University News Last updated 16 May 2013
The stunning helmet used in the stylish Prometheus sci-fi movie – created by Birmingham company CMA Moldform – is one of the iconic images depicted on a range of eye-catching posters launched in support of the Birmingham Made Me Design Expo.
The Birmingham Made Me Design expo is an event led by Birmingham City University to showcase world-beating products designed and made in Birmingham and the Midlands.
To help promote the event up to 100 city centre poster sites featuring ‘hero products’ made across the region have been donated by JCDecaux, one of the leading businesses backing the expo.
Stuart Ballinger, Head of Midlands and North East for JCDecaux, said: “We’re proud to be supporting this amazing design exhibition once again this year.
“We were delighted by reaction to last year’s poster campaign but we think this year’s poster designs manage to build on that success and promote the hero products that are really putting Birmingham and the Midlands on the global map as the UK’s answer to Milan.”
The posters feature five products in total: the Prometheus Helmet, Aga Total Control, Vax Air3, Aston Martin DB9 Coupe and the Morgan three-wheeler car.
Further poster designs have been produced featuring other iconic products, including Hille chairs, which are being used in additional promotional and communications channels around the design expo.
Birmingham Made Me Design expo takes place from 6-21 June at Millennium Point and is led by Birmingham City University with support from partners Birmingham City Council, Business Birmingham and Millennium Point.
The 16-day interactive exhibition and seminar programme promotes and celebrates the iconic brands and products made across the region, inviting business leaders, makers, doers and innovators to take pride in Birmingham being the Original Design City and to promote it as the UK’s answer to Milan.
The event will be hosted at Millennium Point, part of Birmingham City University’s City Centre Campus. The University will later this year open new facilities at the Eastside site to support the region’s creative industries.
Daily free events aimed at the business community and families have been organised and by registering for a policy seminar visitors gain free access to Millennium Point’s Thinktank and to free screenings of Skyfall and Prometheus at Millennium Point’s Giant Screen. View the event programme here.
Ian Richards, graphic design consultant whose business, Heavy Object, has provided lead design support for Birmingham Made Me Design Expo visual communications and graphic design, said: “Last year's Birmingham Made Me Design Expo posters, designed by Alasdhair Willis, were a great success, attracting much comment from the public, business and design communities as well as the media. All those involved in the project felt proud to be associated with them.
“So they seemed the natural starting point in terms of this year's Design Expo. Using the simplicity of the graphic language it was my aim to build on these, adding colour as a means of highlighting the central message and to provide some 'dramatic emphasis' - but most of all to form a graphic platform helping us to promote the great designs being created in the Midlands.
“I have used a classic but contemporary graphic approach, it is combined with elements or hints of letters from the Birmingham Made Me lettering which brings to the design a further energy leading the eye to the star component of the poster, the product itself.
“The project is a great way of highlighting that future competitiveness depends increasingly on how we can combine the ability to design and make 'things' with the ability to promote and showcase these objects as well as telling the story or hooking the audience so they want to hear the story, to be part of the product lifestyle and for it to become part of the way they live too saying something about them, their values and the who they are.
“We are developing a language about what it means to be a Brummie and a Midlander, our pride, our style, and just how much we want to tell the world about it.”