Part of the London Design Festival 2021, the Design House group show took place at the central London townhouse 14 Cavendish, in the Mayfair Design District. Set across three floors of the Palladian building (which has been completely cleared and is in pre-development stage), the exhibitors included Jasper Morrison, Sebastian Wrong, 1882 Ltd, Tiipoi, Ruup & Forma, Sebastian Cox, Marion Deuchars and Pentagram’s Angus Hyland.
Pentagram designed a flexible identity for the exhibition, which features elegant stencil typography to complement the grand interior, along with a restrained black and cream colour palette to work with the different objects and design approaches on show throughout. The identity appeared on invitations and signage (using vinyls and graphite pencils), as well as on the social media assets, which were designed with space to showcase each exhibitor’s work. A catalogue featuring an interview by Adrian Shaughnessy was also created to accompany the show.
Angus Hyland's geometric paintings ‘Looking for a certain ratio’ were exhibited for the first time in London during the show. Through this series of original works on canvas and paper, Angus searches for beautiful compositions and harmonies within prescribed sacred geometry, from striking combinations of tightly pigmented colour to subtle variations in pastels and monotones.
“The title of the show is a direct quote from a Brian Eno song, ‘The True Wheel’. It’s a nice reference to a musician and artist I admire and, conveniently, it’s an exact description of the territory explored in these paintings”, explains Hyland. “None of the paintings has a title, but they share this sense of exploration of searching for very precise harmonies.
I was playing with the idea of dividing up space and using the two things that, as graphic designers, we have at our disposal—form and colour. I started playing with geometry, going back to Fibonacci numbers, the golden section and the rule of thirds, and then dividing up space and finding little relationships between the forms and colours.”
