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Reflectors is a permanent Public Artwork created by Dublin based artist David Beattie. The work consists of four individually engineered and cast terrazzo sculptures of varying sizes and forms situated adjacent to the River Dargle in Bray, County Wicklow. Reflectors was commissioned by the Arts office of Wicklow County Council and funded by the OPW through the Per Cent for Art Scheme. To commemorate the completion of the Artwork the studio was commissioned by David to produce a short run of limited edition posters.

Our brief from David was modest and straightforward, we were asked to work with a series of images of both the site and the sculptures which were to accompany an essay written about the works by artist Sven Anderson. David asked that we be intentionally subtle in our use of typography and graphics so as to create a poster that reflects his own personal tastes and the style of minimalist art that he produces. Our designs focused on the simple task of laying out and executing typography in a clean, pared-back way. We were given a series of images of the project and site taken by Louis Haugh to work with for the poster. The sculptures themselves are designed to focus and reflect sound and depending on how the viewer interacts with these sculptures the results can be quite remarkable. Certain sculptures use parabolic curves to reflect sound, others magnify sound akin to a megaphone.

In order to connect the poster to the work in a sincere yet subtle way, we chose to focus on a particular sculpture from the project, one that acts as a listening post to magnify sound. The piece allows the viewer to look through the object toward the river Dargle or place your ear against it to allow for the magnification of sound. This view through the piece was captured beautifully by Louis Haugh and was used as the master image on the poster’s reverse. We also mapped the sculpture with David’s help and used the poster to create a scale accurate abstract drawing of the piece. As with the sculpture itself the poster measures 540mm in width and the circular graphics both front and back map the conical hollow of the sculpture with the cone expanding from a 70mm opening at the reverse of the piece expanding to precisely 480mm at its front.

The poster was printed on Munken Pure ivory 80 gsm stock to allow for deliberate transparency and the printed in 2 colours using black and a coral pink pantone chosen by David to reflect the colour of the physical sculptures themselves.