art
takeover

DMC Art

Intro

This was a collaboration between Philip Trusttum, The Colombo, DMC Art and Wordshop.

The Colombo owner Lilly Cooper is Trusttum’s neighbour and loves the experience of walking past his studio and peering in to see what he’s working on.

Lilly invited the veteran Christchurch artist to a total takeover of The Colombo retail precinct. “I want a total transformation,” she briefed us.

What resulted was the largest-ever public display of Philip’s works, and one of the most significant art events of the year, drawing thousands of visitors, national media attention and an award nomination.

Elevation, in a hurry

The goal of this project was to elevate Philip’s artworks and invite the public to view them. We also wanted to promote The Colombo, attracting visitors and news coverage.

The Colombo was about to start some renovations and expansions, so there was a limited opportunity to create an exemplary art exhibition in one month – something that would normally take at least six.

DMC Art director Deborah McCormick requested that Wordshop handle all the graphics, publications and digital promotion of the event.

This was a broad suite of designs that ranged from massive window graphics and billboards, to fold-up maps and visitor information.

Challenges

1: Art for art’s sake?

How on Earth do you create an original poster for an artist with thousands of works in his catalogue?

Well, you draw from them. We Analysed Philip’s art, and created something new that nodded to his style without emulating it. A Pop Art-style portrait of the artist himself, using blown-up textures from his own paintings.

2: Bigger and bigger

The window cover designs feature Philip’s artworks on huge vinyl sheets – much bigger than the original artworks they were photographed from.

Usually with billboards, you say “No worries, people will be viewing it from a distance, this can be low resolution.

But these were for the windows and doors at the entrance to The Colombo. People would literally walk up and touch them. They couldn’t be low resolution.

So we experimented with different methods of converting the textures in Philip’s paintings to vectors – a type of graphical object that can be blown up infinitely without losing resolution. The result was incredible clarity.

3: revving up the design

About a week before launch day, DMC Art presented us a new challenge: “Can you design a BMW Art Car?”

What an opportunity! These BMWs have a rich history, with past Art Cars featuring work from the likes of Andy Warhol and Jeff Coons.

But what a responsibility! We selected the hottest, fastest of Philip’s artworks – yellow zigzag arrows and green traffic lights – and laid them out in a car wrap design that complemented the BMW iX1 electric vehicle’s shapes.

We wanted the design to stand out from the rest of the exhibition – edgier, faster – while still looking at home in The Colombo.

4: And we need it now!

One month to design a campaign of this scale and get everything printed and installed on time is… ambitious.

But ambition we have in droves. Some things you’ve just got to do.

Early mornings, late nights, novel-length email chains with signwriters. It’s all worth it for the outstanding end result.

Getting close to the distortion

Our first task was possibly the most fascinating: interviewing the artist.

Wordshop writer Jamie sat down with Philip for the bulk of an afternoon in his studio, talking and taking notes about his style, his history, the artworks, and even his extensive musical library.

This formed the basis for all the words for the campaign: exhibition information, website copy, artwork and gallery descriptions.

Philip’s art is abstract and distorted; this was an unmissable opportunity to get inside the head of the artist, understand the art, and convey it to the viewer.

Designing from the windows up

The graphic design for this campaign was challenging and a fantastic learning experience. Working alongside Philip, Deborah and Lilly tapped us into a wealth of experience of art and retail space design, but we also wanted to bring our own flair. The designs needed to be unique and new, while giving space to Philips’ art to to speak for itself.