Soar’s beautifully engineered performance running wear is now available to buy online. Together with founder Tim Soar, GTF developed a graphic approach that unites colour, shape, texture and typography across garments, packaging and a new website.
Garment detail photography: Casper Sejersen
Website development: We Are Everyone
The vivid ‘bookworms’ developed by GTF for Taschen’s pop-up stores and packaging live on in the publisher’s permanent Milan showroom but now applied in gold leaf to compliment the striking new interior scheme.
Continuing a long collaboration with Marks and Spencer, GTF have recently created new, core brand marks for the iconic British retailer.
Asked to develop a decorative approach for retail packaging,
the publisher’s vast and varied back-catalogue was used to create a constantly changing but highly recognisable pattern of ‘bookworms’. The first application announces the presence of this pop-up store in Paris.
A new London campus for Hult’s international business school allowed us to trade playfully on the themes of global exchange and London idiosyncrasies – taking in the ubiquitous buddlieah bush (originally from China), rhyming slang and East End bill posters. To complete in October 2014.
A new identity for the London interior and retail specialists,
a palette of architectural grounds signifies a selection of the studio’s favourite materials and love of the tactile.
Since its inception in 2002, GTF have been responsible for the brand identity of Frieze Art Fair. Twelve years on, the Frieze family has grown to include Frieze London, Frieze New York and Frieze Masters and is now recognised as one of the art-worlds most successful brands. As well as establishing the identity, GTF have art-directed 16 annual campaigns of which this October's London Fairs will be our last.
Miles Aldridge’s colour-saturated take on the Regent’s Park formal gardens and the macro details of Bronzino’s ‘An Allegory with Venus and Cupid’ (c. 1545) provide the complimentary imagery for the concurrent events.
The National Theatre Company is celebrating its 50th year and have commissioned five designers, Graphic Thought Facility included, to produce a limited edition print to mark the occasion.
Created in collaboration with printmakers Jealous Studio, GTF’s design celebrates the ‘brutal warmth’ of the National’s South Bank home. Taking wax rubbings directly from the distinctive surfaces of both the original Denys Lasdun designed theatre and the temporary studio stage – The Shed – itself designed for this anniversary year by Haworth Tompkins architects.
The print is available through the National Theatre shop and website.
Formwork, a new desktop storage system from Herman Miller, has been launched during London Design Week. Designed by Sam Hecht and Kim Colin with packaging designed by GTF, it will be available towards the end of 2013.
Art direction: Graphic Thought Facility
Photography: Milo Reid
Launched during London Design Week, Interwoven: Kvadrat Textile and Design documents the history and output of the pioneering Danish textile company as told through its creative collaborations with some of the worlds leading designers, artists and photographers.
Designed by Graphic Thought Facility, the book features a bespoke wool book cloth, dyed, spun and woven in England. This itself being a collaboration developed alongside Peter Saville and textile designers Wallace Sewell.
Published by Brancolini Grimaldi, a limited edition portfolio of 32 prints combines high-gloss litho reproductions with dead-matt silkscreen solid colours.
Production management: Martin Lee Associates
Printing: K2 Screen and Pureprint
Graphic Thought Facility have created a suitably skewed mark for the Danish design brand HAY's new awkward younger sibling WRONG FOR HAY. Based in London under the creative direction of Sebastian Wrong, their first collection is being previewed at London Design Week.
The landscape format catalogue for Edmund de Waal’s New York show responds to the challenges of reproducing the horizontal artworks that are both large in scale and complex in detail. Precise specification and a tight control of the production process (from photography through to printing) was necessary
to retain the subtle shifts in colour and lustre present in the thousand of porcelain vessels.
Image: pot samples in the booth at Pureprint
10 July – 29 September 2013
A major retrospective of photographer Miles Aldridge’s work,
to coincide with the publication of the book by the same name.
Exhibition design: Graphic Thought Facility
More information
18 July – 13 October 2013
Exhibition graphics for a retrospective at the Royal Academy
of Arts, Burlington Garden galleries to mark Lord Roger’s
80th Birthday.
Exhibition design: Ab Rogers Design
More information
Shot on film, Miles Aldridge’s photographs of women stand out for his use of cinematic narrative and intense colour. Over 288 pages, I Only Want You To Love Me sequences together 36 stories originally published in Vogue Italia, Numéro and Paradis. A dedicated uncoated section reproduces Aldridge’s
felt-pen working drawings.
Published to accompany the British artist’s Los Angeles show,
this book is both structured and chaotic: paintings, drawings and sculpture slip in and out of sync with the coated and uncoated papers on which they are printed. Metallic pigment is incorporated into the black ink to emulate the sheen of the soft pencil drawings and the book’s jacket is impregnated with linseed oil to evoke smell like the painter’s studio.
The Jammers series was created by the American artist following a visit to India in 1975 on which he observed the intensely coloured fabrics used in day-to-day life. The accompanying exhibition catalogue’s generous page size, singer-sewn binding, transparent jacket and reductive typography (set in one size of Univer 45) respond to the qualities of the expansive colour-saturated artworks.
Lubna Chowdhary creates tile-based artworks for interior
and exterior spaces. Her visual identity is concentrated on a distinctive bold typestyle used across all printed and digital applications. By restricting the identity palette to shades
of grey, focus is kept on the colour within Chowdhary’s work.
A mailing package designed in fluted-board both protects and presents a single unique tile to architects and interior designers. Chowdhary’s website – designed in conjunction with Wolfram Wiedner – uses large multiple images to show both the glazed detail and architectural context of each project.
Designed by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, Ready Made Curtain is an easy-to-install curtain hanging system. GTF created the product packaging and art-directed the related press campaign to accompany the new range’s launch at IMM Cologne 2013.
Photography: Casper Sejersen
Building on the imagery of 2010’s Shapes campaign for upholstery fabrics, the new campaign suspends Kvadrat curtain fabrics
in bespoke aluminium frames to create a delicate play of light
and shadow. Due to run from Autumn 2013, a preview of the campaign can be see in Wallpaper*’s February Oscar Niemeyer supplement.
Design and art-direction: Graphic Thought Facility and
Fabien Cappello
Photography: Matthew Donaldson
Five years in the making, Thames and Hudson publish a major
528-page monograph on the graphic design studio M/M (Paris). Edited by Emily King and designed by GTF.
Gagosian Gallery, 6 – 24 Britannia Street, London
9 October – 10 November 2012
This exhibition combines the artists final works with a survey of his large outdoor sculpture, bound with chunky plastic coil binding in a corrugated board cover.
Designed by GTF and Peter Saville. Life is Space 4 was a one
day seminar held at Studio Olafur Eliasson in June 2011. As a record of the event, one thousand unique books were produced on an HP Indigo 7500 digital press. Each copy contains a selection of images drawn randomly from a database of a 1000 prepared images. Mathmatician, Nicholas Firth scripted a programme to enable the variable composition of the pages.
Graphic Thought Facility is a London-based design
consultancy with an international reputation for appropriate, effective and original solutions. Recent commissions include store environments for M&S, exhibition design for the Science Museum, books for the Gagosian Gallery, wayfinding for Vitra, and campaigns for Kvadrat and the Frieze Art Fair.
We believe that a successful project is rooted in a deep understanding of its objectives and we take great care
to listen to our clients, often forging long-term relationships. Although our approach has been cited as original and unconventional, our underlying principles are clarity, simplicity and a belief that functional need and emotional response
demand equal consideration.
We enjoy exploring the physical possibilities of design,
which has naturally extended our work into product, exhibition and environmental design. We often use non-standard materials and production methods, exploiting our knowledge of niche manufacturers and forgotten techniques, as well as new technologies.
Established in 1990, GTF is jointly owned and led by three directors – Huw Morgan, Paul Neale and Andrew Stevens –
all of whom remain very much hands-on. We have chosen
to keep the studio relatively small and are currently a team
of nine designers supported by our studio manager and project manager. We often collaborate with other creative specialists such as architects, writers and digital media experts, and are equally happy either to join or build a team for a particular project.
GTF has been invited to exhibit and talk around the world
and our work is held in public collections in Europe and
America. In 2008, ‘Graphic Thought Facility – Resourceful
Design’ became the Art Institute of Chicago’s first ever show
dedicated to the output of a single graphic design studio.
Principal/Creative Director
Born in Newcastle upon Tyne, 1971
Central Saint Martins, 1991–94
Royal College of Art, 1994–96
Joined Graphic Thought Facility, 1996,
and became a director, 2003
Principal/Creative Director
Born in Leicestershire, 1966
Saint Martins School of Art and
Central School of Art and Design, 1985–88
Royal College of Art, 1988–90
Founded Graphic Thought Facility, 1990
Principal/Creative Director
Born in Sheffield, 1966
Leeds Polytechnic, 1985–88
Royal College of Art, 1988–90
Founded Graphic Thought Facility, 1990
Finance
Born in Leamington Spa, 1976
Leeds University, 1995–98
Joined Graphic Thought Facility, 2001 (until 2007) and 2011
Inês Bianchi de Aguiar
Designer
Born in Porto, Portugal, 1988
Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto, 2006–10
Joined Graphic Thought Facility, 2013
Carole Courtillé
Designer
Born in Saint-Malo, France, 1988
ECAL, University of Art and Design Lausanne, 2007–11
Joined Graphic Thought Facility, 2014
Designer
Born in Stockport, 1990
Glasgow School of Art, 2011–14
Joined Graphic Thought Facility, 2016
Alexander Ecob
Designer
Born in Cambridge, 1988
Norwich School of Art and Design, 2007–10
Joined Graphic Thought Facility, 2015
Jessica How
Studio Manager
Born in Buckinghamshire, 1989
Bath Spa, School of Art and Design, 2008–11
Joined Graphic Thought Facility, 2013
Dominik Krauss
Designer
Born in Aalen, Germany, 1984
Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg, 2005–06
Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design, 2006–10
Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig, 2010–11
Joined Graphic Thought Facility, 2015
Creative Director
Born in Shropshire, 1972
Central Saint Martins, 1993–96
Royal College of Art, 1996–98
Joined Graphic Thought Facility, 2001
Dario Mutter
Designer
Born in Zurich, Switzerland, 1987
Zurich University of Arts and Rietveld Academie, 2011–15
Joined Graphic Thought Facility, 2015
Bradley Young
Designer
Born in Preston, 1991
Bath Spa, School of Art and Design, 2011–14
Joined Graphic Thought Facility, 2014
Website designed by Graphic Thought Facility
and Wolfram Wiedner
Website built by Wolfram Wiedner
© 2016 Graphic Thought Facility. All rights reserved.
Unless otherwise indicated, all materials on these pages are copyrighted. No part of these pages, either text or images may
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is strictly prohibited without prior written permission.
info@graphicthoughtfacility.com
Telephone +44 20 7837 2525
Graphic Thought Facility
44 Vyner Street
London E2 9DQ
55 bus from Soho
Bethnal Green Underground station (Central line)
Cambridge Heath Overground station (London Overground line)