After many months hard work behind-the-scenes, today we’re delighted to be launching the new-look FrancisKnight website, complete with a fully refreshed corporate brand identity, plus four short films and four downloadable practical guides to commissioning public art.
Published date: 20 September 2021
This moment represents the culmination of much effort through the challenges of the pandemic and a busy project workload.
With funding from the DCMS Culture Recovery Fund, administered by Arts Council England, we were able to work with a talented team of creative professionals comprising:
– Nic Draper (graphic design),
– HdK (web development),
– Mark Hewitt and Rob Young (writing),
– Simon Williams (filmmaker),
– John Avery (music) and
– Anwen Cooper at Get Fruitful Marketing (strategic support).
We’re delighted with the results and hope you enjoy them too!
More about our new look brand identity and website
The Bauhaus principle of ‘bringing art to life’ and making art accessible within everyday life is a fitting analogy with public art and the work we do. That’s why it has influenced our new branding, bringing a strong geometric style, coupled with an assured, dependable tone – we want to be seen as accessible, inclusive and trusted.
Our new logo brings together the component letters of our initials F and K to create something new and vibrant that reflects how our winning partnership brings together two unique personalities to create something new. As you’ll see, we’ve not been shy about our use of colour. We want to add vibrancy to what we do – just like the artists we work with. We’ve chosen a vibrant palette of brights and lights, to work with contrasts or tonally within a hue to tailor the mood as needed.
For those of you who know your fonts – we’ve selected Helvetica New. Inspired by the geometric-style sans serif faces that were popular during the 1920s and 30s, we felt this choice of typography gives the right balance of accessibility and clarity that we were seeking to reflect our values.
We’ve really enjoyed working with Nic Butcher at Nic Draper Design and Hans de Kretser and team at HdK to develop the brand, visual assets and new website. Both have extensive experience working with arts and cultural organisations.
About the films
FrancisKnight have worked with filmmaker Simon Williams and writer Rob Young to produce a series of four short films with music from John Avery about commissioning public art. Each film is under two minutes and has been created to challenge perceptions and open people’s minds to the potential for public art to play a bigger part in creating more distinctive places and better connected communities, particularly in the wake of the Covid crisis. The films are dotted about the different pages of our website to tie in with how we work and what we do and bring a fresh perspective on the purpose and value of public art.
About the podcasts
Talking Public Art is our podcast series exploring the ins and outs and highs and lows of making high quality art in the public realm, looking at why it’s important, how best to do it and how not to do it. Experts in the field discuss their personal approach to placemaking, best practice and why public art is so important. Each episode features us sharing our personal experience of collaborating on a range of public art commissions, in conversation with a special guest project partner.
The five episodes we’ve published so far feature insights and top tips from Katherine Putnam, Associate Planning Director at RPS Group Ltd, Mark Fisk, Landscape Architect at LUC and professional artists Katayoun Dowlatshahi, Chris Tipping and Maria Amidu.
We are delighted that the podcast has been well-received so far and we’re now looking forward to planning a second series.
About the downloadable guides
Demystifying Public Art is our new series of four practical guides to commissioning public art and together with the films, podcast and website, contributes towards our bigger ambition to make the commissioning process better understood and easier to navigate.
The guides have been produced for housing developers, architects, design teams, social housing providers and local authorities to learn more about commissioning professional artists to create bold and ambitious artworks for the public realm.
All available here on our website, the series comprises:
- What is Public Art?
- How to Produce Public Art?
- Why Work with Artists?
- What Value does Public Art Add?
We’d love to hear what you think of it all – do get in touch to share your feedback!