This poster was designed to promote the V&A Village Fête, an event held at the Victoria & Albert Museum’s John Madejski gardens for two days every summer between 1997 and 2010. Each year, curators Scarlet Projects asked a selection of designers, architects and makers to create a stall in the Museum’s gardens, offering fun and games alongside a showcase of contemporary London-based design.
Our design for the poster for the 2005 event drew upon childhood memories of traditional village fêtes in the English countryside, and their fruit and vegetable competitions for amateur gardeners. We created a peculiar fruit or vegetable to represent each designer or studio exhibiting at the fair, adapting a set of illustrations found during our recent travels in Mexico. Accompanying the poster was a ‘Judge’s Guide’ for visitors to keep with them as they browsed, making notes and judging the work for themselves.
