While in Manchester over Christmas I visted the Urbis Centre, an interesting building in itself but you can depend on it to have interesting exhibitions on. Not knowing what would be on this time round I was pleased to find the D&AD exhibition of 2008 award winners and an exhibition on the Hacienda club.

The Hacienda club, owned by Factory Records, was celebrating 25 years since the opening of the club which introduced the ‘madchester’ era. This was a bit before before my time but viewing the exhibition made me wish I was around at that time in Manchester!

The exhibition highlighted the revolutionary starke, industrial design style that was created by interior designer Ben Kelly and graphic designer Peter Saville. Back in the Madchester era Peter Saville was involved in forming the famous identity of the club which came to become legendary and it was from the poster and memorabilia designs for Factory records that Saville’s career was launched. For those of you who may not be familiar with Peter Saville’s work and influence on the music scene there is a far more detailed (and probably accurate) account of his work and life on his website - Peter Saville’s website