FF: Review of the year / 2019
A snapshot of everything that happened at Fieldwork Facility in 2019.
It’s been a bloody mental year… Mental in the good sense but… you know… still mental.
As per usual, we’ve been a little rubbish at sharing what we’ve been up to, there is now a small stack of projects waiting to be put on the website but the start of next year doesn’t look any quieter, so my friends here are a few snapshots of everything we’ve been up to over 2019. Have a quick scroll for an overview or take a little read if you have the time.
2019 Projects
This is literally everything we worked on and released this year…
Museum of Us
Without a doubt, one of the most rewarding projects of the year, we partnered with New London Architecture to reimagine community consultation for Southwark Council in the Old Kent Road area. We proposed the Museum of Us a free exhibition and programme of events, workshops and tours on Old Kent Road. The Museum of Us was designed to enable conversations and engagement on the long-term plans for the area. The focus was on participation and engaging underrepresented voices in the area so that everyone could share their ideas and opinions on what is truly important in their community.
See the full Museum of Us case study here
I wrote a really detailed write up of the project here.
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Creative Boom wrote about the project ‘Fieldwork Facility helps to create the Museum of Us to bring a London community together’.
Sjú
Throughout the first few months of the year, we were continually working with a Swiss skincare startup. We had many individual strands of work with Sjú but cumulatively we were exploring ‘what should personalised skincare feel like?’.
When we started working with the Sjú team in 2018 they were on track to launch in the UK and already had branding, packaging and product design in place (which they made with various agencies in Germany) … our first projects for them were photography art direction, helping them define their tone of voice and tell their story, we then took the existing brand assets and the skeleton brand strategy — pulling everything together into guidelines.
Fast forward to the start of 2019 we had three big projects to kick-off, we had to create a brand film, which we wrote and then worked with Gramafilm to produce (this one I will wait until the new year to share but here’s a couple of gifs as a sneak peek).
After a few months of working with the startup, we strongly felt that we needed to get to know the customer more… so we commissioned a deep dive of research welcoming the amazing lydiahowland to lead a qual study… We hired an apartment in Mayfair as our base and ran a series of wine and dine research sessions. Next Lydia led a series of 1:1 home visits for a deeper look into the emerging customer personae… in the downtime we took the client team on analogous shopping experiences for them to further get to know the UK skincare market. These were long weeks but so so rewarding in the depth of understanding we got to — helping us map out the opportunities for Sjú. Next we introduced Sjú to Goodstuff who helped size the market of each of the personae we had established.
All of this research was informing the other big project which was developing their brand strategy and fine-tuning the storytelling… for which we welcomed the wonderful Camilla Grey to the team… there were lots of spinning plates and parallel projects during this period but through the journey, a clear strategic direction emerged.
If that wasn’t enough we also had several small projects with them too… like finding them a UK PR team, introducing them to the world of influencer marketing, creating how-to videos, more photoshoots and … and, well I’ve lost track of how many projects that is now… I’m sure you have to. It was a really interesting period for the studio, we hadn’t ever really picked up from another agency’s work before which offered a fresh set of challenges, also the bulk of our work was purely strategic which was a little unusual for us... I mean all of our work is strategic but usually strategy is an initial phase of the design process… I do wish we had gotten to influence more of the startup by turning our thinking into design deliverables but it was a really great journey nonetheless.
Flamingo & Oak
A super quick one… a very simple identity for an interior design practice that has a penchant for unexpected contrasts.
Such a wonderfully weird name right? Next!
Plants Not Pollution
At some point in 2018 we got a telephone call from Hammersmith & Fulham Borough Council, they were working on an air quality improvement project and introducing planters underneath the Hammersmith Flyover to block heavy exhaust particles flowing into the pedestrian space. I’m not kidding the initial call came out of the blue and went along the lines of “We have permission to paint parts of the Hammersmith Flyover … but we don’t know what colour would be appropriate, would you be interested in helping us out?”… erm, YES PLEASE.
To support the planter interventions we developed a project called ‘Plants Eat Pollution’… we found that Hammersmith had some lovely connections with British horticultural history and it was a bit of a gift that William Morris had lived a short walk away from the project site… Morris is well known for his botanical designs but also he was also a staunch advocate for the rural idyll, he even mentioned Hammersmith in his novel ‘News From Nowhere’.
Best of all… Plants actually eat pollution! Our approach was to celebrate this by using a plant motif that would eat away at the built-up stain of pollution on the pavement and the flyovers undercarriage… To do this we wanted to use reverse graffiti (using a stencil and high-pressure water jets that remove the build-up of urban grime) so the idea was to literally erode away years of pollution with a botanic design; Plants Eating Pollution. That was the original selected concept but it went through a couple of tweaks… first, the council requested we paint murals instead of the reverse graffiti as this would last much longer (fair) and the GLA contested the validity of the line ‘Plants Eat Pollution’ so it became ‘Plants Not Pollution’. Still though, we are very happy with how the project came out!
For added design-research-geekery we discovered that Edward Johnston (the prolific designer who designed the London Undergrounds typeface) lived on the same street as Morris, so we used the Johnston typeface for the typography… it was a nice touch as you can briefly spot the project from the tube as the Piccadilly line rumbles beneath the project site.
The project was featured in Creative Review. Project case study here.
Brainteasers
After the Plants Not Pollution project the council asked us to take on another section of the Flyover, amazing! However this time there wasn’t going to be any planters introduced that we would be there to support.
We saw this as an incredible opportunity… just because there wasn't any planters didn’t mean we shouldn’t think about contributing to reducing the impact of air pollution in the community, right? We took it on ourselves to think about how supergraphics could counter the terrible effect air-pollution has on our health… For us it made total sense that if one project was attached to creating a public good then why wouldn’t we try and do the same on our own.
We asked ‘how might we combat the awful effect air pollution has on our health?’. In our research we were shocked to discover how air pollution has been linked to degenerating our cognitive ability… So we designed brainteasers to keep local minds stimulated in an attempt to counter the impact of air pollution.
Each maze and riddle was designed and tested so that it couldn’t be solved in the time it takes to pass by — our aim was to keep local minds engaged as they travel under the Flyover every day.
This project, whilst small, felt like a bit of a landmark for the studio… we are very lucky that a lot of our projects are attached to in one way or another creating a public good, but what happens when that’s not implicit in the brief? I’m really really keen to see how all of our projects can ‘solve the brief’ but also provide an additional service to the public too… What if every project creates a public good? Watch this space in 2020.
This was project was featured on What Design Can Do and AIGA’s Eye on Design. Project case study here.
Brenchley Gardens
Only part of this project has gone live but seeing as we started working on it a couple of years ago we might as well tell you about it!
Back in the summer of 2017, we won a pitch to design the wayfinding and branding for Brenchley Gardens a friendly, resident-run, beautifully maintained, Council-owned estate in South East London.
The TMO (Tenant Management Organisation) had audited the signage and found dozens of different styles throughout the grounds… and overall they wanted to come to an identity that felt appropriate for their estate… there was a lot of heavy-handed municipal style signage around which felt out of step with the estate.
We discovered many interesting stories connected to the site but the one that really stuck was that Brenchley Gardens was built literally on top of an old railway line with an old station just beyond the end of Brenchley Gardens.
Our Garden Stop
Ladies and gentlemen thank you for travelling on the green line we are now approaching our final destination. You have now arrived at home.
Brenchley Gardens is where lines converge and people from different walks of life alight to come home. We are reclaiming the trainline as inspiration for the Brenchley Gardens brand. We have created a visual language that is inspired by the old railway that ran through the estate. Through signage we can create moments that give residents permission to make the gardens their own special stop.
Everything has been designed for over a year now but we are currently waiting for Southwark Council to give Brenchley Gardens Management Association the green light to roll out the signage. Fingers crossed in 2020 it will be full steam ahead.
London is a Forest
One project that did go live in 2019 was the book design for ‘London is a Forest’… London is home to 8.6 million people who live alongside 8.4 million trees — this makes London one of the world's largest urban forests.
The book was written by Paul Wood (I know, what an ace name)… he has a great Instagram account which documents London's trees and their surprisingly unusual stories… he also does these great walking tours of trees in various London neighbourhoods, I joined a tour around Hackney as he talked tenderly about Frankenstein tree hybrids and different types of blossom which are like crack for bees.
We went through many rounds of work (we were a little bit too adventurous to start with as it was our first ever book project) but eventually landed in a lovely simple place… Early in the process we met with Paul and Zena the editor before Paul started writing. I suggested the book could be like a series of walking trails through the London forest — this was just a throwaway thought but it actually stuck! … The design followed suit with the book feeling almost like a handbook of trails through London’s forest. Chapter title pages showed the real cartography of where the route starts and in the margins we placed GPS markers for interesting trees throughout the book… so readers could hunt them down if they wanted to.
It’s available now and published by Quadrille (would totally make a lovely Christmas present)… the cover shown here is a little different to what is on the shop shelves. Unfortunately, there was an issue with a deboss on our cover whilst the book was on press at the printers — so Claire Rochford who is the design lead at Quadrille Publishers designed a lovely cover quickly remixing elements of our intended cover. (Original cover shown in the photos)
Whilst we are talking about books you might remember Mark Spencer a forensic botanist who we designed the branding for in 2018… he just had his first book published (also with Quadrille) … it’s titled Murder most Florid… a bit of a proud moment for us, we weren’t involved in the book but the book deal came as a direct result of the publishers coming across his new branding… Plants Tell Stories indeed.
One last note on books — I have two concepts for cookbooks. If you are a publisher / editor and like our work get in touch and we can tell you all about them!
National Park City
More green space in London, your damn right!
I’ll be honest, I had wanted to work with the National Park City movement ever since I first heard of them, one of the founders was someone we had worked with on a project for before (Dan was on the Design Council’s Knee High Design Challenge programme which we designed the identity, publication and exhibition for).
A week and a half before the official launch of London becoming the world’s first National Park City we got an email from Dan asking if we could design a 61-page newspaper aimed at making London healthier happier, healthier and wilder…
We delivered on time and it was super fun to do a little editorial project as a change of (RAPID!) pace. We kept the design handmade echoing the grassroots campaign to make London a National Park City.
Can we just let that sink in a little, a group of people got together with an idea that a whole city had enough green space to be classified as a National Park, so they rallied huge support and slowly convinced every Borough Council to get on board… eventually accumulating in the Mayor Of London making it official. Stupendously inspiring stuff… and now cities all over the world are following suit.
Brewery Square
This year we have also started working with Dartford Borough Council, they are in the midst of a huge public realm improvements throughout the Town Centre. The councils first phase of work was a renewal of the public realm around Market Street which we have created place branding for.
Digging through the towns archives we were surprised to discover that Market Street has only existed for just over 100 years, before that the entire area was made up of Brewery’s… over 200 years of breweries!… we named the new public realm ‘Brewery Square’ and took are lead from there.
Change Starts Here
After the Brewery Square identity Dartford wanted to widen the scope of our work and for us to create a campaign that acts as a vehicle for how to communicate how all of the phases of work will roll out (beyond Brewery Square). This is ongoing work…
Current projects
Sports Kits
We’ve been working with a school that is renowned for sporting excellence… their aim is to not just compete at an inter-school level but to produce future Olympians and talents for the national stage.
Earlier this month we presented our concepts and were delighted that some of the more adventurous approaches were liked. We received positive feedback and two concepts, in particular, stuck in the client’s mind, one was a concept that uses generative art to create 1000s of unique kits based on an algorithm that interprets the school’s motto… the other route that has been earmarked would involve us creating a new fabric out of all of the old kits and up-cycling them into a new neap yarn… a nice way to reinforce their sustainability efforts as well as put a different lens on using the school’s colours. We are really hoping to develop this project in the new year!
Dartford High Street
Finally we are closing out the year with a couple of live projects, we have extended our work with Dartford and are currently midway through a few placemaking projects around the High Street which is receiving the next phase of development after Brewery Square.
Untitled Coffee Project
The other project we are halfway through is going to be an absolute banger. I think the concept presentation for this project might be the studio’s finest to date, we really upped our game with ideas working across brand, interiors, acoustic environments, storytelling platforms as well as physical and digital activations. Yup!
We had already already been through a round of strategy and naming for the new venture that puts people and planet first… the trio of founders left the concept presentation totally perplexed in which direction to go… each route we showed was really strong (I normally have a favourite but in this presentation, I had three favourites). They are planning to launch in Spring so not long to wait to see this one go live.
I think that's all of the work from the year… so a few general studio updates…
Other stuff
Awards
Mid 2018 I decided it was time to stop entering awards… so no awards were entered or won in 2019!
I’ve been meaning to finish writing a post about this decision, but you know what, it all boils down to… bias. I’ve heard too many stories over the years about bias in the judging process, that’s not the only problem though. Design awards are a big business… Typically awarding bodies attract big agencies who can afford to enter every project willy-nilly into many categories across multiple award schemes. For them, it’s a numbers game that pays dividends in whatever wins they can rack up. Unfortunately whilst there has been progress over the last two years this process and the state of entry fees… it’s all just geared against smaller studios… so I pulled the plug. No more weeks of unpaid time case study writing and presentation-making, no more faff of printing and delivering presentation boards and best of all no more of all the second-guessing. I’m out!
In all honesty, what got under my skin was the realisation I was paying money to essentially validate the opinions of other designers. I would rather stick to our own guns and make our own path.
It wasn’t an easy, or a clean decision for that matter (there are benefits to awards and I do still get the odd urge to enter a couple of odd projects). That said, you have to draw the line somewhere… for now…
Fieldwork Facility + design awards = Indefinite hiatus.
Own IP
The upshot of not entering awards has had a really positive impact… we’ve never gone nuts on award entries but their financial cost is significant… this year we repurposed that budget to reinvest in the studio. August is typically a quieter month for FF and for almost the entirety of August we spent working on a project that is the studios own IP. We’ve been beavering away on this project to show the world more of what we can do for a few years and this dedicated stint has gotten us really close to the finish line, watch this space early 2020 for a major new project from us.
Studio move
In May we moved studio, the beloved Adventure Floor closed down so we moved up a floor in the Tea Building, we now share a nice little space with UsTwo Adventure — the investment wing of UsTwo, Morrama an industrial design studio and Tribe who are taking over the world with their sports nutrition products.
Team
We are small and agile, proudly so. At our busiest this year we were six (counting the company directors and project team members… not including our wider FFfamily of partners and collaborators).
We are still 100% independent in thought and ownership.
We are still 100% minority owned.
In 2019 the FF team (projects and ops) was made up of wonderful human beings; 50% female and 50% male. In terms of diversity we hit the same ratio; 50% of the team are from minority backgrounds and 50% white/caucasian.
I am always on the lookout for folks interested in joining us in designing for uncharted territories. We don’t have a mould of an ideal Fieldwork Facility employee, if you are interested and engaged drop us an email to say hi. Fulltime / Freelance / Other … just say hi!
Talks
This year someone gave me a microphone and I haven't stopped talking since. Just kidding… This year however I did start doing talks and it’s something I would really like to do more of.
Over the Summer I spoke at the Festival of Place on a panel about Smart Cities. See my slides here.
I’ve also taken the ‘Design is a Role of Citizenship’ talk on tour around several uni’s stopping off at Kingston MA and Kingston BA, Central St Martins and Chelsea… Ravensbourne just asked me to give a talk and workshop and hopefully something with Bournemouth Uni too soon.
I’ve also given a few lunchtime talks at different agencies and organisations… please do email me if you are interested!
Studio is an attitude / Accelerator workshop with Kinsgton
A lovely little highlight towards the end of the year was giving a talk to 40 Kingston Graphic design students who were participating in a social innovation pathway. Our challenge to them was to take our Studio is an Attitude ethos using location as a design tool to accelerate their projects for the day.
At 6pm they come back to the studio for a Pecha-Kucha style elevator pitches of their projects…
It was a super fun night with ideas, beers and pizzas… I invited some friends to join and enrichen the conversation — huge thanks again to Akil Benjamin (Head of Research & Co-founder @ Comuzi), Basil Safwat (Director of AI Normally), Dan Parry (Co-founder & Strategy Director & Tectonic), Katy Needham (Freelance Designer @ Fieldwork Facility), Neef Rehman (Designer & Developer @ UsTwo Adventure) — and special thanks to Zoë Bather for inviting us to do the workshop.
Responsible Design
AIGA Eye on Design interviewed us about ‘What does it mean to be a responsible designer today?’ Catch it in the current issue (Utopia #6)… Planning on posting an extended version here next year.
The most inspiring things of the year
It’s a pretty lucky part of the job to constantly come across inspiring things and ideas. At the end of the year, I am still thinking about these projects… (Link crack below)
The Ice Stupa Project
An incredible project bringing together brilliant thinking, form and creating good. To introduce yourself to the project start with the ace storytelling by the New Yorker too. Start here: The Ice Stupas: Artificial glaciers at the edge of the Himalayas.
The UK in 100 seconds
Dan Raven–Ellison created this lovely project for Friends of the Earth. Each second of film represents a percentage of the different land uses of the UK. Just. Press. Play.
Copenhill
They actually did it. Bjarke Ingels Group this year completed the worlds cleanest waste-to-energy power plant, what could have just been an interesting cladding for a shed was turned into an Alpine Park complete with dry ski slope for the citizens of Copenhagen. Link.
Olafur Eliasson: In Real Life
Probably the most Instagrammed art exhibition of 2019, but you know what, it was absolutely amazing (and if you’ve seen the Olafur Eliasson episode of Abstract on his practice then perhaps this broader sharing of his work online was actually part of the plan)… Either way, you might have seen pictures but go and experience it. Closes soon!
Next year
Typical end of the year feeling for me… super proud of the year’s work and achievements… but so hungry to do and achieve more.
Next year… new projects, new ventures, new website.
Until then, take care of yourselves and have a great break.
Robin
