LATEST:
The Story of Life
Centre for Life, Newcastle
To celebrate their 25th anniversary on 28th May 2025, Life briefed us to create a small birthday exhibition. Telling people & community stories and recognising the achievements of the work and research that has been part of the Life family since the Millennium.
We often find that word driven historic content requires increased visibility to attract the visitor. It was important for us to break the content into sections, we collated it under the umbrella of some carefully chosen titles with colour coding for easier recognition.
B&W images alongside strong graphic visuals focusses the narrative and allows the opportunity to cherry pick from the display.
We created a series of sustainable, satellite units that can be easily re-used and relocated meaning that LIFE have the opportunity to easily adapt and present new articles or live stories anywhere in the centre.
The Story of Life exhibition will be on display for one year.
With thanks to the work of the team at Life
Design: AFSB
Graphics & visual communication: Charlie Feast
Build: Paul Case/The Hub
Graphic Contractors: Display Ways
LIGHTBOX
Centre for Life, Newcastle
Lightbox is new visitor experience sited within a redundant gallery in the Life Science Centre.
The brief was to create a fully interactive space containing a number of exhibits that encourage
the investigation and discovery of the principles of sound, light and water wave forms.
Working closely with the team at Life we directed the project through from concept to completion of a permanent exhibition.
Responsible for all aspects of the design, as well as the gallery branding, graphics and interpretation.
Lightbox includes major experimental exhibits including the tallest ‘Tornado’ in Europe. As well as a whole body interactive water exhibit, plus, a major art piece for the light section.
It has a completely different atmosphere to any of the other zones in the centre.
Eighteen months in the making Lightbox opened to the public in May 2025
TEAM:
Design: AFSB
Graphics & visual communication: Charlie Feast
Illustrations: Sharon Armstrong
Build: The Hub
Graphic Contractors: Display Ways
Science Exhibits: Hüttinger Interactive Exhibits, Germany
String Wave: Paul Friedlander
Water Play: Pre-Loaded
Photography courtesy of life.org
ARCHIVE:
Playzone 2024
Centre for Life, Newcastle
The gallery for play has undergone a few iterations over the last 2 years to update its content. Looking to suite the gallery solely for the use of visitors aged 7 and under with their adults. Utilising the North East as our backdrop we created large scale murals that wrap around the 3 walls of the space. Each treated in a different render, there’s a wall with North East Icons with children peeping from the architecture - this enforces the relevance of the North East being HOME. The back wall is a moody artistic illustration that portrays the North East coastline and the last wall creates a childlike and colourful design of the nature of the North Easts rolling hills, its woodlands and creatures.
With bespoke additions of a ship, lighthouse and woodland tunnel, alongside the Angel of the North selfie statue we created a playful backdrop to the numerous learning floor activities.
Graphics and illustrations work
Graphic contractor - Displayways
Main and bespoke build - The Hub
Contemporary Science hub
growing our future
Using the pop up exhibition system we created for the science centre in 2022 and reconfiguring the layout this Contemporary Science show provides the visitor with a window into how nature effects the way we live and how it inspires us to create a way forward in the future.
The research and work of the centre and their collaboration with scientists and artists from the North East narrates this punchy, easy to navigate, little exhibition and shows how we might build future homes from Mycelium (the network of filaments underneath the ground of a fungus) and how we could use the structure of a pinecone to create ventilation in the walls of our bathrooms!
Graphics and illustration work
Mushroom model by Richard Graham Make-It London
Graphic contractor Displayways
Images: Shutterstock
Brewhouse Yard Visitor Experience, Nottingham
Nestled at the foot of Castle Rock in Nottingham are a set of cottages that were once homes and workplaces of ordinary people, quite different to the Castle itself.
Across the centuries of Brewhouse Yard from 1900s & back in time to 1650s the visitor discovers the history behind the cottages & their relevance as a key centre for Nottinghams renowned textile industry. Learning through stories, discovered on tags badged with our character and immersing themselves within each room, guests are guided by our 12 year old narrator as she helps you to explore each century and learn about the real life people that lived and worked there.
TEAM:
Room design, layout & set dressing AFSB
Graphic Design and Interpretation Charlie Feast
Historian Susanna Austin
Set works by The Hub
Graphic contractor Displayways
Artistic painter Jonathan Monk
Window graphic and installation Print4
WOW gallery
CFL
A new and exciting hands-on interactive gallery in Newcastle for 2023.
Featuring 16 new interactive exhibits underpinning many areas of science and technology.
Each exhibit, though used in many places across the world, has been created and installed especially for Life.
Exploratory exhibits where the visitor can engage in real scientific phenomena and challenging exhibits that ask the visitor to solve problems and tackle questions as well as spectacular exhibits that create dramatic demonstrations in scale and size.
The target audience for WOW is primarily for the 7-16 year old age-group with adults and families accompanying them to encourage their activities.
A new approach to colour schemes create a persistent theme throughout the space. The use of sustainable bamboo worktops with simple black steel frame legs that act as a foil to the mechanical interactive sitting with it and freestanding graphic instructions with illustrations that interpret the immediate way to approach the activity.
TEAM:
Centre for Life team
3D Design Andy Feast & Sharon Beard - AFSB Associates
2D Design Charlie Feast - AFSB Associates
Illustrator Sharon Armstrong - Sharon Armstrong Creative
Content Ben Gammon - Ben Gammon Consulting
Consultant Heather Mayfield
Access Consultant Katie Gonzales-Bell
Exhibit Makers Science Projects, London & Hüttingers, Nuremberg.
Lighting Jonathan Howard - DHA Designs
Contractor - The Hub Limited
Graphics Contractor - Displayways
SCience now! Save the bees!
CFL
The client requested a pop up science installation to tell a new, single science story in the centre.
‘Creative, modular and reusable, with a cool look & impressive status within the centre. It should be cutting edge, create a splash, a one-off investment, robust and modular. A kit of parts that can be easily re-configured and re-purposed for changing topics relevant to new science stories’
The system was created before the final decision on the inaugural exhibition. Using a hexagonal module means any of them can be pushed together to create different shapes and layouts.
A set of specific modules were designed as required:
-Introduction & signifier
-Object display case
-Feedback Unit/childrens activity
-AV unit
-Seating & portable science activity tables
-Easy access bulletins/graphics (placards)
3D Design: AFSB Associates
Contractors: The Hub Limited
UNDER 7S
POP UP PLAY
cfl
CFL Under 7s Pop-Up Play
To engage younger visitors in science play rather than science education at the Centre for Life the client was looking for a suite of three pop up play areas.
Although all three are different, divided and often hidden around parts of the centre they still needed to be easily recognised as such, it was imperative that a good graphic identity along with three-dimensional continuation of shape form and colour scheme became key alongside storage, seating and accessible units for each pop-ups, kit of parts.
Childrens design is often very much associated with primary colours so the leftfield approach of white and pastel shades replace the expected red, yellow & blue and a funky graphic identity continues the theme allowing the younger children (as well as their parents) to easly recognise the spaces made just for them.
Architects: AFSB Associates Contractor Jeff Davies at TMP Ltd
Architects: AFSB Associates Contractor Jeff Davies at TMP Ltd
Creativity Zone
CFL
CFL Creativity Zone
The existing makers studio within the centre stood large and slightly awkward within its weird and wonderful piece of architecture, looking more house than factory and providing a more school classroom vibe than a making one.
The task to incorporate everything together started with opening up the ground floor of the studio to view ‘making’ in progress and was aided by the creation of a more ‘workshop’ feel. OSB board bench-tables with trestle legs are inscribed with words describing the art of the making and the creative process, these are teamed with functional working stools in matching colours.
Architects: AFSB Associates Vinyls: Bigger Scene Contractors: The Hub Limited
Architects: AFSB Associates Vinyls: Bigger Scene Contractors: The Hub Limited
FINAL MAJOR PROJECT
This was my final project for my final year at University. I got to write my own brief and present whatever I wanted to.
Inspired by the Slowthai album Nothing Great About Britain is a book and film social commentary about Britain, the good and the bad.
It runs through topics such as the environment, cultures and COVID-19.
(January-May 2020)
D&AD LIVE GOOGLE
BRIEF
D&AD Live Brief
This was a live brief I had to answer alongside my final major project in my final year at University.
The brief was to find a song/genre or musical movement that represents a cause and use typography to bring it to life.
I chose the song Boys Will Be Boys by Stella Donnelly which is a song about the #metoo movement.
I made a poster, a small 7" publication, a film and a full 12" record, with a gatefold sleeve, inner lyric sheet and inner sleeve along with the record itself. This was made entirely out of tracing paper, to represent the layers taken on a victim to build them back up after such damage has been done
(January-March 2020)
critical research & practice
Critical Research and Response
This project went alongside my dissertation in which I answered the question 'How is the contemporary magazine industry surviving in a contemporary society?'
This is the magazine created from the research I underwent, I wanted to make a contemporary magazine that I thought would survive.
I created weekend which is an experimental magazine about everything football.
(October-January 2020)
monotype
live d&ad brief
The brief made by D&ad was to create typography led integrated graphic design campaign that uses type to celebrate a community and explores the communities beyond the usual expectations.
I decided to look at the music community and people theatre interested in music and record collecting. I thought that this was a much more reduced community now than it used to be and they don't really have a community anymore.
This created RPM Sound, a community getting these people together. These typographical posters are to advertise that this community exists and people can share their love of music. Instagram - @rpmsound_45
(May 2019)
The editorial
process
The Editorial Process is a project that started with forming a collection of 12 items. I started with a collection formed of 12 pairs of Adidas Trainers. The project had to be full of experimentation and the end product had to include a website and a publication of at least 16 pages.
This was to be named ORIGIIINALS.
The website includes a featured video full of photographs of people wearing the trainers and gifs of cartoons of the trainers and is an interactive site that can be used to view the collection and read information about them.
The book is a photo book that includes the data and information involved in the psychology of collection and how this Adidas trainer collection started. (January 2019)
moving image
This project was the final of year 1 and was moving image. For this project we had to make a series of films, 6 trial 10 second films, 1 30 second film based on a random story we were given which had to include a set we had made and a poetry film.We were given a poem to use for the final film however I found it very hard to visualise a story when reading it or to find a meaning behind it, that is why I decided to change poems and go for something that I found easier to visualise and make into a proper film. (May 2018)
(I've Got A Brand New) Track Suit by John Cooper Clarke
Print is not dead
This project was called 'print is not dead' and was from the year one course. We were given 5 texts to read and we had to make one of them into a book, the constraints were that it had to contain all of the words, include at least 12 images and it has to be able to be read in a confined space. I chose the story 'The Metamorphosis' by Franz Kafka, a story around the theme of change.
Foundation
final major
project
This was my final major project for my foundation course. My initial concept ideas changed throughout the project but the finished product is just what I wanted to achieve, off the cuff photographs taken on all sorts of cameras polaroid instant, 35mm colour and black and white, digital and phones.
The messed up generation is a photographic narrative of my own age-group and documents everyday life scenes and in the lead up to a general election gives a voice to what we understand about politics today and what the country holds for us in the future. - (May 2017)
dampack
Dampack was a project during my foundation course. We went on a trip to Amsterdam and had to record everything, draw, take photos, write etc. When we came back we had to make a zine that at the end of term we could sell at a fair at UCA. I was struggling with ideas for a zine and had some drawings that I was going to put over photographs but then changed my idea, when I was in Amsterdam i had a small pack of playing cards that i was drawing on. I then decided to make a pack of cards on the theme of Amsterdam, called 'Dampack'. (December 2016)
