So, the Max Gill symposium and exhibition opening have taken place and the show is well and truly up and running. I have been looking at people within the gallery when I have walked past the space, and it has been wonderful to see them really studying the works. The symposium on the 22nd of July, 2011 was a great success. It was eye-opening and very interesting to hear so many different papers given from a wide selection of points of view. The private view that evening was very well attended and it was wonderful to speak to so many people about the show and how it came to be.

As August is well on the way, it is strange to think about the amount of work and effort that went into putting the show together when the team are now busy organising the taking down of the show at the end of the month. I thought I would take the opportunity to post up a few photographs from the exhibition for those of you that might not get a chance to visit but would like to see a glimpse of what the space looks like.

Things here at the Design Archives have remained steadily busy, as they always tend to despite the summer holidays. After months of planning and organising, we are currently in day three of a seven week project upgrading our archival accommodation for the parts of the collections we currently hold in a store room next door with the Screen Archive South East. The project has been carefully planned by a team of people from different areas within the University and the building works are taking shape slowly.

The new storage area will remain on the same floor but will have environmental controls installed, which is going to greatly improve the conditions in which the collections are housed. We are currently concentrating on working out the optimum way in which to store our over-sized posters, of which there are just over 100. These are the largest objects we have in our collections with the dimensions of 1280 x 900mm. These, and a selection of other posters from the ICOGRADA collection, will also be catalogued, surface cleaned and digitised by myself and our ex-volunteer-turned-summer-employee Suzy Horada in the coming weeks. A small selection of them also need to be repaired as edges have become torn with time.

We moved the posters from the store to our ‘main area’ yesterday and had a chance to see some of them in greater detail for the first time. There are some really beautiful, colourful posters within the stacks – I can not wait to have a closer look at them as we start to work more closely with them. I will also be writing more about the upgrade in our storage as the works get on the way – these are rather exciting times indeed!