We asked our designer Paul Hemmingfield at Pin to explain how the ‘heads’ poster was first developed:
"I was introduced to the concept for The Warehouse Project whilst taking a breather from the main room at Sankey’s Soap in April 2006 where Theo Parrish was holding court. Sam (WHP co-founder) explained how they planned to create a series of events running for twelve weeks from October to December that year. These would be large-scale, multi-genre, indoor clubbing events, the like of which Manchester had never seen before. It was called The Warehouse Project as the parties would take place in two disused warehouses just on the outskirts of the City Centre; the venue was later revealed to be the iconic Boddingtons Brewery, now sadly demolished. It was an exciting proposition, I wanted to go to the parties and I definitely wanted to be the designer.
My idea for the graphic identity of The Warehouse Project was to create an illustration that wasn’t typical of clubs of the time. So no photoshop filters, neon tubing or girls dancing in smoke and lasers. The lead image would be a stark modernist design that looked futuristic, hinting at its association with digital music, but not out and out ‘club’.
The orignial poster (seen opposite), was designed by myself whilst working for Eg.G. It Incorporates the aspects that gave birth to the project: the heads represent the founders and the diagonal strips (placed where the brain would be in medical diagrams) spell out ‘thewarehouseproject’ in code (t=magenta h=light green e= cyan etc). The styling is a concoction of Swiss modernism, hazard signage, scientific diagrams and there’s a nod towards Peter Saville’s ‘Blue Monday’ and tDRs ‘Wipeout’. Futursit and retro at the same time.
Each year the design has evolved, but to mark five years of The Warehouse Project we have revisted the original posters; re-printed for this year with only the dates changed. The original tagline ‘for twelve weeks this city is ours...’ could be called a mission statement, a call to arms if you like. It was an open invitation to all of us to make the most of the series of parties and really rejoice in what was going on in our city. Yes, we know there’s more than twelve weeks of events at The Warehouse Project 2010, but we’ve kept the tagline on the poster for this year to keep true to the origin of those first parties. It’s a deliberate mistake."
We asked our photographer Sebastian Matthes to describe his favourite photographs from The Warehouse Project:
"The first one is one of my all time favourite WHP shoots. It sums up the excitement of the whole event. There is a bit of everything in there. I've got a big print of it at home and sometimes find myself looking at it for ages and every now and then I find something new. I can't remember who was playing that night but it doesn't really matter. If you take away the fashion and styles of a certain music genre, peoples behaviour is essentially the same. So it could have been anyone on stage. Three words spring to mind: Love, Excitement and Exhaustion."
"This is one of my early WHP shots. Taken in 2006. You can see Simon Taylor-Davis of the Klaxons getting the crowd all new raved up. 2006 is the year I started shooting for the WHP. Little experience, speaking english with quite a german accent and next to no idea who the artists are I was shooting. It was brilliant! I went to one of the first nights back at Boddingtons. Armed with a ticket and my old camera I just wanted to shoot artists on stage. Once in I was infected. I remember calling the WHP office the next week and asking for an AAA for every night in exchange for pictures. They liked my work and here I am still shooting for them 4 years later (Thanks Kirsty for believing in me xx). To keep a long story short: The Klaxons shot brings back memories."
"The last picture is probably not the best one but the story behind it is special to me. I had the privilege to work with Erol a lot the last years so I know he's a top bloke. All he cares about are the punters, the fan. For him it doesn't end with his set. I remember one night back in 2006 where he went down into the pit after his set to hand out water bottles to everyone in the front row. The picture you see here I took straight after his set at WHP down at Store St. He played a 2hr set and absolutely killed it. The crowd went mental to a point that I was wondering how on earth can any of the following artists top that off. The crowd just didn't stop screaming for excitement. The guy in the red jacket (and Erol t-shirt) is a long time Erol fan. I don't know his name but I've seen him many times at his sets. Erol left his decks and instead of wandering off backstage for a cold drink he went straight to the edge of the stage to thank his fans. I like to think he thanked him in particular."
