150 Years of the Cavendish Laboratory

The brief was to design a cover for the department’s magazine to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Cavendish Laboratory. The idea was to highlight the many discoveries and areas of ground-breaking research associated with the laboratory since its inception. The image had to feature both past and present, and to look forward as much as possible, presenting the lab’s work as ongoing and evolving. This fed into the composition which, in discussion with the Cavendish team, expanded to a wraparound cover to accommodate all the individuals and research areas we felt should be represented. The pared-down visual language (flat colours in a limited palette) was chosen for consistency across the wide span of time, individuals and types of science. It was fun trying to depict some of the more theoretical areas, such as quantum entanglement, in an immediate and clear way. I enjoyed learning about areas of physics I wasn’t previously familiar with along the way. The follow-up project was designing a ‘physics walk’ map of Cambridge to accompany an audio tour. This used the same visual style, but with the relevant discoveries and developments overlaid onto a clear and readable map of Cambridge City centre, and the new Dolby Centre complex.