Villalba Lawson

Designing the Urban Commons Exhibition Design

Designing the Urban Commons was initiated as a competition calling for new ways to stimulate London’s common urban spaces. Commoning, the collective ownership and management of resources, is currently being reimagined across social, political and economic debates in response to the increasingly limited range of activities permitted in these areas by private and state management bodies.

In response to the immediacy of the proposals, the free-standing exhibition displays were built according to a simple modular system, using a combination of off-the-shelf materials. Spanning the length of the room, each of the ten London competition winners were given a 2 × 4 board. A geographical map situating the proposals was contained within one of the two vitrines, allowing the New York entries to be displayed within the second.

Monique Charlesworth Website

The online archive of writer, critic and journalist, Monique Charlesworth. Presented as a library of colour-coded books, these periodic entries can be ordered by a number of criteria to facilitate alternative modes of navigation. Our main objective was to bridge the gap between the printed and online page, whilst maintaining a clear and easy-to-use tool.

Garageland XVI Magazine

Garageland is a magazine concerned with fine arts and popular culture. Published twice a year by Transition gallery, from its base in East London. Each issue concentrates on a single theme – conceived, written and illustrated by practicing artists.

For it’s re-design, the typographic direction utilises Mandatory, an obligatory font used on all UK number plates. This decision was inspired by both the name of the publication and the numerous black cab garages that surround the magazine’s headquarters.

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Garageland XV

Garageland XV Magazine

Garageland is a magazine concerned with fine arts and popular culture. Published twice a year by Transition gallery, from its base in East London. Each issue concentrates on a single theme – conceived, written and illustrated by practicing artists.

For it’s re-design, the typographic direction utilises Mandatory, an obligatory font used on all UK number plates. This decision was inspired by both the name of the publication and the numerous black cab garages that surround the magazine’s headquarters.

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Garageland XVI

Izé Art direction

Izé creates levers and handles in collaboration with architects, artists and designers. In addition to working with some of the worlds leading contemporary architects, Izé produces pieces by pioneering modernists such as Max Bill, Walter Gropius and Lina Bo Bardi.

Commissioned to create a series of images that capture the haptic qualities of both the form and material. The environments they sit within are simple and composed of construction and architectural samples. Suggesting the decision process of matching textures and elements within a design project.

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Izé, identity

CSM Degree Show 2015 Exhibition Design

Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design is considered one of the leading art institutions worldwide. It trains one of the largest Graphic Design courses of its kind in the UK, with around 150 students graduating from BA Graphic Design every year. Since moving to it’s purpose built King's Cross campus in 2012, our studio has been in charge of designing the exhibition design and the curation for the final year exhibition.

For 2015, we decided along with the students to curate the show in a radically different way. Trying to come out with a curatorial concept that would reflect the students’ common interests and concerns regardless of which pathway they belonged too. After a series of public surveys, the students' work was organized around loose themes. Each theme was codified by a set of keywords, that referenced traditional archival practices as well as social media 'tagging' systems. Graphic Design: Hudson Shively and Elif Tanman

The House Exhibition

Broadly inspired by Claes Oldenburg’s critical 1964 exhibition "The Home", Faggionato’s "The House" brought together notables of the 20th and 21st Centuries. Works by artists such as Donald Judd, Richard Hamilton and Francis Alÿs, were arranged to form a seemingly domestic environment. The exhibition serves as an enquiry into the vague territory linking abstraction to representation, from art object to reality, or vice versa.

Following the exhibits original inspiration, communication for "The House" was based on 60s architectural and interior magazine covers.

Mayor of London Digital publication

The Specialist Assistance Team Menu is a document published annually by the Greater London Authority. It serves as a directory for potential consultants within the fields of architecture, design, place-shaping, planning, project-scoping, and procurement.

Conceived during the GLA's move from printed to online documents, the publication uses enhanced features allowing the reader to navigate the content quickly and easily.

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Summer of High Streets
Action for High Streets

Lyson Marchessault Website

Operating as Fashion Editor of Noon magazine, Lyson Marchessault works alongside editorial as well as commercial clients including COS, Erdem and Paul Smith.

Similar to Marchessault’s work, the websites’ palette is limited to muted shades, allowing colour to accentuate rather than overwhelm. The site uses a simple framework to showcase both image and text.

Creativeworks Prospectus

Creativeworks London partners London’s cultural and creative industries with academics and arts & humanities researchers. The organisation provides funding to enable the development of significant and sustainable relationships between research institutions and start-up enterprises.

The prospectus documents the research strands and projects funded by the charity to date. The publication also includes a series of participants’ portraits photographed by Max Creasy. During it's launch a modular structure was designed in collaboration with Andreas Lang to exhibit a selection of documented projects.

CSM Degree Show 2013 Exhibition design

Formed in 1989, Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design is considered one of the leading art institutions worldwide. It trains one of the largest courses of its kind in the UK, with around 150 students graduating from BA Graphic Design every year. Since moving to it’s purpose built King's Cross campus in 2012, the studio has been in charge of designing and coordinating the exhibition infrastructure for the final year exhibition. Organising the show is a complex task from a logistical point of view, given the number of students and time available for installation.

As a result, the key feature created for the event was a modular display unit manufactured from a powder coated steel tube frame and plywood surface. Each unit creates a basic, self-contained space that allows for quick installation, freeing up time and resources for sections that require bespoke solutions. The frames can be used either free-standing or combined in an number of arrangements of varying complexity.

&SON Identity

&SON is a consultancy founded by Simon Foxton and Nick Griffiths. Specialising in concept and creative direction for fashion brands such as Stone Island, Fred Perry and Adidas Originals. Their name is derived from the common formula that often follows a founders' surname in traditional British businesses. The removal of the surname hints at their approach: recognising and challenging traditional conventions.

In response to their photo archive of old British shopfronts, a set of custom ampersands were designed by typographer Laurenz Brunner. Each a nod to a different period in design history. The character varies from item to item across their communication.

Re–bel Magazine

Re-bel is an independent magazine based in London and published bi-annually. It deals with fashion and youth culture, promoting new talent whom challenge the conventions of normality. It has an eclectic approach where gender issues mingle with TV celebrities and fried chicken reviews.

As the printing budget for this project was extremely limited, the design exploits the possibilities of the tabloid format. The typographic layouts and images are generous in size – a wealth of space being the only luxury at hand. In a nod to teenage magazines, the cover doubles up as a pull-out poster.

izé Identity

Izé creates levers and handles in collaboration with architects, artists and designers. In addition to working with some of the worlds leading contemporary architects, Izé produces pieces by pioneering modernists such as Max Bill, Walter Gropius and Lina Bo Bardi.

Similar to a door handle, Izé’s logo is positioned on the right hand central axis of all their communication material.

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Izé, art direction

Beyond Entropy Publication

Beyond Entropy is as an inter-disciplinary research cluster. It was initiated at the Architectural Association, London by Stefano Rabolli Pansera. For the Architecture Biennale in 2010, it hosted a series of seminars concerning the wide array of political, economic and scientific debates around the idea of energy. The book charts the efforts of architects to re-appropriate this theme and to address the debate in a wider cultural sphere, collaborating with artists, scientists and architects in order to create prototypes for a new spatial understanding of energy as a concept.

172 pages
2 colours
180 × 120 mm
Hardcover
ISBN 978-1-907896-06-4

Summer of High Streets Campaign

Summer of High Streets was a program of activities organized by the Mayor of London office to launch its new program of investment in over 70 high street places across London. Over the summer 2014 London’s high streets came alive with pop-up cinemas, street markets, fashion shows, dance, music, food festivals and more.

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Summer of High Streets
Action for High Streets

The Red Thread Book

Published on the occasion of Paki Smith's The Red Thread at the Douglas Hyde Gallery, 2009. It includes images of works from the exhibition, fragments of text and source material from the artist's sketchbooks. 221 × 140 mm, 32 pages

Action for High Streets Campaign

The Mayor’s Action for High Streets explores the value and potential of London’s high streets, along with the challenges they face. The report makes the case for careful, purposeful, place-based responses to these challenges. It further sets out the Mayor’s ambition for high streets to host a wider range of uses including some of the new homes and jobs needed.

In order to illustrate and assemble complex urban scenes, a comprehensive set of icons were created. These images formed the identity of the campaign, and were used throughout the Mayor's Summer of High Streets communication and events.

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Summer of High Streets
Specialist Assistance Team Menu, 2014

CSM Womenswear Typeface

This custom typeface was first used in a catalogue and exhibition display for the final year show of BA womenswear at Central Saint Martins. The design draws inspiration from examples of mid 20th century stencilled type found on tailor dummies within the studio space. This typeface was designed in collaboration with Diego Ulrich.

Experiments in Household Knowledge Book

'Beyond Received Wisdom: Experiments in Household Knowledge' is a publication documenting a series of collaborations with East London ecological and environmental innovators. The project explores unusual and inventive ways of making and experimenting. From new gardening techniques to alternative forms of energy production or innovative recycling methods, the project is aimed at sharing a range of unique and often self-taught skills through walks, talks and hands-on workshops. The project is also part of R-Urban, a project establishing practices and networks of urban resilience supported by the EU Life+ programme on environmental governance.

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Latitude Longitude Window installation

In 2008 Louis Vuitton organised a competition – open to all students of Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design – to design the window installations for their boutiques worldwide during the Christmas period. Our intention was to capture the materiality, craftsmanship and concept of travel associated with their products. Our winning proposal: a three-dimensional topographical map, built from the same poplar wood used to fabricate their trunks since it’s founding in 1854.

Architecture / Activism Identity

Architecture and Activism is the title of one of the architecture programs at Royal College of Art. The course investigates two alternative themes: Activism as architecture – how to mobilise architectural theory and practice in the field of activism? How can an activist campaign be thought of as an architectural project, as fabric of relations between places, agencies, and institutions? Architecture as activism – What is the potential agency of architects in the field of politics? Can architecture formulate its own claims, demands, agenda, and above all, its own questions?

We were approached to create a basic design framework that could be easily applied to posters, events and exhibitions. The visual language for the project tries to negotiate the dichotomy between two extremes – activism and academia, placard and essay – using a juxtaposition of attention-grabbing slogans with more in-depth contextual writing.

Punto architects Identity

Punto Architectes is a practice based in Paris. The studio specializes in private residential projects and retail interiors for clients such as Chloé, Dior and Helmut Lang. Its portfolio is characterized by a deceptive simplicity and warm approach to minimalism.

The logo is a simple mark with a white circle as central motif – 'punto' means both 'dot' and 'point' in both Italian and Spanish – while a highly abstracted P can also be seen on closer inspection. Throughout stationery, website and other collateral, the logo is always positioned on the centre of the horizontal axis. On the website, a vertical axis down the centre of the screen separates the text and image area, creating a layout that is balanced and dynamic at the same time.

R-Urban Identity

R-Urban is a bottom-up strategy that explores the possibilities of enhancing the capacity of urban resilience by introducing a network of resident-run facilities to create complementarities between key fields of activity (economy, housing, urban agriculture, culture). R-Urban initiates locally closed ecological cycles that will support the emergence of alternative models of living, producing and consuming between the urban and the rural. To overcome the current crises (climate, resources, economic, demographic), we must, as philosopher Andre Gorz says, ‘produce what we consume and consume what we produce’.

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Experiments in Household Knowledge