Charmian Griffin 0:00
Earlier this year, we commissioned a young designer Vera to build us a website. And here she is with me. Vera, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself?
Vera van de Seyp 0:16
Sure. So my name is Vera. I live in Amsterdam. I mainly do digital work, so I work online a lot. And I'm a graphic designer, and I guess sort of a creative coder. So I programme but I never had the training for it. I think that's my definition of it. I also teach in The Hague at the Royal Academy of Arts in the Netherlands, and also at ArtEZ in Arnhem. And I also do workshops and lectures. I think that's a good summary of my work. Oh, yeah, I recently hacked a knitting machine, as well.
Charmian Griffin 1:02
You hacked a knitting machine?
Vera van de Seyp 1:03
Yeah. So I do a lot of digital work normally, and especially during the lockdown there was like, I think, even the prints work that I used to do before kind of fell away. So at some point, I was really craving doing something something physical again. So yeah, and printing posters, that was not going to happen. I had already the hobby of knitting. And that kind of got out of hand. So within, I think, six months, I had purchased three knitting machines, secondhand, and one of them is hacked, and I make fabrics with a No, and it's quite nice.
Charmian Griffin 1:50
Wow. When you step away from the computer, you do it big style. Vera and I have been working together on other projects for a couple of years. And I know her work really well. And I thought, when I was speaking with Idle Women about how to create a digital environment for the physic garden, which was a garden, in Nelson in Lancashire, in the UK, that was unavailable during lockdown. We decided to kind of build a community online, and Vera was just the perfect person to approach to help us make that happen.
Vera van de Seyp 2:30
Thanks
Charmian Griffin 2:31
Of course, you are wonderful. When I sent her the brief, something magic must have happened because I basically just commissioned you, Vera to make a website where I could put some content up, but you took it to a different level. Can you tell us more about how you felt when you got the brief? And what inspired you about it?
Vera van de Seyp 2:56
Yeah, sure. I mean, that's kind of, I think, sometimes you just get these briefs where you're really like, Oh, my God, this is so cool. So that's a bit of feeling I had when you told me about the Physic Garden Network, it just somehow clicked, I was really like, Ah, it's such a great initiative. And it's so great that this is happening. I've never actually been to Nelson. So I have never seen the place but I've seen photos of it. And it looked super idyllic and nice. And I think there were also a lot of things like aspects of the story and project that really aligned with things I wanted to try out anyway. So working with weather data, but without making like, you know, this very, like black and white, 3D radar visualisation, but more in a bit more of a fluid way or a bit more playful way. So yeah, it just kind of stuck to me. And I think that the project got very out of hand, but in a good way. So I really, I was really thinking also, how I mean, there's many ways to do that, of course, but like how can you have an accessible site but still have the weather influence it or still kind of reflect this physical weather online? That's, I think what happenened.
Charmian Griffin 4:25
That was something that was really important to us. So the brief was something that we came up with during lockdown when things weren't great. And in the place of sadness, really, because you know, Rachel and Cis, who founded Idle Women, had fundraised to build this garden, it was going to be this incredible place where women from all over the country could come and help dig the land, build walls, plant medicinal herbs, and build a space together, that they could all belong to and that could belong to them. And then all of a sudden, nobody's allowed to hang out with anybody else, especially not go and spend time in a garden. And we were like, What can we do? When you think about how people meet each other online, it just doesn't seem to compare. You can't replace being in a garden with somebody with, with anything that's like technical or technological. However, I think we came pretty close with what we built together. Could you tell us a little bit about the weather API (perhaps sorry I shouldn't even use the word API) about how you have visualised the weather? And how that works on the website?
Vera van de Seyp 5:40
Yeah, sure. So there is an API. I mean, I think that at the time, it also really reflected with me. So I looked into ways how to visualise this weather in a place that I was not in. So it was kind of hard actually to check if it was working properly, because I was not there. So I couldn't really decide to check on other sites. But basically, how it works is that there's a weather API API. So like, yeah, it's basically like your little code that you can call and you can give it some assignments. And if you give it that, it will return some information to you. So it's like, that's kind of the Yeah, an API in a nutshell. And this open one, so it's a free one, it's open, accessible for everyone to use within limits. And basically, you can give it dates and location, which is what I did for the main sites. So and you can call, you can ask for different types of information as well. So you can ask, for instance, for the really the weather, so more like the winds and the humidity and the precipitation. But you can also ask, for instance, for a lunar information, so more astrology. So when does the moon rates when the sun said the same for the sun? What's the light angle identified? No, there was a thing, but now, sorry, I learned some stuff as well, along the way. And so I call it for those two things. And I also developed my own scripts, like, for instance, the full moon was really important. So I felt it would be really fun to add, which zodiac sign was applying. So that's something I put in there also based on the date. And what it also confirms it was, I mean, apart from, it should still stay accessible. But I also thought it would be really nice that it can be used kind of a bit as a tool, like almost, of course, like you're gonna, you can open your weather app. But also, if you then visit the websites like okay, Nelson, it's now raining, or it's now the sun is shining. And I felt that that was a really nice thing. And also for the residencies. I edit a little part where you can see the date and the words, what kind of Yeah, what kind of weather it was around the date of the, of the beginning of the of the residency. So
Charmian Griffin 8:29
when is the message she's talking about a programme called the full moon reflections, which she is part of, where either women commissioned different artists to respond to the physic garden each month, with the aim of like publishing that, whatever they created, or whatever they made with the community, on the full moon of each month. There are also residences that have taken place on this Selena Cooper, which is the canal boat that's moored up next to the physic garden. So it's like a really nice, sort of digital version of the analogue residences that have taken place for years with either women. What I really like about the use of leather on the website is for a start, like you said, it doesn't look like how most people would visualise the weather. You know, there's, it doesn't immediately even look necessarily like weather, it just looks beautiful that you come on to the homepage. And it takes a minute for you to realise to connect the data stream which comes down on the ticker tape top of the site on the homepage, with the initial animation, but then you realise Oh, yeah, it's actually raining in Nelson right now. And that's what just happens when I enter the website. There's like, not necessarily a conscious awareness that you are talking about weather but most of all, there's a connection. And I think that's what's really important during this past year with the physic garden is that we are all connected to each other but also that we're all connected to this place that brought us together, which is a very specific place in Lancashire. So I think that was a beautiful A beautiful extra add on that you did way, way beyond what you'd ask for things. The other thing I wanted to talk a bit about was the way that the website changes during the seasons. Because of course, you've thought about that in terms of like, that's something that's very important for gardening is to think about how preseason changes, not just the weather day to day. Can you tell us a bit more about how you work that into your design to?
Vera van de Seyp 10:25
Yeah, for sure. I'm a terrible gardener myself, I have a set of in house plants that magically survived my rain. But other than that, like I've never owned a garden myself, I did go. Yeah, I was outside a lot, though. So I really like it. But I was inspired a bit by these planting and calendar. So you have like these calendars with different crops and when you should plant them and when they should be harvested. And I thought it might be nice to also have usually they have like this kind of colours and charts. And I thought it might be nice to have that somehow on the website as well. So what's happening now is that you based on the season, there's the colours actually change of the website. So each season has a different colour. And also based on the weather the you have some elements changes a bit. So these are all like super ubiquitous things, you don't have to worry, even though because you don't, you can just go to the website without realising this. And I think you only start realising this if you come back over time and see that something changed. And and, yeah, I quite like that about it that it's like, it's a very subtle thing. And the website's functions without it. But it's something that also corresponds to this growing and harvesting and whether whether that influences that a lot, of course.
Charmian Griffin 12:06
And what's so nice about that, as well as that, I think when you build a website, like the classic thing to always think about is who the website's for who's going to use it. And in our minds, and then the brief, we had always been limited to like quite a small number of people. So the women who were part of the physical network, and we hope that would grow, we're not hoping no, it's not just a forum, it's not small, that small, it has information that people beyond that group might be interested in. But I like the fact that you've provided something really special for returning visitors, as we call them. Yeah. Like you know, you they will notice, I'm back to the website a few times a year, you'll notice the colours change if you just come once you probably an accident with the colours wasn't there, but I think Rachel insists pointed out when you first showed them your visual identity, you're on the suffragette flag colours.
Vera van de Seyp 13:01
Yeah, I totally forgot about that for a bit. There was such a funny coincidence. So it was really I wanted to have some some green colours, and also something more like kind of contrasting. And it turned out that the colour the colour scheme that I picked was actually so similar to the suffragettes banners. So it's kind of like this green and a little bit pink, purplish. And there, yeah, there was all the way in the beginning, but it was really nice. We kind of kept the colours, especially because of that, because it's also really interesting. Reference and also really fitting with, I think, the attitudes of system rich, especially but, but also mine. And also the whole project, I think
Charmian Griffin 13:58
it's all about creating a place for women to belong, and it's, it's a it's a radical, politically motivated. It's not just a nice garden, like there's a lot more going on. And Rachel are very interested in the suffragette movement in the north of England and how that's potentially been sidelined slightly by the you know, the focus on paint cursed and the London side of things, you know, there were revolutionaries in the north, and in fact either women themselves and named after the women who worked on the canal boats who were on Canal
Vera van de Seyp 14:31
Yeah. And the boat is called Celina Cooper. Right, because there was also a suffragettes suffered just suffering.
Charmian Griffin 14:40
I think we say yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I don't think there's any such thing as coincidence I would say this is more like magic. Yeah, anything that you that you sort of somehow pick that from the universe.
Vera van de Seyp 14:55
It's very possible that I saw it and then forgot about it. And then presented it and no, it's like, Oh, right. That's, but that won't be the first time that happened. But I don't remember it. But it worked. But I really liked
Charmian Griffin 15:09
it. Yeah, I really like it. But like you said, it provides like, you know, like a kind of using a different kind of isn't green, the green isn't obvious colour to go for when you're thinking about building a website, it's about a garden. But to go for it to the opposite end of the spectrum, to purple is something quite different. And I think that's it, that that move movement that you made, or that choice that you made is obviously a choice at some point that a suffragette made to? You both centuries apart, that's
Vera van de Seyp 15:38
cool. We kind of had the same thought process. Exactly, perhaps. Yeah, what I what I really like about the website as well, and I think that's also really something you introduced, Sherman, is that a lot of the set the pages you can also listen to. So like there's, it's quite text heavy. But but there's like space for audio transcriptions as well. I think that's a really nice addition as well. I can that makes it more accessible.
Charmian Griffin 16:13
Yeah, it's, I cannot take credit for that. Unfortunately, that was an idea of the wonderful assessor of oil. From Ida women who works a lot with audio is slightly screen adverse, I hope she wouldn't mind me saying that was just the women that she works with. She works very closely with lots of different groups of women. And I think the use of audio is something that she noticed a lot during the pandemic. So voice notes being sent on WhatsApp groups. So she realised actually, that's another way to connect to people who might not want to sit down and read text. And we've got a lot of women in the network who speak Urdu as their first language. So we're going to have some audio tracks in Urdu as well. I mean, in fact, one of the B has tracks is do I think, her grandma, like turmeric Haldi. So yeah, I think the use of audio on is quite unique on the site. Is it with chat about the time face as well, you had a specific type? Oh, yeah. Because it was quite male typeface designer, right. Yeah,
Vera van de Seyp 17:19
I mean, this is like, the struggle is real. And actually, this one is from colophon. Foundry. So it's a mix. I did a little research on this. And this is also something ongoing, because I, usually my, if I make this and it's quite tight, saturated, and I like designing type for like display. So if it's like a few letters, I like it, but not for entire typesetting texts. I don't have the patience for that. And I admire anyone that does. Yeah, it's really quite hard to find. And it's changing slowly. But it's hard to find the typefaces made by women. There there are, there are some and they're they're really good. But yeah, it's it's quite a challenge. But yeah, also for this site, I really wanted to have a typeface that was based in the UK, or at least like this, and partly in the UK. And also, at least for parts, a foundry by Roman Yeah. So that that was actually quite good narrowed down the options a little bit. Yeah, I really hope this changes though. That's also the psycho an issue. I think in type design, as well as in programming. And I think in a lot of other creative businesses that somehow that gap, it's not really feeling like changing rapidly enough.
Charmian Griffin 19:00
We've certainly find that in, in many of the projects that we do with either women which we exclusively work with women identified contractors, and there are cases where it's really hard to find people, but it's never impossible. That's but I you know, sis, and Rachel as an as my waves, like, have pushed me to define people who I would normally be like on earth. No, that's it. There's no app developers who who are women, I don't know any. Like, Oh, what about Pharaoh? They just have to look a bit harder. And then once you find it, always, it's always a million times better than anything else you would ever find on the internet or in person worked for.
Vera van de Seyp 19:48
Yeah, and I think that's also really important. So take that extra step. Where you can if you can, yeah. Look for Yeah, for people that I might otherwise not, you know, might not be famous or very well known, but still do their job really well. And, and yeah, with which collaborating also, with collaborating also becomes a lot more fun or like, yeah, also, then I yeah, I think that's really essential to to do. And I think you're doing Yeah, well, it's, it's,
Charmian Griffin 20:28
I think we didn't ask you to specifically like only work with, I mean, you can work with a weather API that's built by a woman or, you know, a set a library of code that's built by a woman all the time, it's not possible. And those things are never like, linked to an individual anyway. And we definitely didn't ask you to like specifically work with a female type design designed by a woman. But the fact that you went that extra mile and thought about that shows how much resonance that was between us and you, and why this website, blown our minds in so many ways. Because you just single was something that you really took care of. And I think that's, yeah, that really chimes with the force of idle women and made it a really special thing to work on. I was wondering if there's anything that I haven't like anything that you're super proud of, and you can go as technical as you'd like here?
Vera van de Seyp 21:24
Oh, that's difficult man. I really like from NaVi has residency, there's this little rhizome. I mean, it's not lino, it's, it's a good a properly sized razor. I really like that brand, just because it kind of shows the connections that she talks about. And a quite Yeah, I mean, I think every page has some nice. Yeah, like carefully thought through details.
Charmian Griffin 22:03
So nothing specific. Maybe we should leave that to the visitors to the website to find their own. Yeah, I think that's a good idea. I'm their favourite. And just for the record, like this website, we're going to launch it quite soon. And start to kind of talk about it a little bit more widely, but it's not going anywhere. And just like our medicinal herbs, we've all been growing at home, we really hope it will grow and more content will be added over time. And perhaps different women will come in and come editors of this site. And yeah, I'm really hoping that it'll kind of go wild in some ways, just like the garden. Yeah.
Vera van de Seyp 22:40
It's growing like the garden.
Charmian Griffin 22:41
Yeah, exactly. Nice. You think you're ever going to make it over to Nelson's visit the garden? I really hope so.
Vera van de Seyp 22:47
I would love to Yeah, I think it's going to be a bit easier now than last year. Like, I think we started about eight months ago. I hope it will like in a few months. It will just be possible. There will be great.
Charmian Griffin 23:04
Yeah, well, maybe. Yes, there will be great focus actually plant plants and some little seedlings.
Vera van de Seyp 23:14
Yeah, that would be amazing.
Charmian Griffin 23:17
Thank you so much, Vera.
Vera van de Seyp 23:19
Thank you too.