Norwich is throwing on a trench coat and lighting up this September, all in aid of a new crime writing festival called Noirwich.
It’s a collaboration between Writers’ Centre Norwich, University of East Anglia, The Crime Writers’ Festival and Waterstones, and features the likes of Val McDermid and Sophie Hannah. Lots of others, too. Check out the whole shebang at www.noirwich.co.uk.
I was asked to create a logo for Noirwich. Yes, random reader, you’re probably rubbing your hands, drooling at the endless clever imagery you could produce with a title like that, but I was asked to make use of the Norwich UNESCO City of Literature identity, mainly because it’s a UNESCO project. That particular logo was created by the excellent Click Design Consultants and came about when Norwich officially became a UNESCO City of Literature. The ‘Norwich’ is written by the hand of Ian McEwan.
It just so happened that McEwan’s handwritten Norwich had a unintentional ‘i’ exactly where I needed it, so with a tiny addition to the ‘r’, I had Noirwich. To make it more obvious, I thickened the noir and blew a hole into the graphic to finish the ‘i’. Yes, with a handgun. I pointed my finger at the screen and went ‘pow!’
So there you have it; Noirwich.
Keep your eye on the slider to see my own (rough) take on it… I couldn’t resist.