johnson banks have designed a collection of maps for this year's london design festival
that will help visitors pinpoint some of the V&A museum's design highlights.

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michael johnson told designboom more about the project:

'this project stemmed from a discussion early in the year about designer’s inspirations, and how
a lot of creatives found the V&A influential. we started planning an exhibition where we gathered
favoured pieces together, then realised that the logistics would be too daunting. then we started to
discuss other ways to show how the museum influenced people, and hatched a plan to create
bespoke maps of the museum, based on notable people’s favorite items.'

'so we drew up lists of people that we and the museum thought would select an interesting and
unusual ‘journey’ through one of the world’s greatest museums, sent out letters, then finalized
10 people prepared to come and spend a day wandering and selecting. a few great people like
vivienne westwood just ran out of time, but we’re hoping to do a ‘round two’ at some time in
the future. as it was we had a good selection of designers like paul smith and stephen jones,
pop stars (florence from florence and the machine), theater personalities (cameron mackintosh)
writers (jacqueline wilson) and a super model (erin o’connor).'

'after that, our design task was to design each map differently, to reflect each individual,
yet fall under an overall style, so you see glimpses of content from the outside, then within
each map is different (lines for paul smith, tape for nick rhodes, ginger hair for florence welch, etc).
our early experiments in folding the A2 sized maps in unusual ways revealed a highly unusual
‘map fold’ that creates the illusion of many pieces of paper, but is just folded from one piece of paper.'

'the maps are printed, folded and drilled, and will be hung from a specially designed stand
that is being made for the duration of the design festival.'
































project credits
project name: v&a and me
project: V&A designer maps
client: V&A/london design festival
design: johnson banks
photographer: leon steele
modelmaker: wesley west
V&A client: victoria broackes

fill list of contributors
anya hindmarch - fashion designer
sir mark jones - museum director
stephen jones - hat designer
sir cameron mackintosh - theatre producer
erin o’connor - supermodel
nick rhodes - singer and producer
tom schumacher - theatre producer
sir paul smith - designer
florence welch - singer-songwriter
dame jacqueline wilson - children’s author