My name is Louis Elton. I’m on a quest to craft an entire outfit from underwear-to-outerwear entirely in Britain. Why? To trigger a renaissance in local British manufacturing and to heal the nation’s spirit, of course! If you forgot how you got here, here’s a reminder of what I am doing.
TL;DR: This week, I share updates on logo design, boxer short innovation, and the first NOA mini-documentary.
Logo in Progress
I am continuing to work with Tom and Angel (winners of the Nation of Artisans Design Prize) to iterate the next stage of NOA’s branding.
It’s a painstaking process. In essence, I send them mad essays and WhatsApps with musings on the spirit of NOA — they make sense of it visually.
We’ve made real progress. We have an N.
Not just any N. This is a bespoke N inspired by the weighting at the back window of Thomas Heatherwick’s New Routemaster (2012).
I adore this bus. I love how it combines Heatherwick’s Humanisation principles, British Art Nouveau, and contemporary clean design.
First, an N. Next, the whole _ATIO_ of ARTISA_S.
The idea is to develop a word mark that captures design cues from various British design movements, all in one typeface.
Expect hints of Gothic Revival, Arts & Crafts and much more.
Boxers in Progress
The quest to develop a pair of brilliant British boxers goes on.
Design wise, things are looking good.
After presenting the first design courtesy of J.G. Fox in June, my design assistant Gemma is now sculpting it into a pair of boxers.
She is playing around with colour and scale — all TBD.
In terms of fabrics, we have aligned on a particular weave of Northern Irish linen from John England. However, this stuff is slow. They need to specially weave some stock of the exact weighting we like.
Then, we need to create a sample to check if it is soft enough to wear and durable enough to withstand a washing machine.
The battle goes on.
Gemma also made a video showcasing the behind-the-scenes process. Check it out:
Film in Progress
After my visit to Northamptonshire for the first NOA documentary, the editing begins.
In essence, that means me going over the transcripts of the interviews and highlighting the stories I want to explore.
NOA’s filmmaker extraordinaire Christian, takes that and will incorporate it into his creative process.
I have already trailed the behind the scenes content from film on Instagram and LinkedIn. So far it’s getting traction. 50,000 views across platforms of shoe sole corking!
To glimpse into the future, here is a still of Tony Gaziano (founder of the shoe factory I visited) hard at work cutting a pattern…
Now Try This
Towards A Critical Regionalism
There is the paradox: how to become modern and to return to sources; how to revive an old, dormant civilization and take part in universal civilization?
—Paul Ricoeur, History and Truth
For me, this is the question of modernity — and NOA in a nutshell.
Last week, I stumbled upon Ricoeur’s quote while reading Kenneth Frampton’s Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance (1983).
Frampton responds to Ricoeur exploring what it means for architecture. This essay is a well-cited classic in the post-modern architectural canon. It explores the relationship between tradition and innovation. While it primarily focuses on architecture, the thinking could easily be applied to other forms of culture.
Sadly, Frampton’s thinking has failed to inspire mainstream discourse. That must change!
How to return to the sources of the past while participating in modern society?
This is the burning question that drives NOA.
My Eclectic Letters
I was kindly asked by Kit Wilson, curator of Eclectic Letters —a kind of mixed-media Desert Island Discs for the Substack Age — to put together a sample of my favourite things.
My mixtape contains: a 90s thriller scripted by Harold Pinter, Nick Cave's gruesome ballads, poodle hair arrangements, hyper-niche Swiss chocolates, Joshua Cohen's meta masterpiece, a noughties cult comedy, British craft, and Rinquinquin.
You can read it here:
Thank you to all the new subscribers who joined this week: Kevin, Amanda, Elise, Haidee, Phil, Euan, Fanny, Emma, William, Steven, Sandy, Jo, Uzayr, Jo, Cat, Megah, Clarita, Mary, and Gabriel! I’m delighted to have you all on board.
Until next time.
Now please tap that ❤️ emoji so the Substack algorithm is kind to me.
What will the internal architecture of the boxers be? Looking for a British alternative to the McAlson model!
Never seen an N so beautiful