It pays to be thick!

Or so it seems as we have recently taken delivery of our new, super thick layered business cards! We are always looking for something new and different, especially for our clients and these wonderful new business cards are certainly going down a storm. Made from a quality Mohawk Superfine stock, our cards are triple the thickness of most ordinary business cards, the cards also have a coloured layer sandwiched between the outer cards enhancing the effect and finish giving them that lovely thick feel. These cards are beautifully tactile and are available at truly competitive rates, if you’re looking for business card design and printing that is truly unique and memorable then get in touch with us and let us prove how much it can pay to be thick!

Redcar seafront regeneration, Palace Hub and the Vertical Pier

Thing’s are gathering pace down at Redcar seafront and esplanade! The ongoing redevelopment is resulting in the seafront resembling a construction site but it’ll soon be worth it when the finished article looks like this animation for the Redcar seafront regeneration, featuring the Vertical Pier and the Palace Hub. Click the link below to view the Redcar seafront development animation and take a note of the Palace Hub logo which, whilst not the final logo, is the version we created for the building signage in consultation with Tim and his team at Xsite Architecture in Newcastle.

The Redcar esplanade regeneration is also shown and in particular the Vertical Pier which looks amazing, there are also plans for the Redcar leisure and community heart and these will be showcased later. But in the meantime enjoy the video and keep a look out for our logo…

Redcar seafront regeneration animation – click the image below to play:

Redcar Palace Theatre demolition and regeneration

As part of Redcar Council’s redevelopment of the seafront and esplanade, one of the key areas of regeneration was to build a state of the art creative ‘hub’ on the site of the old Palace Theatre. The old building, whilst previously covered with horrible 1960′s cladding had become almost ignored and yet it in it’s heyday it was a place of entertainment and a popular social location for the people of Redcar. Its many guises included a theatre, cinema, social club, video store and amusement arcade when it became empty in the 80′s.

There was an element of local public outcry when the cladding was removed to expose the original facade as part of the demolition and the once magnificent structure was visible for all to see one last time before the demolition commenced and it was during this period I thought i would go down almost on a weekly basis to record the staged demolition. Essentially it was due to us being awarded the tender to create the new branding for the impending creative hub, that spiked our interest in the old building, our branding services and tender application beating a host of local, regional and national design agencies and the fact that Redcar Council had awarded this kind of creative tender to a local agency like ours keeping the project within their local economy was a massive bonus. The Palace Theatre held many memories for local residents of Redcar and to some extent I can sympathise that another period building has been demolished for a modern alternative, but I can understand the council’s remit to want to regenerate the local economy, the whole sub-region and also to help stimulate the untapped potential of the area’s creative industries, the new creative hub will certainly help this regeneration and I’m pleased to say we have played our part in creating the new branding that will adorn the building once its complete.

So, on to the photos, have a look through the following gallery and you will see some images of the various stages of the demolition as it commenced. The council will have some of their own images and these can be viewed on their Redcar seafront progress Flickr page here. One other interesting reference is the council’s new cgi animation of the Redcar seafront development, featuring the Palace Hub (complete with the logo we created) and the Vertical Pier, projects that will help revitalise Redcar and boost tourism and the local economy. The video can be viewed on another of our blog posts titled ‘Redcar seafront regeneration, Palace Hub and the Vertical Pier’

New Redcar Palace Hub branding approved

Its been a long time coming since we won the tender to design the new branding for Redcar Council’s Creative Hub, but we are delighted to announce the new logo has been approved and will be in circulation soon so keep watching this space! As we’ve been keeping the ongoing development of the brand top secret we haven’t had the opportunity to blog about the whole process and the work we have carried out in relation to the various workshops we delivered, the meetings with the Council, Architects, Consultants all involved with bringing this fantastic new creative hub to Redcar. The multi-million pound regeneration of Redcar, Cleveland in the North East of England encompasses a hive of redevelopment work which is currently visible as you enter Redcar itself.

Two highly prominent new builds include the ‘Vertical’ Pier, a dynamic, tower like structure which will form an iconic entrance to the esplanade itself, the other new build is the Creative Hub, a landmark building that will be home to the region’s growing creative community. It’s this building’s branding that we have created and that we will showcase soon. (A sneak peak can be seen here)

The building itself is sure to cause both local and regional debate, especially as it will stem from the demolition of one of Redcar’s most famous buildings the Palace Theatre or Palace of Varieties, a historic building dating back to 1913. The old building had seen several guises such as the aforementioned theatre, a cinema, a social club, a bingo hall and at its closure in the 80′s a video and amusement arcade. Locally the building has been synonymous with being a place where people congregate and have fun, engage and converse, this helped shape our overall brand strategy when developing the new logo for its intended purpose as a place for artists, creatives and designers to work and share ideas and energy and also to become a place the region can be proud of, to become a showcase building. The local influence of the previous historical values the old building had were prevalent in our shaping of the brand, yet we still had to ensure the logo would appeal to its intended market, so the name we proposed “Palace Hub” was adopted by the Council and is what the new building will be known as. Soon the logo itself will be in circulation and adorned on the wonderful new building designed by Tim Bailey’s Xsite Architecture, designers of Boho One in Middlesbrough.

We will be posting further blog posts about more of the history of the old building plus a photo library of the old buildings demolition stages soon, together with more thoughts and images of the new branding and if you are passing Redcar have a pop down to the esplanade and see for yourself as the new building work is gathering speed with a planned completion date for September 2012. If you are an artist, creative, designer, digital expert, scupltor or involved with anything creative and are interested in finding out more about the Palace Hub and how it can help your business then contact Charlotte Allen, Creative Industries Adviser at Redcar Council on 01642 495733 or search @redcarcreatives

Tees Components new display banners complete

A recent new client, Tees Components, of Skelton, East Cleveland,  approached us to offer marketing support for their international engineering business. Tees Components was established in 1963 as a machining and fabrication sub-contractor.  Over the past 45 years the company has been involved in a wide range of major power generation, marine, and tunnelling projects, building the six-acre site into one of the UK´s most comprehensive heavy engineering facilities.  They also design and produce the Tees White Gill Thruster propulsion unit, fitted in vessels worldwide.

As part of their marketing activity, Tees Components were looking to deliver an exhibition in the USA promoting their Tees White Gill Thrusters business, for this we created some new VT banner display systems and an associated A3 brochure. Whilst the background ‘superwaves’ graphic was unavailable for us to use, we were tasked with recreating this to a large format 2m x 2m area! Needless to say this pushed the RAM boundaries of the studio Macs to breaking (no, stalling) point! Thanks to the addition of some new RAM from Mr Memory, the now turbo charged Macs coped quickly and more efficiently in finalising the new background using Photoshop.

PD Ports exhibition graphics – new

We have just received some photos from our client PD Teesport from a recent exhibition they attended. The main display boards were previously produced but for this exhibition they briefed us on delivering a new infographic to depict the recycling services they were offering. The large format graphic can be seen in the middle of the panels, the schematic illustrates the various recycling services our client offers and makes what can be a complicated process easier to explain.

Saxon Princess Exhibition Now Open

We are proud to have been chosen to create some new display graphics for the Saxon Princess Exhibition which is now open at Kirkleatham Museum in Redcar. This is a permanent exhibition based in the old school building and houses a lot of local and rare discoveries from around the East Cleveland region. We have produced some of the display material from initial visuals to final printed large format laminated wall panels.

Have a look at the images and you will see the fitting of the feature piece which was a 2.5m square single piece canvas print which included the fabrication of the wooden frame, stretching of the canvas and subsequent fitting. This was capped off with a hand made enlargement made in three layers of the main Saxon Princess jewel, printed to gloss stock and mounted to foamboard and attached to the canvas display.

We also created the design and print of a historical timeline wall display which wraps around 3 walls of one of the display rooms. Checkout further information about the Saxon Princess Exhibition here.

Saxon Princess exhibition graphics complete

We have completed the various graphics for the new Saxon Princess Exhibition opening on the 28th May 2011 at the Kirkleatham Museum in Redcar. This exhibition is the culmination of a six year archeological project from a local excavation which dates back to the 7th century. The exhibits are unparalleled in the Anglo Saxon world and included the discovery of 108 graves. Jewellery items from an Anglo Saxon Princess have also been discovered and will be on display at the museum. VIA Creative are proud to have been chosen to create some of the associated display materials for the exhibition which is a major exhibition attracting a lot of media interest for the Redcar and East Cleveland area. We will shortly be posting some photos of the large format exhibition display panels we designed and project managed for this Redcar based museum including a massive 2.5m x 2.5m single piece canvas print!

How the internet has moved on

If you have never heard of “the way back machine”, it’s quite an interesting website that can show you a snap shot of a website. It works from 1996 onward. Now, it doesn’t provide a full image of every site – but it can give you a little look at the progression of websites. In creating our new site we had a look at some versions of our old site. But it didn’t pull in the full design.

So we took a look a look at the old msn site and how it has moved on from then. Take a look for yourself

It’s strange to be able to look at the different evolutions of web design and web technology.

Body Glove Display for Typhoon

The good guys at Typhoon took some snaps of the Body Glove Display with our posters on. I think you will agree it looks immense. Apologies for the bins and rubbish in the shot, think Hazel must have took that one! If you look closely you can see the Dive Boot Box we did and some of the merchandise on the shelf near the back. Just wish they would move the manikins out of the way so we could see more of the fantastic display.

These were printed full colour onto 210gsm polypropylene and attached to the display board with double sided velcro.