Kingslea Primary School Timeline Design

Client: Mr A.Conway, Headteacher.
Project: School Timeline
Location: Kingslea Primary School, Horsham
Design: 1348 Design
Print and Installation: BEL Signs

Having already designed event posters and banners for the PTA group of Kingslea Primary School, KLASS, 1348 Design had built a good relationship within the school. The Headteacher, Mr Conway asked for designers to come forward for a new project for the main school hall and our name was added.

The Vision

Having been sent a catalogue of timeline ideas for school corridors Mr Conway had seen an idea he liked but had no space for. All the corridors are taken, and adding a large installation of a timeline would mean nothing could be placed on the walls. Thereby he hit upon an idea, placing the timeline within the main hall. The hall, with two short walls 40m in length and two longer walls 70m long meant the timeline could travel almost the whole length and could go up over and around sports equipment, doors and speakers. With the hall as a canvas, he needed a designer to help him with his vision.

The Brief

Initially, the brief was for 300 informative circles along a timeline, that would comprise various events across three themes which would be colour coded: International, UK and Horsham events. The line would be a thick vinyl that would travel around the hall raising and falling over objects. Bright orange was suggested with bold times inserted onto the line, giving it impact and interest. Design suggestions included showing text separately from the circular images, however, a design combining the text and images within each circle allowed for a clearer display and added more context to each image. The colour coding itself would be by an outline around each individual circle. One of the biggest hurdles we had to overcome was ensuring we could source images of national and world events, as well as those for local points on the timeline.

The Journey

Mr Conway and a team of teachers at Kingslea Primary School supplied a grid of times with various key dates. This began with Aboriginals in 63,000BC and ended with the Olympics hosted in London in 2012. This encompassed the Stone Age, Iron Age, Romans, Greeks, Vikings, Normans, Tudors, Stuarts, Georgians, Victorians and Windsors, with hand-picked important dates placed throughout. Horsham appears around the year 947 with its first historical mention, then onto the heaviest hailstone ever recorded in 1958, and up to Kingslea Primary School being built in 2006 and when South Lodge Hotel hosted the G8 summit in 2009.

A mixture of images was required, some covering specific events, others depicting time periods in general, from both stock image libraries and the public domain. The Horsham specific images were sourced from the West Sussex County Council Library Service, these showed the Carfax in 1892, the Town Hall in 1905 and the war memorial in 1920, amongst others.
Proofs were put together along with mock-ups of how they might appear on the walls.

The Final Timeline

After three months of proofing and amendments, the designs were sent to a local signage business; BEL Signs.

The final design featured 24 large circles 650mm in size and 114 smaller 450mm circles along the timeline. These included 32 circles featuring Horsham, 43 featuring UK highlights and 64 with international events. Each was printed, cut, and installed along with an orange matt vinyl strip and white CAD cut vinyl dates. A team of two worked on the final installation across two days, positioning the timeline and circles across all four walls of the school hall.

Feedback

“We absolutely love the timeline. Thanks for all the work you put in and the guys that put up the timeline were absolutely fantastic.” Mr A.Conway

“It’s brilliant, really clear and it brings the space to life, it’s great seeing all the different scales of history – local, national and international – alongside each other. Fantastic job!” Parent

“It looks brilliant, what a fantastic resource” Parent

The Future

The timeline ends in 2012, but who is to say where it will head next. Mr Conway has already asked the pupils if there is anything they would like to see added, so there could be more to come!