Woodland Heritage Live Brief
"Woodland Heritage was established as a charity 25 years ago by two cabinet makers keen to 'put something back'. Both their businesses used a precious natural resource - wood - but until founding Woodland Heritage they hadn't previously considered their potential role in ensuring a future supply of quality timber." - Woodland Heritage, 2020
In February 2020, my university, UCA, teamed up with Woodland Heritage - a charity created to make people aware of how to grow trees, but still use wood. We were challenged to develop illustrations or animations to address the paradox between the need to plant more trees and increase woodland cover in the UK, and the need to produce more home-grown timber and use this in construction and manufacturing. The aim was to communicate to people that the two objectives were not mutually exclusive and that harvesting tress from well managed woods can have multiple benefits.
We submitted individual proposals and the charity chose 7/8 of the strongest proposals that they wanted to be developed further. The authors of the successful proposals became team leaders and were allocated students to join their group to develop their ideas.
Each group was named after a type of tree, I was allocated to the Maple group. The team leader of the Maple group was Sophie Lorenz - a print maker - who's idea were based around
'what a tree could become'.
Team Members and Roles:
Sophie Lorenz - Team Leader
Aj Simms - Product Designer (Objects)
Lois Marshall - Product Designer (Trees)
Harlem Edwin - Product Designer (Trees)
Sophie Mckeon - Type Font Designer (Textures)
What Can a Tree Become?
All the trees and objects were printed in lino with some digital experimentation and editing to keep to the same theme. Each print of the trees and the objects were created in the style of every team member and then put together in Photoshop. The first 3 images with the question "what can a tree become?" are collages of the different trees that were printed. The last 3 images with the question "what can a tree become?" are examples of a tree cycle; from initial planting to growth spanning 60 years. The final images are our interpretation of what we believe a tree can become.
