This Friday Big Active’s creative director Gerard Saint will be talking about our studio’s art direction and design work at Eye Magazine’s Design for Music Conference at St Bride’s Library in London. For more information please visit St Brides Library or Eye Magazine / Events.

27 January, 2010 - Posted in Art Direction & Design, Gerard Saint, Music | - Tags: Eye Magazine, Gerard Saint, Music Design, St Brides's Library | Permalink

To mark the climax of this year’s Youth Music Week, the Phillips De Pury Gallery in London auctioned 25 of the original artworks produced for the Destroy/Rankin project. First under the hammer was Mat Maitland’s’s work for Basement Jaxx which fetched the respectable sum of £800. Other key works included Damien Hirst’s ‘Joe Strummer’ and artwork by by Debbie Harry, Kylie Minogue, Mat Collishaw, Douglas Gordon and Mariianne Faithfull. The evening’s entertainment also included an exclusive performance by Jarvis Cocker and a DJ set by Lemon Jelly’s Fred Deakin. The night raised a total of £50,000 to benefit Youth Music projects. Destroy/Rankin designed by Big Active’s Gerard Saint is available from bookstores with all proceeds also going to the youth charity.

 

16 November, 2009 - Posted in Art Direction & Design, Illustration, Mat Maitland, Music | - Tags: Gerard Saint, Mat Maitland, Rankin, Youth Music | Permalink

Destroy/Rankin is launched today. The book designed by Big Active creative director Gerard Saint features 70 of the world’s leading musicians who have ‘destroyed’ Rankin’s iconic photographs of themselves to create new pieces of artwork in support of Youth Music – the UK’s leading music charity for young people. “I wanted to hear the voice inside that the camera doesn’t always catch” say Rankin. “…with that in mind,” says Saint, “I planned the book to look quiet on the outside and loud on the inside”. Musicians and contributors include Jarvis Cocker, Ian Brown, Fred Deakin, Kylie Minogue, Debbie Harry, Douglas Gordon and Damien Hirst. Big Active’s Mat Maitland also created a piece in collaboration with Basement Jaxx. The work will be on show at Phillips De Pury London, for free, between November 9 – 21. Collectors can bid online for the work from November 7, or attend the Open Auction on November 14 to bid for 25 key pieces. See more here…

Destroy / Rankin

09 November, 2009 - Posted in Art Direction & Design, Mat Maitland, Music | - Tags: Gerard Saint, Phillips De Pury, Rankin, Youth Music | Permalink

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: Art Direction & Design, Gafik Magazine, Gerard Saint | Permalink

Big Active’s creative director Gerard Saint offers sage words of advice to aspiring music designers in this month’s Clash magazine.  “Recognize the music industry is changing…“  You can read the full transcript here.

02 July, 2009 - Posted in Art Direction & Design, Music | - Tags: Art Direction, Creative Direction, Design, Gerard Saint, Music Design | Permalink