Wild Song at Dawn, Artist at Dusk

A little bit about me: I work as an artist and designer in Manchester, the focus of my on work is often botanical subjects with outcomes produced using traditional printing processes such as screen printing, lino cutting and metal plate printing.A little bit about Wild Song at Dawn: The focus with the Sonic Streams project was the users, firstly the patients, secondly the staff. It was important to have an end product that was not only functional but also enjoyable, colourful and hopfully inspirational. One of my early thoughts when I started working on the brief was childrens books and the illustrations that I remembered as a child, I wanted to try and capture detail with colour and a finished piece that would break away from my own style.Click title to read more...Designing the bird box that houses the music player and headphones required the consideration of where it would be used and who would be using it. The prototype design was tested at Alder Hey and I went to visit patients and staff to gather feedback on how it could be improved. I found that it needed to be smaller, lighter, manageable and most importantly - colourful. I went back to the drawing board, looked at new materials and a new approach and worked on manufacturing processes that could be easily repeated as three boxes were required to be made and used at Alder Hey. The outcome was a lightweight MDF box structure that houses the mp3 player using a clip design, this solved the weight issues and also allowed patients to interact with the sound piece easily. In the initial prototype the mp3 player had been concealed, the new design allowed for it to be removed so patients could listen to it while they went to sleep or on their way into surgery. The reduction in weight and size of the design meant that staff will be able to transport the bird box from ward to ward easily, a problem that had been highlighted with the prototype design.To add colour to the design I looked at vinyl printing, working designs in photoshop I used a series of cut out shapes to form a nature scene and added detailed illustrations to these to hopefully inspire the user into looking closely at nature. The vinyl I sourced for this design has been laminated to allow for an extended lifespan whilst at the hospital.For more information on my work as an artist and design please visit my web site:lawrencebrown.eu