As part of the 2015 London Design Festival, Applied was asked to contribute to Co-ordinates, an art exhibition put on at Ground Floor Space.
Ground Floor Space is a private art gallery that was recently created by design consultants, dn&co and Co-ordinates was the event to launch the new space.
dn&co approached 24 other studios and artists and asked them to submit their interpretation of London. The brief was simple, the old classic 2-colour A1 poster. dn&co screen-printed a limited edition for sale and all benefits went to the homeless charity, Streets of London. They have sold 100 to date and prints are still available to purchase online!
We asked dn&co about what inspired them to put on such an exhibition; “We went through a long process in the studio to decide what kind of event we wanted to launch Ground Floor Space. A few of us mentioned an interest in maps, it’s something we have to do for clients often but we all feel maps are such interesting and intriguing things we wondered what we would get if we asked 24 other studios to contribute a map.”
“The brief was open so they could interpret a map in anyway they wanted and we had a great mixture!” A great mixture was right, the interpretations ranged from more factual maps to some very abstract compositions. Some of our favourites included Melissa Price’s Under London that utilised the brief of only 2 colours to great result with a map and legend detailing the various types of earth and rock beneath London, Andy Bolton’s contribution, Boundaries of London, that depicted London’s boundary as it changed throughout history, and Pentagram’s A-Z which took an abstract view to the brief with a crop of the iconic type of the A-Z map publishing company.
Applied was honoured to have been asked to contribute our interpretation of London. The city of our head office and the location of the project that started it all, Legible London, we were keen to offer our insight into London.
Applied’s submission was initially a set of two maps entitled Day and Night. Unfortunately, due to a lack of wall space we were only able to contribute one to the exhibition. After a heated office debate about which to keep in the exhibition, Night prevailed when brought to a vote.
‘Day/Night’ are a pair of maps created using data gathered by Applied Wayfinding during the mapping process undertaken for the Legible London project, a city-wide pedestrian system for London. The map attempts to describe the different areas of London in a number of ways. First, topographically, with accurate road, water and green space data. Second, adding to this web of information is a network of shapes, the smaller shapes represent the villages of London, all 784 of them; areas such as Soho, Shoreditch or Waterloo. The larger shapes represent the districts of London, to which the labels refer to, the areas that bring a number of villages together under one name. The visual treatment of these elements help to describe our research findings, the more you attempt to uncover the boundaries between the different areas of London, the more you discover that the boundaries can be hugely subjective, everyone has their personal opinions of where their own villages begin and end. In a city as vibrant and ever changing as London, there can be no fixed boundaries.
