On the Friday, I headed off to the Globe to have my meeting/talk with Meghan. I arrived quite early and as Meghan was no where to be found, I took the time to have a good look around at the shop to see if any extra questions sprang to mind. I was really quite nervous at this stage not knowing what to expect.
I returned to the front desk at 11:00, the time that Meghan would be expecting me and this time she was reached. While I was looking at a brochure on the in construction covered (as in with a full roof apposed to the open-to-the-elements Globe) theatre they are building, Meghan snuck up behind me and said, "You must be Imogen." I turned and saw a nice young lady with short hair in jeans and t-shirt, I was relieved. I started to introduce myself and shook her hand to which she said, "Oh good strong handshake, if you were coming for a job I'd hire you," which set us both off laughing. I no longer felt nervous at all. She continued by looking around dodging her gaze through the tourists and said, "Now you're going to love this, because the quietest spot for us to talk is probably in the theatre." And off she strode, out through the door towards the theatre. She flung open the main door, not the side door through which the tourists were entering and there it was. I was was stunned by the theatre's brilliance and the quiet haven that the walls created even though the hustle and bustle of London was right outside.
We headed up the stairs and and sat at the back of the theatre and started to chat. It wasn't at all as I had expected. I thought I would have been lead into a small office, forced to sit opposite each other and have to commense a rather forced and awquard conversation, but this was... well it was just so much fun!!! Now that I have explained the situation I suppose I should say what I learnt about the theatre.
I found it was good having had the time to look at the shop. Some of my questions were already answered in a way but this gave me the chance to reformulate and ask other more specific questions with a higher benificial rate. I started off by asking what kind of designers she generally targeted when looking for new designs which is when I discovered that she in fact designed the main line so I really had contacted the right person.
The majority of the products in the shop are their own products with mainly the books and the odd children's toy outsourced. I saw in the shop that they had prop skulls and even these Meghan said weren't really outsources. They are hand moulded and painted by the prop company that makes their own props so this makes them pretty much their own as well. When I've got the spare money I would love to get one, they were so cool. Meghan said the major purchasers of the skulls were middle-aged men. The fact that they have so many of their own products works very positively. When you go somewhere special you want something to remember the place and nothing is more frustrating than seeing cheap tat that you saw at the other three museums you visited earlier in the week.
The main audience, and hence target market, coming through the tour and shop are actually school children. Around this period, Meghan said mainly French. The products tend to be aimed at people in their young twenties and not nessesarily with an interest in Shakespeare. Many people in the shop have a quick browse so the product has to have a 10 second grabbing attraction, so they have to be more visually attractive than just a bit of text on a t-shirt. The age and modern feel to the products is very important she said. She gets a thousand designs sent to her every year from people saying this is what the shop is missing. Most of them assume the Globe is targeted at old fashioned people who know absolutely everything and anything about Shakespeare. 'That's just so wrong,' she said, most people haven't got a clue when they send stuff to the Globe. An example was a range of posters which I thought were quite cool. They each show a photo taken during a performace in the background and an illustrated initial over the top in the foreground. These hadn't sold well at all and I saw they had been marked down to a pound each. Most people not knowing anything about Shakespeare had looked at them quickly and thought they don't have the initial of my name and walked on, not realising it was the initial of the play that it represented. I thought them very obvious and clear but clearly the general audience didn't.
Most of their ranges are based on individual plays that have been on in the season. At the beginning of the new season a new range is brought out, sometimes numerous ranges per year. Generally there's never just a t-shirt design. The t-shirts cost 20 pounds and a lot of people think they haven't got enough money to buy a t-shirt and want smaller items, even if they end up spending 20 pounds in the long run (which is exactly what I ended up doing funnily enough). When Meghan has got a new design she makes up a A3 display sheet with the tshirt design and some rough photoshopped ideas of the other products in the range to show the head for approval. She added that these wouldn't necessarily be the final designs but enough to show that the idea could work over a range and not just a t-shirt. Other products include: mugs, badges, bookmarks, bags, notepads, keyrings etc. The original design is generally repeated on most of the things and few extra small things are added for the badges and bookmarks. The materials tend to differ between the lines depending on the designs and atmospheres of the plays. Hamlet for example had a bookmark printed on leather, while A Midsummer Night's Dream had the bookmark design sewn onto silk. Because of these range based products I will be doing the same (A3 presentation sheet) with my A Midsummer Night's Dream designs.
Before leaving for London I re-read A Midsummer Night's Dream so I could go there and enter the project with the play fresh in my mind. A particular scene had struck me as visually brilliant and when I went into the shop I saw that it was this scene they had used for the bookmark. I told Meghan this and she agreed that this would be a brilliant part of the play to base the designs on. She said although it's magical it's also a bit of a darker scene. The macabre sells well she said. Our top selling line is the Macbeth line, they're splattered in blood baring the quote, "Out damned spot, out I say!" The t-shirt shows the blood spray that would actually be caused by a slit throat she told me with excitement afterwards while looking around in the shop together. It outsells the second most popular line twice, the second most popular line being a Hamlet line, which also has a darker and more gothic feel to it.
All of the product ranges that were based on the individual plays had quotes on them, which she said was not essential. She did say it was an absolute must to have the title of the play on the products. This was in the hope that whoever bought it and hadn't necessarily read it would come across the product later in life and think, 'Hey I think I'll read that." I would have to agree having seen the crowds that went through the theatre.
Meghan does not design all of the product lines. When looking for new talent she tends to go to graduation exhibitions and other places where whe can see the work first hand and contacts them via that. There was no point looking on the internet she said, it's so vast and you don't tend to find what you're looking for. I told her how hard I had found it to find interesting Shakespeare related products on the internet, but that I had managed to find Elizabeth. That's when she said that she had found Elizabeth via a graduation exhibition, a bonus and coincidence that they know each other.
When we were in the shop we carried on talking. She had sent me an email before I came in reference to my first brief I had written and had mentioned a vast amount of printing techniques. I said to her honestly that I had been a bit shocked and hadn't known the majority of them. I said my school's great for teaching you to look at your own work but when it comes to the real world and stuff we really need to know, they're actually a bit crap. She said that was where she had an advantage to a lot of designers as she comes from a printing based background, she knows exactly what can and can't be done. She told me about the screenprinting machines they use to print their fabric based items. It's a screen table with 8 hoses for the colours, so there's a limitation of 8 colours and they're still all printed by hand. On the odd one you can see a fault but all round they are pretty bloody good. I was actually surprised that they were all screenprinted because they were so detailed in some designs and well printed. She also told me in which order things had been printed, for example a bag for Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. This had had black printed over the top of silver on a black bag so the overlaying layers created a metallic black which was really effective (so effective I've got one hanging in my room now). It was good having done the printing minor and having done so much screenprinting. I was at least able to say that I had played around with green and gold over the top of each other and things like that and that it was a lot of fun to see the results. She said the experimentation with the colour layers really did make the products more interesting. As these are the printing techniques the Globe uses I will also be basing my designs on these techniques to keep it as real as possible. The mug designs are digitally printed onto special transfers and then put on the mugs.
We chatted about loads of other things too such as the theatre in general. I asked her if anything odd had happened when they were filming for Doctor Who. (In the third series the Doctor and his companion go back in time to meet Shakespeare. A group of three witches, which are in fact alien Carionites, are trying to let through the aliens from their planet to Earth. The shape and construction of the Globe work as a magical figure and when the magic words are said in the right spot the gateway would be opened.) She said that nothing odd happened but it was hilarious and a lot of fun as the theatre and all other linked buildings were filled with straw. She remembered one time getting into the lift and the TARDIS being in there, to her dissapointment there was nothing in the TARDIS. She told me lots of general information about the Globe which I won't bother typing out here as the post is already quite massive. She did say though that the Globe was not in it's original location as a listed building now stands in the original location which naturally can't be touched. I said, oh that's why the Doctor Who magic words didn't work, the theatre's in the wrong spot, which made her laugh. I mention this as it just really showed how relaxed the talk was, it was so much fun, a real highlight of the trip. It's left me really buzzing and excited to start on the making of the product designs.
In my excitement I actually forgot to take photos inside the theatre, oops. I've got a guidebook of the theatre and obviously there are images on the internet I can use for reference. If I need more I'll send Meghan an email to ask her if she could send me some. I shall post some more pictures of the Theatre and their products in my research posts very soon.
TIME COUNT:
1 1/2 - 2 Hours talking to Meghan in the Theatre and Shop
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