I was perusing the latest issue of Creative Review on the train to work this morning, as I'm sure many of you are prone to do, when I came across a spread of posters that had been commissioned for the London Design Festival. I had been singing the praises of the festivals presence in East London on this here blog just a couple of weeks ago, so I took particular notice of the article.

Twenty of the country's big name designers were asked to take part. The brief was very open, with the idea to make a personal statement about London, the only real stipulation being the colour palette; the designs could on include red and black.

I really like these kind of limitations. On one hand it could be seen as a hugely wide open brief; London in black and red, but that gives the brief an important focus with huge scope, something I'm sure many designers would love all of their projects to have. The result is a really diverse set of posters, that work together on an individual basis, but when viewed together work as a set because of the use of colour, which really emphasises its level of importance when it comes to graphic design. Another good example of colour bonding a series together this is Penguin's great ideas.

The posters I'm showing above were my favourite from the twenty commissioned. Starting with the 'Taxi!' poster the designers responsible are Alan Kitching, Mike Dempsey, Morag Myerscough, Bibliotheque, Tony Brook, Tom Hingston Studio, Studio Frith, Damon Murray & Stephen Sorrell of Fuel, Angus Hyland, Henrik Kubel and Quentin Newark.

With the London Design Festival kicking off this weekend, my plan was to pop along to the Kemistry gallery to look at the Typographica exhibition they have on for the festival. I won't go in to detail about the show (though there were some great spreads from the magazine being displayed), kind of just wanted to sing the praises of Shoreditch really and how many cool galleries and shops there were along the route I took from Kemistry to Brick Lane.

So, there was Kemistry with the Typographica exhibition, then we popped in to SCP, who were working in conjunction with Kiosk, a New York store who collect "rare but humble items" that make peoples life a little bit easier. My favourite piece was the pie cutter. From there we stumbled across YCN where (Full Beard favourite) Alexander Hulme's modified pencil caught my eye. On the way to Brick Lane we discovered Concrete Hermit and East Gallery, both displaying cool prints and collages.

I think my point is that without even seeking these places out, we happened across four or five interesting galleries/shops that were all taking part in the Design Festival (plus more that weren't) which really highlighted how richly the area is blessed with a creative passion and industry. You can really soak up that feeling just spending the afternoon there.

As if I hadn't had first-rate day already, it was concluded with a mighty fine salt beef bagel from the best emporium in London and a couple of pints of Leffe in the Ten Bells. Nice.

Links: Kemistry Gallery, SCP, Kiosk, YCN, Concret Hermit, East Gallery