Flying Pig Systems Archive

The Fifth Estate was asked to create a web archive for materials relating to the history of the iconic Wholehog and Wholehog II lighting consoles. Designed by British company Flying Pig Systems, the Wholehog was launched in 1992 and revolutionised the control of modern show lighting. Its 1995 successor, the Wholehog II, dominated concert lighting for years. As well as providing a resource for all the information and materials relevant to these products and the story of their creators, the website would also serve as home for the hour-long video recording of the PLASA 2017 seminar, Can Pigs Still Fly?, produced by The Fifth Estate.

As an iconic brand which shaped the future of stage lighting control and influenced the careers of many leading lighting practitioners of the 1990s and 2000s, the Flying Pig story still attracts strong interest in the entertainment lighting industry. Phase 1 of the site would have three main Archive areas – Images, Documents and Press. To populate these we digitized and databased hundreds of pages of press articles and documents collected by the Flying Pig team back in the 90s, and filed, tagged and captioned dozens of photographs. We also wrote ‘The Story’ of the company, interviewed its three founders, and conducted interviews with users of the early Wholehog consoles – including lighting designers and operators working on some of the leading concert tours of the 1990s - to create a ‘Memories’ archive.

When we announced the launch of the web archive via the Flying Pig Systems Facebook page, the news was extremely well received. The post attracted over 200 Likes, as well as many positive comments and was shared 31 times. Over 21,000 people were reached, with more than 3,500 direct engagements driving traffic directly to the website. We also saw a 15% increase in followers of the Facebook page.