Working with St Fagans is rewarding, fascinating, and often very moving.
We were delighted to be commissioned to design a new guide book at an exciting moment for this wonderful museum, having just completed a major redevelopment – and won the Art Fund museum of the year 2019 award. The judges said:
'St Fagans lives, breathes and embodies the culture and identity of Wales... this magical place was made by the people of Wales for people everywhere, and stands as one of the most welcoming and engaging museums anywhere in the UK.'
The guide book has a clear, bilingual design and features new photography from Aled Llywelyn and Philip Griffiths, combined with historical images.
Llys Lywelyn is a new building, a reconstruction of Llywelyn ap Iowerth’s medieval court. Next to it is a smaller building where children can stay for sleepovers and have medieval feasts in the hall - what a great idea! Rather than using panels, information about the hall and the people who would have used it is shown on table cloths, which are set with jugs and implements.
In 2017, to celebrate its centenary, a project began to revitalise the Oakdale Workmen's Institute, to make it a dementia-friendly space, alive with community voices once again. Shown above is an interactive 'voices' map, commemorative newspapers for the Reading Room and posters for the Library.
We also designed table place mats for the new Life is... exhibition space, for a display where children learn as they play about food history, and a series of interpretation paddles for St Fagans Castle.
We've designed a number of special publications which reflect historical design styles, whilst being bilingual and accessible to contemporary readers.
Glo - a series of magazines designed for Big Pit, and Y Ffrynt Carretf / Homefront designed for St Fagans, were awarded a Special Commendation in the Corporate Publications Design Category of the Welsh Language Board Awards.
In 2019 we designed a magazine to mark 100 years of the Oakdale Workmen's Institute, looking back at it through the eyes of those who used it. It was distributed at a performance by the award winning theatre company, Re-Live, who worked with ex-service personnel, their families, community members and actors to mark the centenary of a Victory Ball which was held at the Institute in early 1919, at the end of the First World War.