OK, I finished my placement at Elmwood this week, it went really well and I'm sad to leave. Apparently "Folk here were really impressed with your contribution", which is ace. I'm hopefully going to be returning there for a few weeks next year when I graduate.
You may have noticed the site had an overhaul, I've been working on updating this and my CV and print/PDF portfolios. I'm reasonable pleased with it, although I don't really like trying to brand myself, it's like having an identity crisis!
Stuff I've seen recently that is mint: This is dyson's new hand drier, its amazing! Bone dry in seconds.
Also spotted these on the tinterclicker: If I ever used a napkin this would be my weapon of choice!
Yesterday I was cruising the internet and downloaded a couple of new fonts from the NEO2 blog. Couldn't resist having a little play with them. Doesn't really mean anything to anybody, but it looks quite nice. Here's a close-up. The photo is taken by my friend George Marshall, as is the one from the entry page of this site. I think his pics are ace, he is also the designer for a microbiology magazine, BOSH!
Sorry for the lack of updates, I've been really busy lately and haven't had the chance. Also, sorry the sites been down for the last few days, I'm changing over hosting servers and had a few days without service.
Ok, first up I've been to quite a few exhibitions recently. Firstly degree shows at Leeds art college and Norwich art school. Lots of really good stuff, too much to mention! Really good to see the standard of work by graduates, gives me an idea of what I'm heading for this time next year. On that subject I also went to the D&AD New Blood show at Earls Court, felt slightly like a meat market, but the standard of work was good. Was also interesting to see how different college went about the task of showcasing their students, some far more successfully than others! I think my favorite was Falmouth or maybe Plymouth with their pantone organising system.
Also went to this exhibition of tribal style masks made from entirely from junk, some visually interesting and fun work.
Also took a visit to the Tate while in London, good minimalist exhibition as well as some constructivist graphic design/posters. I also love their bookshop, spent hours in there!
I think by far my favourite was the 'A century of Olympic posters' exhibition at the V&A childhood museum. This was part of my dissertation research for next year, which is studying the Olympics as a tool for social and political branding. Also had a look around the V&A childhood, quite good fun. Had a go at making some iron filing hair styles, this one is called 'the shoreditch'. This is what I want to look like when I'm old. Also when I was down in London managed to find a suitable hill to watch over the fence as Radiohead played in Victoria park, they were double ace. Then we had a mega curry night, everybody sticks in a fiver and you eat and drink like champions!
Also recently we've moved house. It's good-bye for our lovely fridge in Hessle Terrace... ...and hello to our jazzy pool table basement on Delph Mount.
I recently designed these t-shirts for revolutionz snowboard shop in Norwich, the inspiration came from our habit of trying to speak French really badly every time we go snowboarding! I'm also trying to help them out with their overall branding and hopefully I'll be designing their winter catalog.
Also housemates Tom Bing and Kyle Harvey have put websites online over the last week. I did all the coding for Tom's is based the whole thing on a series of linked blogs, this seemed the easiest way for him to keep on top of updating it as he's is often traveling away from home, plus he's not really a fan of web design. He can now easily and quickly update it from anywhere with internet access. Check Tom's site out here. Check Kyle's site out here.
Been on a work placement for the last two weeks at Elmwood design in Guisely. It's been going really well, and they've asked me to stay for another week which is great. I've learned loads so far, and starting to get a feeling for how the whole process works. I still need to work out what work I'm allowed to show on here due to confidentiality business, but I'll update soon with some of the stuff I've been working on.
College has finally reached an end for the year and a busy summer lays ahead of me :)
hmmmm, where to start? OK, firstly D&AD have invited me to come down to London next week to be a student judge for their New Blood event, which is really exciting. I've entered quite a few competitions this year, it'll be really interesting to be on the other side of things.
I recently went up to Newcastle for a talk by Adrian Shaghnessy (author of how to be graphic designer without losing your soul, one of my favourite books!) about the five essential attributes of a graphic designer. It was a really interesting evening, very informal and lots of good questions and points brought up.
I start my placement at Elmwood Design in just over a week, there office is in Guisley, about 8 miles outside Leeds. I decided that was slightly too far to ride on my bmx everyday, so with the help of photographer, good friend and bike shop employee Simon we put together an ace road bike made completely out of secondhand bits and bobs. It goes like a bat out of hell!
On the subject of work placements I've managed to arrange two weeks with the guys and girls at Farrows Design in my hometown of Norwich at the beggining of september. They seem like nice people with a lot of experience and large brand names under their belt, I'm looking forward it!
Me and illustrator friend Gus have started the redesign of his website, you can check it out here, expect it to be changing soon and getting some proper content.
I recently went down to Somerset House in London for the final day of the Sorrell Young Design Programme. There was a private view and presentations of all our work as well as some lectures from industry professionals. By far the most interesting and thought provoking of all was from Micheal Wolff, previously of Wolff Olins fame. He didn't bother showing any pictures of work, instead he just talked about the conversation he had with the taxi driver on the way there, it was brilliant. I decided if he was interesting, chances are Wally Olins is too, so I tracked down his book On Brand, which is now going to form part of my dissertation research this summer.
Also, found this recently, I think it's ace! It's a typographic clock screen saver thingymajig. I've set my version up as a justified off-center column, white back ground, 30% grey type and red highlights, bosh!
Finally... LS6BMX, the colab that me and my housemates are working on with various other people documenting the Leeds bmx scene have just released a new web edit. We're planning a full website, watch this space! The video has got some footage from Leeds international pool that we sneaked into, pretty amazing building, a lot of fun to be had! As usual the filming and editing quality is intentionally bad, we like to see ourselves as the antithesis to a lot of the Hollywood production style bmx films that a lot of people are putting out these days. Our direction seems to be going down really well. Anyway...
Here's a video from the recent Nike exhibition in Beijing, it's all about celebrating the history and creativity of BMX. It's kinda strange as they only starting paying any interest in it about two years ago, after a few failed attempts to get into the skateboard market they then saw the opportunity to start making money off BMX... None the less, it's always nice to see a big company paying people to go to the other side of the world to ride bikes and draw pictures. I would of sold out for a free holiday! Looking at the bigger picture though, it's interesting to see companies such as nike and redbull start spending more of their marketing budget on events rather than straight forward advertising.
In other news, yesterday I managed to secure a two week placement with the guys and girls over at elmwood design. I really excited about this, there work is amazing and they have more awards than you can shake a stick at, so I'm sure I'm going to learn a lot from the experience. If I'm lucky I might even be able to make myself useful, bonus!
Right, I've got some work to finish off before lunch, chao x
I just finished the Endsleigh Insurance competition that YCN were organising, I ended up doing a colaberation with my housemate Kyle. You can download a pdf of our entry here if you wish. Should find out in the next few days how successful it is... regardless I'm quite pleased with it!
Also, I've won this months typographic flair competition hosted by the guys at creativematch. I'm super excited, as I've never won anything before... I'm going to highfive myself right after this blog post!
The guys over at graphic-design-blog.com just made a post about me in their news section which is ace, thanks!
This months DIG Magazine has just come out, they've used my font AllThePies for a big 12 page article they're running, for all the headlines and pull out quotes. I'm really pleased about that, its cool to see how other designers interpret your work.
And finally... There is a full page picture of me riding my bmx in this months Ride Magazine taken by good buddy Nathan Beddows... one for the grandchildren! Right, I'm off to bed, goodnight x
ooo, ps. here is the most recent video from LS6 BMX, a collaboration between everybody in my house and a few others to document the Leeds bmx scene. Its not high budget, its not well edited, in fact theres nothing good about it except its really good fun!
When I was down in London last we made a visit to the science museum, which was ace! Also while we were there, it turned out that a friend of a friend was that great granddaughter of Edward Johnston, the guy who designed the typeface used on the London underground. I'm a fan of this typeface, despite being extremely legible it has a lot of character to it. Yesterday, me and some friends spent the day at the national museum of photography, television and media in Bradford. Lots of cool 80's stuff kicking about... made me realise how little photo taking I do these days, as a youth I used to love my instamatic, I also had a Polaroid and an awesome multi-colored plastic 35mm point and shoot camera. Digital has sucked all excitement out of life! Next time I have any money I'm going to invest in a Holga and a Lomo Supersampler.
Some nice 3d wooden type, I'd love to make something like this! While we were there we watched lions 3d in the imax! As a documentary it was pretty mediocore, but it was so much fun to watch. There was also some really nice use of depth in the title sequence to create a hierarchy for the type. Unfortunately we didn't get to keep the glasses. While taking a break from doing college work today me and a few house mates decided to try and make our 3d photos. A bit of research and few attempts later we managed to get it! If you havn't got any 3d glasses you'll have to take my word for it that they actually work. For some reason this one really reminds of the Suicidal Tendencies photos that Glen E. Friedman took. If you havn't seen his book 'Fuck you heros' you should treat yourself, amazing photos from the early days of punk, hip hop, skateboarding and everything that used to be good about youth culture. Also picked up this little fold out booklet while in Bradford, pretty dull content but a really good format, might be able to use this for something in the future.
Also this weekend the lovely people at YCN have invited me to take part in a pitch for Endsleigh Insurance, which I'm quite excited about. The deadline is next weekend so I'll put some pics up then. Right I've gotta be up early, better get gone, xx
I'm now back in Leeds after a very very busy and fun easter break. The time I spent at Factory Media was really beneficial. As well as being a great insight to how the industry works, I learned a lot about layout and production for print. Here is a couple of page layouts for a music article in +1 magazine. Although not being based in the main London office, Dig Magazine is also owned by the same publishing company, so when I wasn't shadowing the other designers I helped out with some bits and pieces for them. Above is an illustration for an upcoming article about a trip to Australia, which apparently was full of 'Jocks'. They are also using my typeface 'AllThePies' for a re-brand of the regular 'Sturdy Wrists' article they run. Above is a new logo to match the font and a some other bits for the identity. After all that I went and played in the snow for a week which was almost as amazing as the food in the chalet we stayed in. Vegetarian Chefs are my new best friends!
Right, I'm off to london for a two week work placement at factory media, helping out with magazine design. I'm pretty excited and also slightly nervous! Then after that I'm rewarding myself with a week in France snowboarding! I'll let you know how it all went in three weeks time, merlin xx
oh yeah, here are my three favorite websites of the week! If the whole internet was ordered into a radamid, (a pyramid of radness) all of these guys would be very near the top. In no particular order,
Above is a snap of Nathan setting up for our photo shoot last week. And below is the final result, unfortunately the pitch was unsuccessful. Oh well, win some, lose some. Still had a lot of fun doing it! These pictures are of the packaging for my 'AllThePies' font which I'm selling at the NousVous Sunday Club event next weekend. The idea was to make the buying and selling of typefaces a more personal, tangible and tactile process. These qualities were emphasised by screen printing on a variety of uncoated stocks, and unique disk designs. Available exclusively at Sunday Club, only £5 a go! I've also entered this typeface into the monthly typographic flair competition over at creativematch.co.uk. View my entry here http://www.creativematch.co.uk/?action=viewflair&fi=2771
