More attentive readers will already know that, having been based in London until around a year ago, Asbury & Asbury has moved back to the north-west, just outside Macclesfield – that fine mill town famous as the home of the silk industry, Joy Division and, erm, the Macc Lads.
We've found ourselves in the position of branding a new local arts festival, known as Barnaby. It's a revival of the old charter fair that Macclesfield began celebrating around the Middle Ages, connected to St. Barnabas Day and the summer solstice.
It used to be a very big deal. Victorian times saw thousands of people flocking into Macclesfield to see fairs, travelling zoos and music hall entertainers. For a while, the fair left Macclesfield altogether – the mills would shut down for a fortnight and the town would head off en masse to Blackpool.
Over the course of the last century, the whole thing died out, as the mills closed for good and working practices and holiday patterns changed. Now it's coming back again, in the form of a long weekend of artistic, cultural and family-friendly events. It's organised entirely by a few local people volunteering their time, so there's a real grassroots feeling to the whole thing.
Anyway, these are the first fruits of our extensive, in-depth branding exercise (otherwise known as designing a logo and some postcards).
The mill is the logo and centrepiece – not so much dark and satanic as bright and breezy.
There's plenty of folklore and archive material associated with the festival, which the organisers have done a great job in unearthing. Like this old press cutting:
And this folk rhyme, alluding to the festival's position around the summer solstice:
We used that rhyme as the starting point for some rhyming copy (not quite worthy of the term 'poem'), hinting at what the festival will include:
We're continuing to think about various festival materials, so there may be a few more goodies to show soon.
That's very lovely Nick. (Got any spares I can blog about?).
Posted by: Richard | 22 February 2010 at 13:56
Cheers Richard. We're picking up some file copies tomorrow night, so we'll stick some in the post for you.
Posted by: Nick Asbury | 22 February 2010 at 16:33