Billboard and poster designs for an Irish cultural arts initiative.

In July 2023, the Project Arts Centre in Temple Bar held an open call to have their street-facing billboard redesigned. Their only guideline was asking the designer what changes they wanted to see in Dublin’s future; and what we can learn from the past.

I interpreted this by re-imagining the carvings on the entrance stone of the prehistoric passage tomb Newgrange as a black-and-white pixel graphic. Experts believe Neolithic carvings like those at Newgrange were a means of relating important cultural and spiritual information to others; my design deliberately echoes the angular appearance of a QR code — another tool for storing and imparting information. I hoped this message would inspire others to explore the past to help build our cultural future. To this end, I came up with a slogan; “ancient roots, modern shoots”.

During this process, I also created a poster inspired by the Celtic god Lugh — I took inspiration from vintage video games and pixel art to design a three-faced visage that appears both foreboding and captivating. I hoped to create a series of images like this that could be placed in various locations as street art dedicated to Ireland’s ancient deities; the others are still a work in progress.