Accept & Proceed

London based design studio Accept & Proceed have recently finished the design for the annual music festival Loop, based in Brighton and now in it’s third year. We caught up with creative director David Johnston to talk more about the identity.

You have worked on the Loop Festival since it began back in 2007, can you tell us a bit more about the identity for this year’s event.

We have purposely aimed to make each year’s campaign very different from the last, and this is something that will be continued moving forward. The first year the main aim was to establish the brand, and so the campaign very much revolved around the logo. Last year we went punk; destroying the old (digital equipment) to create something new. And this year we have decided to focus again on the logo, but interpreted it as a sound. By starting with an image (the logo), turning it into soundwave, building this as a sculpture and then photographing it with David Ellis, we have created a loop in the process. This also seemed to be very appropriate to the event this year, as the event is not just about digital music, but also animation and moving image with the collaboration with onedotzero.

The music obviously plays a big part in the direction of the identity year on year, is it music you would usually listen to and does that help?

Having a background of being in various bands over the years music is immeasurably important to myself, and also the studio as a whole. We have music on all the time, of all genre’s past and present. We are constantly looking for new and interesting stuff, often asking any new employees and especially student placements to bring in what they find exciting at the moment. In terms of listening to digital music in particular to help aid the creative process, well I don’t think it can hurt, but am not convinced that it’s a requirement. Afterall, Reid Miles managed to create some of the most significant album covers of all time for BlueNote, but didn’t even like Jazz.

The relationship between digital music and moving image is an obvious one, who do you think is doing particularly notable work at the moment?

The relationship is definitely an obvious one, and the line becoming increasingly more blurred all the time. There are a number of artists that are exploring the overlap between digital music and moving image. Some of the work Jamie Lidell was pursuing alongside Pablo Fiasco took the live form and injected real excitement and unpredictability to audiovisual performance. And I thought that the Noise of Art present Booka Shade Live event last year at the BFI was a great idea. And in particular there was a viewing of Koichiro Tsujikawa’s ‘Fit Song’ video for Cornelius, which I though was magnificent, as I do of all the work I’ve seen of his ever since.

What would be the line up at your ideal festival (past and present)?

On a poll from the studio, in no particular we’re going for Jimmy Hendrix, Bjork, Loco Dice, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Radiohead, Burial, Elbow, LCD Sound System, Stevie Wonder, Q-Tip, The Libertines with The Velvet Underground with a special performance to close the festival by David Bowie and Prince performing covers of each other tracks (you said we could have anything!).

Loop takes place from the 10 — 12 July 2009 in Victoria Gardens, Brighton. For more information including the line-up check the site.