While volunteering with Trivallis media team I was tasked with designing a large wall decal for the main reception area. As Trivallis is a housing association in Rhonda Cynon Taff I decided to link the mural with the designs I had made for the meeting rooms on the upper floors of their building. As well as adapting the existing designs I needed to make multiple new vectors of iconic places found in RCT. Each vector had different properties and needed certain details to make them recognisable. In particular I found that some buildings seemed unrecognisable as silhouettes. In order to fix this I added the windows of each building giving them shape, size and perspective.
In order to make a background that also linked to the RCT region I collected photos of the surrounding valleys and stitch them together to make one long flowing hilltop. While the initial block colour hills looked rather ragged and disjointed I developed them though the iterations to work in unison with the landmarks, sometimes hugging the taller building and other times providing placings for the hillside statues and monuments.
While placing each piece I tried to order them so that they were as geographically correct as possible. For example, the buildings in the south are on the left while the northern ones are to the right, and the stone circle monument found above Pontypridd is above the building found in Pontypridd itself. After collecting and connecting all of my pieces onto the spread I began changing the colours to make each object stand out against each other and not blend together.
With Pontypridd being the home of the Welsh national anthem we thought it important to include it in the mural design. I looked at a few different options for including it in the image but landed on one idea. The sheet music is carefully shown on wisps of wind that flow down the design while the lyrics hang beneath them. It was important to me that the chords be displayed as accurately as possible so that they could be recognised by anyone who could read sheet music.
The mural was one of the last updates made to the building and has had a few changes since my departure from Trivallis. For example the colours were updated, adding a deeper shade of blue to bring out certain buildings and aspects, and the English translation of the Welsh national anthem was removed from the hilltops.
I am very proud to have my work up in the Trivallis building and I would like to especially thank the Media & Comms team for welcoming me during my time with them.
To see the other work that I have done on the Trivallis meeting rooms please visit my
projects page.
