The Box
The Way We Live
Taking its title from the 1946 film by Jill Craigie, The Way We Live is an exhibition programme across six galleries at The Box Plymouth that explores urban spaces and architectures of the home, allowing visitors to consider universal themes of belonging, place and community.
Curator Beth Hughes has brought together work by a number of leading contemporary artists including Do Ho Suh, Rachel Whiteread, Jasleen Kaur, Caroline Walker, Anne Tallentire, Hetain Patel and Gavin Turk. The artists all approach the idea of home from different perspectives, revealing it to be much more than a physical space; a place where creativity and identity take shape, where memories are made and belonging is established.
Alongside the contemporary art, a newly restored version of Craigie’s film is being screened with behind-the-scenes footage and other archival materials. A large-scale lightbox display also draws from The Box archives, exploring Plymouth’s changing approach to planning from 1943 to today.
Adam Milford — Senior Engagement and Learning Officer, The Box“The Way We Live was a conversation between past, present and future that unfolded through contemporary artworks, film, photography, and archive documents across six galleries at The Box. Intercity embraced the challenge of this, developing a contemporary visual language that brought rhythm, texture and coherence to a remarkably diverse body of material. Their work brought a sense of energy and purpose to every gallery, creating a design that felt as dynamic, hopeful and ambitious as the city whose story it was telling.”
Our design system took inspiration from the architecture of the city, particularly that of post-war modernism – utilising bold, all-caps type styling and an overtly structural grid layout. The scope of work included 3D renders for the planning stages of the exhibition, all interpretation design including large-format wall graphics and lightbox displays, plus promotional campaign work including both print and animated digital advertising.
The two main elements of the design scheme – exhibition interpretation and exhibition promotion – were each treated slightly differently, with the interpretation utilising a more monochromatic approach and the promotional materials utilising bold colour visuals and typography. For both elements, images from The Box archives were colour-treated using a bright brick red and light sky blue, set on a neutral stone-coloured background – a colour palette inspired by both the city and the work of Do Ho Suh.
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