We are looking forward to seeing how the site is received and developing the site in the future with possible additions such as the implementation of more social/community features.

Visit the site at www.sgse.co.uk

Thanks to Stef Lewandowski, who is on the School’s Council of Trustees and Marketing Group, for preparing a clear and comprehensive brief as well as helping us to communicate the more technical elements of the web site to the staff and board members.

Take a look… www.artmarkt.net

by Chris Keenan

by Carlie Ness

by Kate Beatty

by Max Barrett

by Patrick Lawrence

by Daniel Cullen

For the logo we worked with the head of department and tutors. They wanted something that would represent the school’s various locations over the past years and for the future. The school began at Margaret street, then moved to Gosta Green, to Perry Barr, back to Gosta Green, and then will move down to Eastside in the next few years. Hence the curve, which references the points of the geographical locations. This logo will be used to represent the school after the centenary has passed.

The web site’s main function is to advertise the centenary ball and allow students and alumni to purchase tickets. Once registered the alumni are given the opportunity to add a profile and search for other alumni and view their profiles (a sort of ‘friends reunited’ come ‘facebook’, only a tad simpler!). This web site will be reviewed after the ball and developed to use as the school’s main web site.
www.bsa-alumni.org.uk (won’t be able to view many pages without being a registered student or alumni of the school i’m afraid)

I remember looking at ASCII art when I was knee high to a grasshopper and thinking back then what an amazing but laborious task it must be to create them. This takes it to a whole new level, and instead of looking crude on a low bit depth screen, actually looks sophisticated; the perfect embodiment of ‘Geek Chic’ !

“There’s absolutely no shortage of ways to geek up the inside of your domicile, but few creations posses the perfect balance of class and geekiness like the ASCII Curtains. Reportedly hand-crafted by designer / artist / undiscovered genius Nieke Sybrandy, these nerdalicious curtains feature a light gray tree motif that is compiled entirely from code.” - Quote from Engadget

Via: Freshome

‘Creative Communities is directed to increasing the voices of young people and helping to ensure their opinions are heard and acted upon. It started with Youth Space, a Government Office West Midlands Commission, where young people worked collaboratively with architects and artists to create their own spaces in 6 different parts of the region. Leading on from this, Creative Communities is strengthening the strategic regional context for young people’s sustainable and self-directed engagement with the designed environment, particularly within the planning and regeneration contexts. Creative Communities comprises three live projects and First Site, a virtual architecture centre for young people.’

The ‘First Site’ logo we created:

and the web site:

www.firstsite.org.uk

The original Symposium took place on the 25th-27th March 1988, and as a result of a weekend’s intensive brainstorming the foundations were laid for most of the transformation of the city centre which has taken place since.

The participants came from a wide range of backgrounds: architecture, planning and landscape, the development and business worlds, economic development and management consultants, artists, surveyors and landowners, councillors and local and central government officials. They came from many parts of the world: the east to west coasts of USA, Japan, Holland and West Germany.

The theme identified for the weekend was that of the ‘City as Theatre’ because the actions necessary to make cities exciting, attractive, comfortable places can be likened to putting on a show. The participants were divided into six workgroups each with a set of issues to consider:

- Producing the Show – The role of the city centre and resources;
- Setting the Stage – urban design and landscape;
- Casting the Roles – user perception;
- Directing the Actors – movement and transportation;
- Managing the Stage – management and maintenance;

The main solutions to come from the symposium amongst others were:

The Gateways
A ‘clear’ welcome strategy
Routes across the city must be clarified to help people find their way.
Public transport stop-off points must be improved.
An exciting mode of public transport, appealing to visitor.

Distinctive Quarters
- the Jewellery Quarter, entered off Newhall Street – a craft/creative quarter;
- the Chinese Quarter, off Hurst Street – an entertainment and cultural quarter;
- the Science Quarter at Aston;
- a Media Quarter at Digbeth;
- a Convention Quarter off Broad Street;
- Business Quarters off Victoria Square and at Five Ways;
- the Civic Quarter around the Council House

The Ring Roads
The conclusion of this was re-conceiving the role of the inner ring road resulting in reducing traffic within the city by taking away through traffic.

Pedestrian Policy
The overall strategy addressed:
- Access
- Signage
- Linkages
- Pedestrian priority
- Control and enforcement
- Ground floor frontages
- Grain / scale
- Landscaping which reduces traffic conflicts
- Paving materials
- Relationship to traffic, loading, parking, public transport
- Disabled persons
- Secondary systems, including existing arcades and new block subdivisions

All a matter of image?

“- a city in a tearing hurry, addicted to instant success, biggest, first, pragmatic, profitable, confusing, incoherent and monotone. A concept of natural development seemed to have been swept away. There was neither time for people to participate in city development, nor time for the city landscape and its people to absorb that development. Collaboration with time is important.”

Birmingham is sitting on a golden opportunity, but there is a need for economic energy, a new atmosphere and commitment to the end product. London and the South East have peaked and the West Midlands is seen as a current growth region.

This strong commercial base provides direction to the role and functioning of the city’s future, but it has resulted in narrow, single-function centre which offers neither 24 hour activities nor a complete range of activities, since such important elements as housing are missing.

The city has no emotional appeal. It is difficult to find your way around which is particularly daunting for the pedestrian. Open space and greenery are minimal, the potential of canals and water has not been developed; there are too few fine old buildings and no first class modern ones.

Harsh words… but fair? These thoughts, highlighted 20 years ago, still seem important and relevant in today’s Birmingham, particularly Eastside where I would love to see some of this pedestrian joy, greenery, and use of the canals and water.

The symposium produced some essential solutions and made a great step forward for the Cities image and usability. I’m looking forward to hearing the results that come from the anniversary conference to be held on the 14th of April.

If you have blue eyes (like myself) you may find the following interesting.

A University of Copenhagen team has identified the gene which around 6-10,000 years ago underwent a genetic mutation in one individual who eventually gave rise to all blue-eyed people.

The proof that all blue-eyed people have a common ancestor comes from the fact that whereas eye colours ranging from brown to green are caused by relatively large differences in the amount of melanin in the iris, controlled by “considerable individual variation” in the area of the DNA responsible for melanin production, the variation in iris melanin levels across all blue-eyed individuals is very small.

“From this we can conclude that all blue-eyed individuals are linked to the same ancestor. They have all inherited the same switch at exactly the same spot in their DNA.”
Professor Eiberg from the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/01/blue_eyes_mutation/

They also have a nice new blog.

We were very pleased to help them with their flyers…

I have just been chatting to a friend about developments in the eastside of Birmingham, a subject that I am keen on as it is home to our design studio. Our creative director, Jim, has also recently moved to a new flat in Avoca court, as too have several of my friends over the past couple of years. I have limited knowledge of the Eastside plans, and have just heard various rumours and plans. I haven’t managed to find any concrete information or facts informing me of development plans or timescales. Maybe I’m not looking hard enough, or maybe there is nothing to look for at the moment? Please excuse my ignorance if so, and help guide me.

The Council’s link to information appears to be broken.
There is information about Eastside sustainability:
Eastside Sustainability Advisory Group (ESAG)
This site links me to the official Eastside site to find out more, but it’s the council one, that I already discovered does not exist.
Sustainable Eastside
An interesting ‘vision for the future’ document pdf here, from 2002!

As a ‘creative’ area I think it is important to involve all residents in development plans in order to retain the businesses and take on board peoples ideas. I have enjoyed attending events such as the lower eastside dialogues, as they offer an opportunity for people to get their heads together and share interesting ideas.

Manchester’s ‘New Islington’ plan has a web site that communicates (albeit slightly too flashy for my liking, although they do offer an alternative display) the project in a good level of detail and involves the community.

I think the Council should consider producing a web site that keeps the public fully informed of plans, and enables discussion and feedback. I am excited to be in Digbeth and watch it develop, but would like to see this development (or at least the plans and timescales) and feel in some way that we can make influencial decisions.

Much has changed since the early dot-com days of December 1997 when HTML 4 was published, as developers, designers and users have unlocked the web’s potential. Web sites have moved from being a collection of static pages to media-rich communities leveraging participation.

HTML 5 is designed to reflect this, with APIs for drawing two-dimensional graphics, embedding and controlling multimedia, managing client-side data storage and editing parts of documents. Turning to more bread-and-butter stuff, HTML 5 will also make it easier to represent familiar page elements. A full list of changes can be found here.

“Ajax and related innovations have propelled demands for a new standard that allows people to create web applications that interoperate across desktop and mobile,” the group said.

A drawing API? It will be interesting to see sites that use no graphics at all, just typography and browser-rendered graphics. Speedy. Though would this be regarded as presentational markup? - something we’ve been told to separate from our content? Either way, I don’t think we need to start making flashcards for the array of new tags just yet.

Read more here: Reg Developer

We produced the yearbook… (more pics/info here)

Here’s a couple of photos to make you jealous!

We are closing down now, and will be reopening on the 3rd Jan. I am off to Australia for New Year, woohoo! then back in the office on the 18th January. Substrakt will be running as normal in the capable hands of Jim, Carlie, and Chris.

We launched a new flash web site last week for MADE. This web site was for a successful project they’ve been running titled ‘Making Sense of Places’. Check it out

We have just managed to add a few updates to our site detailing a few other projects that we have completed and are in the middle of. We also added an alternative CSS style sheet for those who couldn’t handle all the brownness!

She is also a great friend! see her new web site www.kate-beatty.co.uk