sketchbook) before creating the artwork for the ad as a collage, building the ad as an oversized object.


Kenn's initial Illustrator sketch next to Annabelle's finished artwork.

This is obviously a time consuming way to work, but not massively slower and the exercise of swapping thing around benefitted the ad immensely, looking through an issue of the magazine, this will surely stand out, although this is very much an attempt to promote the work we do and ultimately to get more work, we decided not to put our name on the ad. Working under the name a secret club obviously makes that decision easier, but our experience with memory work also suggests that although fewer people who will have looked at the ad will know our name, the ones that have checked out the website following the ad will have a much clearer memory of us - spoon-feeding is not good for your memory, exploration is. Furthermore, this effectively filters out the less passionate and curious members of our target audience, the ones that wouldn't be interested in working with us anyway.



See the finished ad and make the thaumatrope here. (pdf)

Bag a bargain (but more importantly: Bag a bag)



Opening Saturday 27th November and closing again 11th December is the Tea and Make pop up shop in New Cross.



We'll be selling Antlor kits and stuff like the Son of Ar and our The See Screenprints are going for, well, next to nothing. Fellow a secret club culprit Annabelle will also be selling goods there, including miniature shrines, porcelain pieces and Qee figures



With every purchase (if you're fast) you get a special paper bag - all participating artists/designers have been asked to design ten and ours were done as a secret club.



This, of course, means play and craft so our bags can easily be transformed into either a monstrous finger puppet (the small bags)



Or a medal for the big bags.

Only after having made these did we realise that the designs had to be the same for all bags and we're sorry that we've messed with the system, but this way you'll get a lucky bag style lucky bag.

These bags are re-visits to some of the projects a secret club have worked on through 2010 and bring back great memories of making medals with kids at Port Eliot Festival in Cornwall and monsters with grown ups at V&A.

The medal making will get a another revival very soon in Scandinavia - point your eyes here.

Please drop by to raid our stock so we can get space for new products.