Codi Cymru
Race Council Cymru
Race Council Cymru approached our team for help creating their Codi Cymru travelling exhibition celebrating and sharing the stories of Black Lives Matter activists across Wales. RCC had planned the exhibition launch for the 21st of March at Amgueddfa Cymru’s National Museum of History, St Fagan’s. With the opening date set we got to work collaborating with RCC to design and produce three sets of story panels, each sharing the experiences of individual protesters involved in 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests in Wales.
This project required us to create a graphic style for the exhibition that captured the specific tone the clients were looking for. This entailed creating artwork for thirty panels that complemented each other in a cohesive style, design the layouts for the first three flagship exhibitions, and work with our suppliers to have ninety banners produced.
Race Council Cymru is a charity established by ethnic minority grassroots communities in Wales which brings organisations together to combat racial prejudice and discrimination. Their aim with this project was to spread awareness of the BLM protests across the country and inspire more communities to join the effort to work towards an anti-racist Wales. Codi Cymru, funded by the Welsh Government, provides resources to interested communities and allows them to hold their own exhibitions in different locations. The first three flagship exhibitions were in St Fagan’s, The University of Bangor and Aberystwyth Arts Centre.
Creating the Graphic Style
To start off the design process, the team met with Race Council Cymru to better understand the desired tone for the exhibition. Usability and accessibility were a crucial consideration along with the message itself: The banners needed to display all text in Welsh and English in large enough type to be read at a distance whilst keeping content within reasonable viewing bands specified in accessibility guidelines.
Katie Forrest Smith, leading graphics on the project, created mood boards reflecting points from the client’s initial input, which then formed the basis of three panel designs. We discussed the designs with the RCC before refining the tone and graphical style in a further iteration. Once the chosen style was agreed upon it was time to be to be applied to the twenty-nine remaining exhibition panels.
The designs had to be completed swiftly to meet the tight deadline set by the scheduled launch event. We liaised with our suppliers to have the first set of thirty indoor banners printed ahead of the exhibition opening, giving us time for quality control before bringing the banners to location. The remaining two sets of banners created were mounted on wind resistant outdoor stands and printed on durable, weatherproof material to give RCC the most flexibility with where they can display the exhibition.
“PDR provided an excellent service from day one, responding to extremely tight deadlines with speed and professionalism. They kept in regular touch with us, ensuring that they understood fully our intentions and that they captured the nuances of the stories of the Black Lives Matter activists being portrayed in the banners. The activists are delighted with the designs, as are we, and the funders, Welsh government. The impact of the exhibition is still being felt across Wales, with over 55,000 visitors to date”.
Maggi Dawson, Race Council Cymru
Spatial Design
With the panel designs signed off by the client and printing underway, we turned our attention to the layout of the launch exhibition at St Fagan’s. Working with Amgueddfa Cymru, we visited the exhibition space to take measurements and to ensure we were considering the various constraints of the space. Our product design team created Computer Aided Design (CAD) files of the location and crafted a scale model with a full set of scale banners, allowing the project team to begin scoping and planning potential layouts.
Using the physical model, we were able to quickly plan three layouts for the space that met the client’s requirements with different emphasises. The layouts proposed were considerate of access requirements, appropriate clearance and reading distances. Panels were grouped by protest location to create a richer picture of each of the individual protests held around Wales.
All three layout options for the launch exhibition were transferred into CAD and renders were created to showcase them. RCC’s preferred option utilised their commissioned sculpture as a centre piece and kept the exhibition space open so that it can be viewed and accessed from multiple angles. We worked with Amgueddfa Cymru to tweak the design to address any practical issues or security concerns after installation at St Fagan’s. We then designed layouts for the next two flagship exhibitions at the University of Bangor and Aberystwyth Arts Centre.
After the successful install and launch of the exhibition, we received highly positive feedback from our clients at Race Council Cymru as well as our contacts at the Welsh Government who funded the exhibition. Maggi Dawson from RCC said, “PDR provided an excellent service from day one, responding to extremely tight deadlines with speed and professionalism. They kept in regular touch with us, ensuring that they understood fully our intentions and that they captured the nuances of the stories of the Black Lives Matter activists being portrayed in the banners. The activists are delighted with the designs, as are we, and the funders, Welsh government. The impact of the exhibition is still being felt across Wales, with over 55,000 visitors to date”.
Interested in working with us on a spatial or exhibition design project? Get in touch!
