Eno and Harrison & Co unveil fruits of collaboration for Brighton Festival

Artist and musician Brian Eno’s art direction and Harrison & Co’s branding for this year’s Brighton Festival will be unveiled today, alongside a bill revealing digital, gaming and soundscape design.

The cover of the festival brochure (pictured right, together with a listings page) is the product of a collaboration between Eno and Harrison & Co’s studio. Eno (pictured) supplied Harrison & Co with calligraphy, and the consultancy selected a graphic image from Eno’s touring sound- and image-scape 77 Million Paintings, which will appear at the festival.

Harrison & Co used an image by photographer Alex Banford to complete the brochure cover. ’There’s a strong exposure and it’s working with light and time – like the themes in Eno’s work,’ says Harrison & Co creative director Chris Harrison.

Headline typography in the brochure has been applied in a redrawn Progress font, which Harrison describes as ’modern and simple’.

Eight icon graphics have been sourced to organise listings. ’We went round the Royal Pavilion and copied images from wallpaper, carpets, ceramics and tiles,’ Harrison says.

Using elements of the cover, Harrison will apply this year’s graphic identity to 48-sheet and bus shelter sites, press ads and T-shirt designs in the run-up to the festival in May. Eno’s graphic ’red swirl’ and his typography will be isolated for different applications, Harrison says.

Eno, who rose to fame with Roxy Music, will bring his 77 Million Paintings installation to the city for the festival. It explores light as an art medium and generative system.

A second installation by Eno, specially commissioned, ’will be mounted in various locations around the city’, say the organisers. Full details are yet to emerge, but it will involve soundscapes created by Eno amalgamating ’found sounds’, sonic treatments and his own composition.

Also in the festival, Rimini Protokoll’s Best Before will invite an audience of 200 to take part in a theatre-based interactive gaming installation.

ach audience member will be represented on-screen as an anonymous avatar, but will develop human characteristics in response to data fed through individual control pads.

As a ’simulated city’ evolves, participants are invited to ’clash, collaborate and negotiate’ on real issues which effect the game’s development.

Dream Think Speak is a project involving three-dimensional designers, modellers, filmmakers and performance artists in an installation which will invite the public to the abandoned Co-op building on Brighton’s London Road, where an immersive ’visually layered’ installation will celebrate the 150th anniversary of Anton Chekhov’s birth.