At the beginning of Unit 3, I found that my peers were enjoying the iterations I had presented but there was no context to ground the work in. I was producing the illustrations because I wanted to but I was not asking wider questions in and outside of graphic communication design. I realised that I needed an input for my generative system.
Having grown up designing rave flyers for my friends’ house and techno events, I have always had a huge interest in dance music and rave culture. When I heard about my tutors’ experience with raving in the warehouses across from Central Saint Martins in Coal Drops Yard, I began to research the area’s club history and decided to use club culture as my input. My initial research focused on the Bishopsgate Institute’s archives as it focuses on London’s history.
I discovered two documents, dated 1988 and 1997, that highlighted the council officials’ positive reception toward the regeneration of King’s Cross. Following the post-industrial decline, King’s Cross had deteriorated, and the former warehouses which once stored coal, fish, and other commodities had been left abandoned.
Although the documents only briefly referenced the local club culture, they provided valuable insight into the broader social context in which it emerged. This helped deepen my understanding of the area and its historical development.
Following advice from staff at the Bishopsgate Institute, I explored the Subcultures Archive, which focuses on British youth movements. There, I found primary sources including photos and interviews which provided insight into King’s Cross’s vibrant club culture. I learned that the area’s nightlife began with squat raves in the 1980s before evolving into licensed venues in the 1990s, including Bagleys, The Cross, and The Key.
For a time, King’s Cross was a key hub of London’s club scene which is strange think now because of how corporate and upscale the area is. I learnt that it was because of the regeneration project, one of the largest in Europe, which transformed the area from a grimy place for crime, squatters, sex workers, and raver into home for multinational companies such as Google, Sony, and bougie shops.
With my new input, I needed to produce my first set of iterations. However, I quickly realised that I had to drop the generative design part of my enquiry. I honestly didn’t know how I could randomise parts of the club culture in King’s Cross with coding experiments like I had been doing before. Instead of generative systems, I was now looking at regenerative systems. With this my enquiry had shifted into: Understanding the effects of regeneration on club culture through the lens of King’s Cross.
I became inspired by the works of socially engaged practitioners such as Katherine Hamnett, famed for her protest art, and Corbin Shaw, known for bold imagery referencing club culture. I wanted to draw on their visual language of bold condensed typography and minimalist designs.
These series of posters combines halftone black and white images with text, referencing the screen printing tradition within protest art club posters. I took quotes from articles about clubber’s experience in King’s Cross and paired it with archival images at that time from the Subcultures Archive. This was contrasted by modern statistics on club closures and my own photos I had took on nights out. Together, the posters reflect the systemic decline of club culture in London and the UK.
By drawing on the visual language of protest art and socially engaged work, these works question the value placed on club culture and its preservation amid urban regeneration. While I liked the visual impact of my initial experiments, the combination of bold type and photography felt busy. I began to realise how truly minimalist the work of Hamnett and Shaw were. To make the effects of regeneration on King’s Cross club culture more digestible, I turned to Stephen Willats for inspiration. His conceptual art breaks down systems such as social housing into core elements, allowing him to communicate dense issues through a clear, minimalist visual language.
Inspired by Stephen Willats, I began breaking down the regeneration of King’s Cross into its key driving factors. Drawing from planning documents at the Bishopsgate Institute, I identified interconnected socioeconomic, cultural, and environmental factors behind the regeneration project such as reducing crime, boosting the economy, and shifting demographics. To better understand and communicate these links, I created a framework in a similar fashion to Willats that mapped these relationships. I assigned each factor a distinct colour and shape to establish a consistent visual language for my ongoing experiments.
The colours and shapes in my framework were partly inspired by visual elements found around King’s Cross. While photographing the area, I noticed remnants of its past including faded numbers and symbols on warehouses, and signage echoing both historic and modern design. Ironically, the branding of the redeveloped area resembled protest art and old club flyers, with bold condensed type and pastel almost neon colours. I adopted this palette in my work to both reference and subvert the corporate aesthetic that has replaced the original club culture.
Using my interlinked framework, I categorised quotes and statistics according to relevant factors. For example, a quotes from a clubber’s experience in King’s Cross fits within both ‘culture’ and ‘environment’. These factors were central to the push for regeneration, as developers and officials aimed to erase the area’s rough edges and displace the clubbing culture.
I experimented with incorporating the shapes I had assigned for each regeneration factor such as square for socioeconomic or circle for politics. While I liked how the vector graphics added visual interest without overwhelming the design, I was not happy with how the shapes overlapped certain text, creating awkward gaps. I also limited myself to keep a consistent central placement but it makes the compositions feel rigid and less effective.
Until this point, my work had been entirely digital, using blending modes to mimic paper textures but this felt inauthentic, more like a pastiche of the protest and club posters that inspired me. Influenced by socially engaged artists like Hamnett and Shaw, who often play with scale, I realised my digital posters lacked a physical presence. This led me to explore screenprinting, drawn by its roots in protest and club culture.
I then replicated the digital experiments in print. I appreciated the vibrant, tactile quality of the colours and the impact they had in person. However, layering was challenging and the lighter pigments appeared almost translucent on darker colours. I also had problems with misalignment and bubbling. Still, I enjoyed the hands-on process and began to enjoy the imperfections which I ironically was trying to emulate in my digital versions.