Typography & design by
Richard Wolfströme

Exhibition and installation
by Standard 8

Website
Words William Shaw
Design Richard Wolfströme
Photography Kenny Laurenson

Publishing consultant Adrian Driscoll

An Unmadeup Production

...laughter follows them

Bill’s Restaurant, 100 North Road

Three young women in skirts and leggings, one in a pink wig, struggling slowly eastwards along the pavement, one behind the other; between them they carry a large sheet of brown board.

A sunny day. Drivers slow, turn their heads, grin. Some laugh. "Need a hand?"

That the students can’t see over the board makes crossing roads especially hard. Every now and again they stop to rest their aching fingers, catch their breath, and, being the girly type, hoik up the handbags that have slipped off their shoulders. Then they pick the board up again, the way they were told to by the man in the North Road Timber Co. – first the back, then the middle, and finally the front.

Jess paid £26.95 for it. It’s bigger than she needs, but she couldn’t find a spare piece in the University of Brighton workshop. She’d tried cadging some from a building site in Tichborne Street but what they had was just too mank.

Instead she’d press-ganged Anna and Aneka. "Girls? Can you help me?"

She didn’t realise how heavy a sheet of 18mm MDF was going to be. They stop again, notice where their make up has rubbed off on the board, and burst out laughing.

It’s for a chair. Jess is a 3D Product Design student preparing for her degree show. The three years are almost over. Everything is coming to a head. Soon she will be judged on what she has made.

The design isn’t just a chair, it’s a meditation on relationships. One way up, it can be a chair for one; tilt it over, a traditional leg falls out of the backrest, and it becomes a seat for two. She’s particularly proud of the beautiful living-room lamp she’s already finished. Inspired by student life, it’s designed as something you can also dry your knickers on.

Will people like what she’s creating, or not? It’s a scary time.

Outside Bill’s they pause, their path blocked by a kerb-parked car. Infectious laughter follows them. A pedestrian moves Bill’s A frame board so they can squeeze past. Almost there.