Project archive: Arts & Culture
Our most recent projects are shown first
The Edinburgh Literary Pub Tour
The award-winning Edinburgh Literary Pub Tour was the first literary tour launched in Edinburgh in 1996! Since then, it has carried in excess of 500,000 satisfied customers on a dramatic literary trail across Edinburgh.
We created a new website for the tour, using WordPress and Divi, and integrating several third party services for reviews and ticketing.
“Bookswarm was professional and efficient at handling our website redevelopment. They understood our needs well and were always eager to offer advice and direction where needed. They also happily answered our questions as we developed the final website without imposing any further time or financial restrictions on us. This allowed us to experiment and get to grips with the technology. We felt safe and supported throughout the whole process. We highly recommend them!”
The Scottish Literary Tour Trust Ltd.
Museum Bums
Based on the eponymous viral Twitter account, the book Museum Bums takes you on a whirlwind tour of the finest rear ends in museums around the world, divided into six categories of keisters. Heritage scholars and art educators Mark Small and Jack Shoulder pair illuminating social commentary and historical context and lively captions with more than 270 depictions of tasteful—and sometimes cheeky— bums in art. We created a website to support and promote the book, with plenty of bums on show!
“We were recommended Bookswarm for the Museum Bums website, and after looking at a few of his current sites we were confident Simon could provide what we needed. We were looking for a shop window for our products but also a space to expand on our online presence, share further insights into the world of Museum Bums, and advertise upcoming events.
Simon’s preliminary meetings and draft websites proved he knows what he’s talking about and we’re absolutely thrilled with the final product. While we’re not luddites we’re also not the most tech-y people, so another crucial part of Bookswarm’s service is the ongoing support once the website’s online. It’s very reassuring to know that if we break something, Bookswarm are on hand to put it back how it was!”
Mark Small and Jack Shoulder AKA The Museum Bums
The Life of Music
Microsite for The Life of Music, by Nicholas Kenyon, published by Yale University Press.
“From pianist Myra Hess’s performances in Blitz-ravaged London to John Adams’s composition for mourners of New York’s 9/11 attacks to Italian opera stars singing from their balconies amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, Kenyon argues that, no matter how great the crisis, music has the power to bring us together.”
New Welsh Review
Founded in 1988 as the successor to The Welsh Review (1939-1948), Dock Leaves and The Anglo-Welsh Review (1949-1987), New Welsh Review is Wales’s foremost literary magazine in English.
After undertaking an initial consultancy exercise funded by the Welsh Books Council into the options for digital publishing that would work best for NWR, we designed and built a new website for New Welsh Review, which uses WordPress and WooCommerce to allow them to sell books, magazines and subscriptions – with subscribers also receiving access to an extensive archive of online articles, and a library of digital back issues delivered via our partner Circular Software’s Masterplan system.
The site also acts as the home for the New Welsh Writing Awards, and as a submissions portal for non-fiction, short fiction and poetry.
Return of a Native
Photographer and writer Joanna Wing explores the lives of creative people and their relationship to place, in photo-essays enlivened by extensive research and links to further reading and musical accompaniments.
“Simon listened carefully to my brief and came back with a design that was exactly what I had in mind – a user friendly, simple yet beautiful blog. I’m delighted with it. And I couldn’t be happier with their friendly and prompt service.”
Joanna Wing, writer and photographer
Filotico Arts
Branding and website design for cultural consultancy and production company Filotico Arts.
Library 21 visualisation
Working with The Literary Platform Collective for The Reading Agency, our brief was to create a visual journey through Library 21 that would support their conversations with partners, developers and funders.
Our work included:
- Creating use cases and user journeys based on the findings in the report
- Commissioning illustrations of the user journeys including key elements of the user experience and the environment
- Creating an infographic that presented key data included in the report
- Working with TLP to publish these – together with their drawings of technical schema and key system interfaces – as a coherent narrative, which we did using the Creatavist platform
Illustrations by Sam Murdoch of Crush Creative.
