One of my favourites from yesterday’s garden party to celebrate Phil and Kyria’s wedding. This one’s a bit of a nod towards Mrs and Mrs Wright by Gainsborough.
It’s June, it’s time for a new calendar
The academic year
I do a lot of work for the education industry, and these institutions insist on having a different year to the rest of us. The academic year is a curious object; in the Northern hemisphere it begins in autumn and ends in the following summer. Southern hemisphere countries like Australia, New Zealand and South Africa have academic years from January to December.
Most schools and colleges in this country have a three term year; further complicated by half term breaks, bank holidays and teacher training days, (you can also add election days, snowy weather and arson, although these don’t tend to appear on the printed copies in advance). Whilst we are adding complications to the mix, starting dates for neighbouring counties e.g. Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Nottinghamshire don’t always and often match. Oh! one more thing, Easter insists on shifting about; this is apparently because it is a moveable feast, could this have been the first takeaway?.
If you’ve got to this point and wondering why it makes no sense, the Wikipedia guide to calculating Easter makes it clear, it’s just too complicated:
The First Council of Nicaea (325) established the date of Easter as the first Sunday after the full moon (the Paschal Full Moon) following the vernal equinox. Ecclesiastically, the equinox is reckoned to be on 21 March. The date of Easter therefore varies between 22 March and 25 April. Eastern Christianity bases its calculations on the Julian Calendar whose 21 March corresponds, during the twenty-first century, to 3 April in the Gregorian Calendar, in which calendar their celebration of Easter therefore varies between 4 April and 8 May.
– from Wikipedia entry on Easter
I would suggest that all this makes no sense to any reasonable human being. As designers know well, things often work best when simplified [see witty example video below].
The five term year and why it makes more sense
There is light at the end of the tunnel: a system that means understandable terms of the same length, which accounts for Easter, Bank holidays and training days. The five term year works like this: five terms of eight week, then a two week holiday and in the summer, four weeks holiday = 52 weeks.
Calendar design
Louis Henri Sullivan once said, “form ever follows function” or in other words, the design decisions are based on the purpose of the thing being designed. The calendar for the five term year has five double pages, starts Week 1, ends Week 8, includes holidays, has space so you can write on it and sticks on your wall so you can see it. I don’t think it’s going to win any awards but, like the academic year, it’s been working well for a few years now.
One added bonus of this system, I’ve just thought of, is cheaper holidays, because you can book out of season when the other kids are still at school!
Science Academy’s magic invisible uniform
How do you take photographs of a school that doesn’t exist and a uniform that hasn’t been designed yet? Sounds impossible, but this is the second brief I’ve had like this, so I guess I’m now an old hand at making ties, badges, identity cards and school buildings appear from nowhere.
In the above picture you may be able to spot some of the following fake items:
- blazer badges (two)
- ties (three)
- blazer has been shrunk to fit its occupant (1)
- reflection has been altered (1)
- child added to picture (1)
- child removed from picture (1)
Selected gallery from the day:
Digital or litho document printing
I think this was one of the first documents we published using an entirely digital process; normally reports like this would be litho printed. Considerable cost savings were made on this short run document which then lead to more of the same in digital print. There are some compromises on the finish; this was printed on satin paper rather than the gloss laminated versions we had previously produced. Design considerations play a part, as large blocks of colour were left out and photographs were deliberately kept small.
Finished digital print:
Logo for Kettering Science Academy
This logo I created was chosen as the symbol for the Kettering Science Academy, which is a new Academy rising from Ise Community College in September 2009. More often than not, the simplest ideas are the best and this logo is a simple reconstruction of an uppercase “K” (the font is Minion), to incorporate a simple test tube. The bubbles were added to give some colour and movement. The logo also had to fit the corporate family of logos existing in the Brooke Weston Partnership.




