Writing’s on the wall for design agency office

A DESIGN agency that has created adverts for Bulmers cider, Gala bingo and Subway sandwiches has hired street artist Conzo to create a giant piece of graffiti for its Glasgow head office.

It took Conzo, who has carried out work for Red Bull and Reebok, 60 hours and 25 cans of spray paint to create the 50ft by 10ft mural for Frame.

Gary O’Donnell, the agency’s managing director, said he wanted a “contemporary image” to inspire his staff.

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“Your working environment can say a lot about you – particularly in the creative industries,” O’Donnell said. “If you’re all about ideas and inspiration, but your office is dull and uninteresting, that feels like a contradiction.”

O’Donnell admitted the mural could also be seen as a clever investment as Conzo’s popularity, and the value of his work, increases.

Frame – which also lists First Group, Royal Bank of Scotland and Scottish and Southern Energy among its clients – was founded in 1989 and now turns over £3.5 million, employing 30 staff.

Conzo, a former student at Glasgow Caledonian University and Glasgow Metropolitan College of Print & Design, was signed up last month by Robert Beecham, the entrepreneur who secured the first Star Wars product licence in Europe, to produce a new range of adult collectable art toys called Dudebox.

Conzo said: “When I got asked to do the piece at Frame I was chuffed to bits with the scale I was getting to work with, as I love going big, and was given the golden-ticket brief, which was open to flex my own style and ideas.

“As it was a studio full of creatives, I didn’t want to produce something safe or easy but completely original and one of a kind. I pushed myself on this one and went for something that me and the Frame team agreed would work best in the studio, a flowing piece with direction.”

Conzo rose to fame as part of a team commissioned to paint 90ft murals using spray paint in Edinburgh and Glasgow during “Connectivity”, a global advertising campaign to mark the 100th anniversary of the Converse shoe brand.

As well as his corporate commissions, Conzo has produced work for Amnesty International during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe to commemorate pro-democracy student protesters in Burma along with artwork for a protest the charity staged against RBS’s investment policy.

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His work has also taken him to the Scottish Parliament, where he ran art workshops for fifth and sixth-year school pupils, encouraging them to think about their political views and about policies they would like to see changed over the next five years.

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