Flax Books

Before the Rain and Westcoast, North Hill




These two books have been out for some time, but I've not figured out how to show them. But I've figured, just take the shots and pop them up. Above are the covers for both books, below are some spreads, including the sub-title page. The font we use for Flax is the Nexus family. I'm particular fond of the serif version, it has amazing little little features. Westcoast North Hill features the isobars of a weather front passing over Britain, bringing rain, of course.








The books are available from www.litfest.org or you can buy it in person from Litfest events which begin in September. Better get the publicity done, then.

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David Lean Centenary

Carnforth Station Visitor Centre is celebrating the centenary of the birth of David Lean, director of the wonderful Dr Zhivago amongst many, many others.

I was commissioned to produce banners, a time line and two boards, one with photos taken on the set of Brief Encounter (shot in part on the station) and one with details of Lean's other great films. Below are three photos of the banners and the latter two boards. Alas, the time line has been so popular (I hope) that I've not been able to get a clear shot of the time line display, which is a three metre long display of three boards, all very nice.

(please keep in mind, I'm no photographer!)








I hope to get a picture of the timeline when I next visit the station to discuss the next project, The Age of Steam, display up from August 4 2008.

Thanks to Sheila for commissioning this work, and Robin for mounting it.

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Alan Chapman Consultancy

It has been a while since I've updated this. I've had a few adventures and a lot of work, and below is one of those project.

Alan Chapman is a consultant for community, charitable and volunteer organisations. He has recently gone freelance and approached me about creating a website along with business cards and letterhead for his new business.



Click here to visit the site. The photo is by Lesley Anne Rose.

More soon, I hope, as I have a stock of project completed for Carnforth Station, Flax books, Litfest, Hazelemre Cafe and Bakery (in process) and Applause Theatre (also in process). At least some of these will be popped up here in time

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Esprit Logo

I was recently approached to produce a logo for an international experiential education programme working in Italy and Lithuania and involving partners in Britain, Italy and Germany. The challenge was to make something active, human and not too specific. I wanted to make the image as simple as possible, clean lines and simple text but with a sense of fun. The running character (or leaping if you prefer) began its life as a stick figure that slowly mutated into this caligraphy-like drawing. One challenge was to try to make the image non-gendered, though as it turns out, the education programme is for boys, so i fussed with no need.

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Afro-Caribbean Express

The flyers below were produced for a play writing initiative organised by North West Playwrights for Afro-Caribbean community in Liverpool. Writing is pretty difficult to represent in image without resorting to cliche. In this case, the final result is a script in hand performance, so we went with that idea, with a male actor on one side and a female actor on the other. The images were produced in illustrator using stock photos and ones of my hand holding a book (thanks to the lovely web cam on my i-mac) and then taken into photoshop for the effects.

I’m pretty pleased with the result. Hope the project went well.

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More Flax books, but this time they’ve been printed

Flax, Litfest’s publishing imprint, has produced its first "proper" books, Before the Rain and West Coast, North Hill. The writing is great, I have to say. I’ve yet to figure out the best way to present books on screen without taking photos, so there’s nothing here to see, but you can see (and buy if you like) the books through the litfest site at www.litfest.org. They are really great, honest. And Vancouver people, there is even poetry referencing the Vancouver Fireworks competition and Lake Okanagan – or similar.

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Brief Encounter with Digital Culture

Another lovely commission from More Music, this time for a project with Folly Gallery and held at Carnforth Station. We produced A6 flyers and A4 posters to advertise this project to introduce young people to digital art and sound recording. Wish this was around when I was a kid.


I’ve done a few projects for More Music now, and each of them has been really great to do. They respect your creativity and always push me a little outside of what I normally do. This time, I’ve taken the image and turned it into curves and then used transparency to bring out the deep blue and white. The text uses a pixelated font (synchro). The result, I hope, is to combine a slightly mystical sense of nature as transmitted through clinical digital media.

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Bright Artistic Minds (Lancashire Youth Arts Audit)

Some time ago I was contracted to work, along with Maya Chowdhry and Paul Hartley, to work with a group of young people to produce a report of their Youth Arts Audit, looking into the provision of arts in the county and what young people wanted in their areas.

The report is worth looking at on two levels, the first is the results, which at times surprised me and will challenge the conception of arts and arts provision for young people . The second is the process. This was very much a young person led process. Working on the report, we handed over decisions to them and just made it work, and I understand that is how the audit worked as well. This is their report, and it is very good.

I did the design and web work, working in workshops with the 'clients' (a dozen or so young people, from 12-18) to pull together ideas and start building something both appropriate, a little challenging to the adult viewer, and fun. Below is the splash page, but there is so much more, including video and music, at BAM!, check it and see.



the young people we worked with were great. In particular I'd like to thank David from Wyre, Frances from Preston (reluctantly), and Zeba from Preston, though everyone was great and I found them all refreshing, challenging and honest, great for a grumpy old cycnic like myself.

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Litfest 2007

Litfest 2007 has been and gone and as usual it was busy and like last year, quite successful.

Below is a photo of the local Waterstones window with the 5ft tall posters. The photos are taken by Jonathan Bean which I manipulated. The banner was the identity for the festival and seemed to work. One of these posters was more or less stolen (demanded and taken away) as they were being taken down at the end of the festival, we are hoping the culprit a) isn't the model stalker and b) will return it for our archives.



Below is the pre-brochure leaflet (from it's proof), inside on the left, outside on the right and the big photo is Sarah Hall, or Carhullan Army and The Electric Michelangelo fame. And below that is a flyer for the mighty Linton Kwesi Johnson, who was amazing to see, such a powerful performer and poet.







And finally the cover of the brochure itself (again photo by Jonathan Bean)

Thanks to Penny Darby, the marketing officer for Litfest, and the rest of litfest for allowing and helping me to do this again. Despite the fun and games of trying to get something like Litfest organised, the design can be great fun and I'm pretty proud of the results.

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More Designs from Martin Chester (finally an update)

I’m finally updating this blog, it’s been a wonderfully busy time on actual work, this doesn’t even include all the stuff I’m been doing for Celebrating Cycling and the Lancaster City Council, which I’ll try to get up later. So here we go:




North West Playwrights new writing project. I did the information leaflets to bring in writers, and here’s the one for the performances.



Drumming Session for at risk youth in Carnforth, Lancashire. These were done for More Music in Morecambe, a lovely organisation to work with.







And finally, for this post, the cover of Annie Clarkson’s collection for prose poems published by Shadowtrain books. Its a really good book and worth tracking down. If you are interested, email me though this page or my home page and I’ll forward it to the publisher.

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