Supercool

Dance, design and a living doll – Part II

15 Jun 2011

Categories: Extra-curricular, Nice stuff, Our work,

So, this is my contribution to Pointe Blank; the Birmingham Royal Ballet collaborative project I mentioned t'other week. (Dance, design and a living doll – Part I)

Rather than write a load of waffly prose about the thinking behind the design, which'd not only take me ages to compose but you ages to read too, here instead are my waffly notes and a picture of the individual design elements:

• It's a comic story so needs to look light-hearted.
• Layers! There are many layers to the story. Show this.
• Give it a hand-made quality but produce it by mechanical means.
• Background pattern = based on an embroidered costume from the ballet.
• Hearts! There's lots about love and broken hearts, so that needs to come through.
• It's set in an Eastern European village so the buildings should show that.
• 'Crest' to include ears of corn - used by Swanilda to test Franz's faithfulness.
• No suitable font for the title, so hand-drawn lettering used.
• Wanted to do a bit of copywriting: "Magic, misdirection … and a girl with enamel eyes".
• Bunting was the last element to be added; frames everything else and hints at the festivities at the show's climax.
• Colours palette = sympathetic to the production design (both costumes and set).
• Include a level of mystery, wonder and magical-ness so people associate it with fairytale-type stories.

This was a great fun project to take part in and I have my fingers crossed there'll be more where this came from.

You can have a look at the other 26 submissions on the Pointe Blank website; there're some absolute stunners: www.pointeblank.co.uk

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UPDATE: Oops. I neglected to add photos from the launch event which was held on Monday at one of BRB's studios over at Birmingham Hippodrome. Here y'are …

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