Victoria Carr - Textbook Studios
Vicky Carr is the founder and one half of the Textbook Studios team. Today she gave a presentation on the work that herself and the team do at Textbook Studios.
Textbook Studios are a team of graphic designers that work alongside a lot of artists and art galleries. They help with exhibitions and catalogues and their main cliental are smaller artists / galleries that have unique and interesting ideas. The company specialises in publications and providing form and meaning through graphic design. They have also worked alongside local brewery ‘Cloud Water’. They met the founder through friends and the brewery has been voted as one of the top 5 breweries in the world.
Since starting the business they have moved studios 7-8 times before finding their current studio at Islington Mill in Salford. They have now been there for 5 years. A favourite quote of Vicky’s that she relates to is “A studio is a place of study.” from Bruce Mau’s Manifesto for Growth. Their first studio was a derelict mill in Manchester, that was cold in the winter so they had the idea of building a smaller studio inside of the studio to keep them warmer.
The team would go to print fairs to raise extra money for the studio, selling the prints at £10 each. They had Risograph machines (5 in total between them) that they would use for the fairs. Another project that the team came together to produce ‘Mystery Tubes’ which was a vending machine of prints. They built the machine together that distributed tubes of their Risograph prints for £25 (worth £150). You would get a tube that contained prints from both people Textbook Studios and other artists. The funds that came from this were to help to fund a new roof for Islington Mill. The vending machine ended up in an art shop in Manchester named Fred Aldous. They found that it kept on selling out and they had to keep on restocking the machine, in the end they raised around £6-£7,000.
The team have always gone to talks and met with likeminded people. This has helped them to gain connections and jobs. Over the years ex-students from universities have joined them on the team so they are all about helping graduates and students. Another example of this is when they created the website and catalogue for last years photography graduates at the University of Huddersfield. Vicky and the team are always there to answer any questions or help with any graphic design that you may need doing.
To see more of their work and services visit here: https://www.textbook.studio/
