Irish Craft Heroes is a highly-visual, outdoor exhibition and commemorative coffee-table book celebrating Ireland’s inspirational craftspeople and makers whose work has contributed to the rich tapestry of craft and design practice in Ireland.
The exhibition and publication charts the evolution of the craft and design sector on the island of Ireland over the last 50 years, and pays homage to the many makers whose work has significant legacy.

The first steps on this creative journey were spent in dialogue with DCCI – working on the mechanics of how a touring exhibition could work in an outdoor setting. A covid enforced decision actually opened the exhibition up to a much wider audience. Once the movable panels system had been defined and prototyped we set about creating the style template for the panels. Our concept for the exhibition and the book was to take the idea of the ‘facet’ common in jewellery design and to explore this as a graphic language. The DCCI supports a myriad of design makers so we felt this multifaceted language encapsulated the essence of the organisation.

Each craft hero layout has a hierarchy of information both visual and written. The main emphasis is on the visual example of their work. This is supported by key information including their name, profile image and text and a personal quote either from the maker or a response from a third party on them/their work. We also created a set of colour coded icons which helped to define the materials that the craft maker worked with – textiles, metal/jewellery, glass, ceramic/stone, wood/furniture. The icons explore the use of line as a descriptor. Each panel/page layout also includes a key timeline which shows the years through which the maker was/is active.