24 September 2009

Olympik Champions

We were recently invited by Caroline Roberts at Grafik to participate in the magazine’s Olympik project (39 sports, 39 designers, 39 posters). The brief was to make a poster about a given sport – Caroline tasked us with ARCHERY. “I was toying with some ideas and it occurred to me that the essence of the games is not just the winning but about really getting involved -  the idea of participating really appealed to me” says creative director Gerard Saint.  “We knew absolutely nothing about Archery; none of us had ever done it before – so what a great opportunity to give it a go – and for our poster to be the evidence of our efforts – for better or for worse”. Applying some reductionist thinking Saint designed a simple archery target within the specified poster format (in C,M,Y,K colours of course just to be smug). Grafik kindly obliged by asking Team Impression to prepare a litho set of posters for us to work with. On Monday we had these delivered to the 20/20 Archery Range in North London and set off for an evening of elementary target practice under the watchful eye of our instructor Gemma. “We certainly stepped up to the challenge, and Gemma noted that we all had good potential and ability, but the real star of the range was Markus Karlsson who walked away with top score on the night”. As a result the used targets (by now all battered an bruised) testify to our initiation into the world of archery. We’ve selected 25 of these to form our poster edition and – method or not – each is unique. Grafik’s Olympik project is exhibited as part of this year’s London Design festival at the German Gymnasium in Kings Cross and the posters are for sale with all profits being donated to children’s sports-related charitys Right to Play and the GB Paralympic fund. For more information please visit www.grafikmagazine.co.uk/ok

24 September, 2009 - Posted in Art Direction & Design | - Tags: , , | Permalink