28.3.09

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Haven't updated this for a few weeks now, been exceptional busy! Here's a quick overview of what I've been doing.

Firstly, I went snowboarding for a week in Avoriaz. We had the most amazing weather, and the snow was perfect. Took my new camera aswell, here's a couple of snaps.







As soon as I got back from holiday I started my four week placement at Elmwood in Leeds. Now two weeks into it and it's going really well, been working on some fun projects and I can feel myself learning new things by the day.

Also on my return from France I discovered that I had won the competition to design the end of year show promotional material at college with my 'end of the beginning' idea. Really pleased about that, such a great note to leave the college on!

On the subject of college, in the evening this week I've been putting together a proposal to design the posters and promotional material for a series of professional lectures at college. Here's a quick peek of a mock up of one of the routes.



I'm hoping to print these at footprint in Leeds on recycled coloured paper using soy ink.

Last Wednesday me and a couple of the guys from elmwood jumped on the train up to Newcastle to go to the Micheal C Place lecture at Dance City.



It took on an interview format with Adrian Shaugnessy asking the questions and being an all round good host.





It's always interesting to hear about people's success's and their failures, and the talk definitly had a more honest and complete approacher rather than just using it as an opportunity to show off.

Other interesting stuff I've seen and thought 'ooh, I'll do a blog about that' includes; lifestyle clothing brand Insight have put all they're old adverts up on their website. Some really interesting and powerful art direction going on here. Check it out by clicking right here.





Also found this online gallery of amazing Lego advertising.



As far as I'm aware, everybody in the world loves Lego, and it's great to see the creativity it inspires to younger childeren is still alive in some adult designers.

Thats all for the moment, need to crack on with some work!

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Merlin x

Don't Panic! Competition

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Don't Panic! have been running a little competition this week in conjunction with HiFi Club in town. The brief is to design some flyers for the regular Monday night 360Club, which features live music followed by a club night. HiFi as a whole has a bit of a retro theme to it, and the club night following the bands is mainly 60's soul and disco all played from origional 7" records. With my subbmission for the compettion I tried to create something that will attract the hip young student audience they are trying to target but still keep some of the retro feel of the night.

They have an existing logo for the night that I'm not really that into, hopefully if I was to win the competition I could talk them into either dropping it or changing it somehow.



A6 flyer, here's the front...



and here's the back...



Fingers crossed with this one!

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Merlin

LS6 BMX stickers

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My house mate Kyle Harvey has been running a side project for the last few years called LS6 BMX, which documents and supports the local BMX community. Everybody in the house helps out with it now and again; filming, taking photos or blogging... A while back I decided to design some stickers and they just came back from the printers.



LS6 BMX is run with a punk "nothing to sell, nothing to lose" ethos and the idea behind this sticker was to try and promote that and encourage peoples self expression. A good bit of fun!





This last snap is by Tom Bing taken from Kyle Bibbys bike. Team work!

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Merlin

My Wooden Owl!

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Sometimes it's fun to try and come up with concepts, communication strategies and other stuff that actually has a use, but then sometimes it's fun to do something just for the sake of it. To stop me going crazy from the amount of 'proper' stuff I've been doing recently I decided to buy myself a wooden owl kit! A steal for only £3 (good old craftwise). Also trying to get better at working my new camera, manged to work out how batch processing RAW files works for the animated GIF. These are probably slightly over tweaked, but I just love all those bright colours!





If I get the time I'd love to do another one of these again soon, if I remember rightly they had a pretty mean looking grizzly bear kit. Also on a vaguely similar note, Manchester ethical design studio 'Ultimate Holding Company' (where Kyle and Bing are currently interning) are running an art event soon celebrating Darwins 200th birthday, with an exhibition featuring one hundred illustrations of extinct animals. At the end of the exhibition there is a 10 day period where they tattooing volunteers with the images for free. So if you fancy a tattoo of a dead animal get involved! The general idea behind the show is raising awarness about our effect on the environment and wildlife. Goodstuff.

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Merlin x

Left Eye Blind - Continued

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Also been developing my work for Left Eye Blind.
They wanted to go in a direction that made them more fun and accessible to a young hip audience, but still professionally credible to the record industry suits.



Here's where we are at the moment, playing a bit more with the legibility of the main type but having a more solid anchoring base. Lets see what happens next...

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Merlin

Aneurysm

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Me and Matt Saunders have started working on a new little project.



It's a collaboration with Wyld Stallions in London, which is pretty exciting considering all their stuff is ace! Been doing some typography, motion graphics and a touch of art direction for a tittle sequence for one of their upcoming Kolab projects.







I'm loving my new camera, getting to grips with RAW conversion now, haven't taken any photos for years, feels good :)

Here is a first test of the tittle's, I think Matt is going to be working on these more next week to try and get them more crisp and the timings better.


Aneurysm test 1 from Matt Saunders on Vimeo.

More from this soon!

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Merlin x

Can Anybody Swiss?

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AnyoneCanSwiss.com is a website which creates your own Swiss style poster for you. Apparently the idea behind the project was to create debate about whether the Swiss style of design actually requires any skill. I can kind of see the funny side of this, but for me they are kind of missing the point. You might be able to create a piece of software to quickly layout type for you, but then this method of assessment implies that design can only be judged on how long it has taken to craft, or how skillful the craftsman is. Neither of which necessarily have anything to do with successful communication or appropriateness.



For me, great design is successful communication. A good clear idea that is relevant to the audience, expressed in a manner that reinforces the message. I think discourse in design is healthy, but I think they are asking the wrong question. It's comparable to saying is taking a photo instead of doing a drawing cheating? I think a more valuable topic would be asking to what extent we've let style replace good ideas. Anyway, it's still good fun! Shame the kerning's a bit shit.

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Merlin x

Snowboards, paint, pens & cameras

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Last week me and Matt Saunders finally got round to having a doodle on my new snowboard. My Canon G10 turned up in the post today so I though I'd have a go at taking a few snaps and pop them up on here. Still trying to get used to what all the buttons do and get to grips with RAW conversion, but these came out quite nicely. I managed to steal Tom Bings radioslave and one of his flashes to light it all, its such a good idea to have a hot shoe on a compact camera!



Both shot at ISO 400, f2.8, 1/125 - bosh!

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D&AD at Urbis

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Tomorrow I'm off to Manchester for a D&AD events day.
At lunch time I've got a meeting with somebody from Manchester based agency Thoughtful, to go over my portfolio and give me some top tips on how to make it better. As a company they seem really interesting; as you would expect being formed by ex-members of the chase there work is pretty spot on, but personally I think it's their working practice that really makes them stand out. Their methods of working from big projects right down to their own stationary has been taken back to the drawing board and considers environmental and social issues. They seem committed to doing things not just differently, but better. This includes moving their entire office into clients buildings to ensure the smooth running of projects! Needless to say I'm really looking forward to meeting them! Here's some of their work, check out their blog for some more...





In the afternoon I'm attending a branding workshop with Liverpool based agency Uniform. As a response to a brief they sent me a week ago I've been working on some ideas for the branding of a new North-West based contemporary art gallery. On the whole I find the majority of art galleries intimidating and a bit lifeless, I'm keen to try and create a completely different experience of art that is fun, accessible and human. Today I'm polishing off some ideas for a promotional leaflet that is essentially an etiquette guide for the gallery, encouraging people to act in a more human way and participate in discussion. I'll get some feedback on all of this tomorrow then hopefully work on some visuals and pop them up here.

In other news there is a One Flag design competition going on over at the Adbusters website, some really great ideas, here's my favourite!



Right, need to crack on, ta-raaa!

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Merlin

Full Speed Ahead!

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The dissertation is done, thank god! I handed in my 8,000 words on 'the Olympics as a tool for national branding and international communication' last Thursday, and needless to say I was a very relieved and happy boy!

Now that's out of the way I can just concentrate on designing stuff, all day, everyday. Winner!

Been fairly busy this week, just finished two small projects for the guys over at Synergy Leeds. Firstly a logo and web banners for their newly launched Media Camp scheme. Fairly straight forward, sitting in line with their existing image.



You can see this in action on their website here. The scheme is going live this week sp hopefully by the end of the week there should be quite a lot of stuff up on their site. I've also been working on some visuals for their reporter reviews scheme that is currently picking up speed, I'll have some pictures for this soon!

I've also been putting together some work for a pitch to design the art college end of year show promotional material. The poster is currently looking like this...



Still needs some love I think, need to get the visual language working across the board, flyers, posters, leaflets, web etc.

Here's a picture of top lad Kyle 'of man' Bibby and forty pints of our first batch of home brewed ale, fingers crossed it'll taste nice!



Also Kyle has just been listed as a 'Hot Graduate' on the Character Creative website, congratulations to him.

I'm currently saving up for one of these...



High resolution digital compact that shoots RAW files, looks amazing!

Also found a website this week called Just My Type, it has an interesting collection of display typefaces all available as illustrator files free of charge, winner!



Right I need to get on with some work.

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Merlin x

David Carson

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Seems like a good lad!
Inspiring stuff.

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Merlin

"Ace picture of a horse!"

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For ages my friend Grace has been asking me to make an "ace picture of a horse" to put up in her house. It was her 22nd birthday the other day so I thought it was about time I got round to doing it...

here's the print,



and here it is in all its glory of a gold frame!



Merlin x

Supporter To Reporter @ BETT

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Just got some photo's through from the launch event of the Supporter To Reporter program at BETT a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately I was in France at the time snowboarding so I couldn't be there but apparently the day went really well and they had a good response on the program. I've now started work on some branding for another couple of projects they have in the pipeline, more info soon!

Here's the trade stand, with my work seen on the right hand side...



and here's Olympic swimmer Steve Parry with the next generation of journalists, directors, cameramen and editors.



For more info check out either the synergy website here,
or the supporter to reporter website here.

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Merlin

Left Eye Blind

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I've just finished putting together a pitch for Leeds based music video production company Left Eye Blind. They were after a new logo and identity which could be used on business cards and the website they're planning to put together for 2009.


Grammatics - The Vague Archive from LEFT EYE BLIND on Vimeo.

Check out more of their work on their vimeo page here.

Here's the existing logo:



Taking their use of bold typography and literal visual reference to eyes I developed a logotype with the aim to keep it bold, clean and unrelated to a specific visual style of any music genre.



Here's an example of how it could work on a business card with the black and yellow colour scheme I proposed...



And an example of potential website layout...



Fingers crossed with all that!

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Merlin

The Internet!

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Well I've pretty much finished my updates on here, just a few more things to add, please bare with me!

In other internet news, my friend George put his photography portfolio online and it's seriously good stuff. Check it out by clicking here.

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Merlin

It's been a while...

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After a Christmas break in Norwich and a snowboarding holiday in France in back in Leeds grafting on my dissertation! I'm currently in the process of a complete site overhaul so please bear with me while I get photos of everything and get it all online!

I got an email the other day off my friend Chris who's the art director over at Ride Magazine, him and his friend Ben who is a big bad web designer have put together a nice blog website that documents the fine subjects of BMX, design and girls. Pretty much a winning idea there. Have a look, Wednesdayclub.

Wish I had some pictures to add onto this post...
oh I know, have a look at this t-shirt I just designed for Ride Magazine, should hopefully go to print in the next week or so, I'll put some proper pics up when I get the real deal.

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Merlin xx

Merry Xmas!

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I've been exceptionally busy over the last few weeks!

Firstly we had our Visual Communication Christmas exhibition, some ace work from all three years, and I was especially pleased that all my Xmas cards and wrapping paper I made as gifts had disappeared within the first hour! I'm still trying to track down some photos of the event, I'll pop them up here soon.

Also the final versions of my book came back from the printers today and straight back into the post to the design companies involved. Again, I still need to get round to taking some nice pictures of this, but you can download a screen resolution PDF copy by clicking right here! (7.37mb)



While at the exhibition I was given a business card from a local company called Radiowaves who specialise in running new media educational projects for school children. I've been designing the logo and visual identity for a project they run called 'Supporter To Reporter' which gets students along to sporting events to interview atheletes and celebrities, as well as working along side people like the BBC and Sky TV. There old logo looked like this:



They were also keen for the new identity to sit well with the Radiowaves logo and the visual identity of parent company synergy TV, which look like this...





Mixing the blue and white colour scheme from the Radiowaves identity and adopting the typestyle from the synergy identity started to create something clearly linked but slightly differentiated. Taking inspiration from the vertical bars in the Radiowaves logo and italising them for a 'sporty' effect it creates a distinctive look that has plently of room to play with when it comes to implementation.

The new logo.



And a rough idea of how the identity could be carried through in a leaflet.



I hope to be helping them out with some implementation work in the new year across the website, some print leaflets and maybe some tshirts as well. Good stuff!

In other news, a few weeks back a guy called Alan Wardle (who is the art editor for computer arts magazine) got in contact with me about using my all the pies font for a little project he wanted to do. He sent over a pic the other day of a logo he had made for one of his friends who is a DJ.



I'm a fan of this, really nice use of the font, it looks great! You can have look at more of his work over on his blog right HERE!

I also found this while surfing the web recently...




'Help' is a small pharmaceutical company that make plasters and pain killers. Whats great about them is uniquely they don't base their whole company around pseudo-science and space age diagrams showing how their products work, instead they go for a 'innocent smoothies' style humanistic approach. Clean design and great environmentally friendly packaging make them really stand out in this sector. If I ever bought any of that crap I'd definitely buy it off them!

Two other things I've seen recently that I thought were ace are...



This mobile puma flagship store/display room. Made out of container creates the whole thing can be easily packed up onto lorries or boats. I don't know a lot about architecture, but I think this looks great!



And then...



This lad called Hampus Jageland is a few years younger than me and still a student, he has already won several awards and his portfolio is bang-tidy. Above is some branding and packaging for a range of spices and olive oils which are accessible for blind and visually impaired people. Check out the alton brown section of his website for more info.

Last night we had a big vegan roast dinner to in our house celebrate the end of a good term at college and to wish farewell to our housemate Tom who is heading off to Canada for six month in a few weeks time!

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Good times!
xx

It's nearly xmas!

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This week I'm going to screen printing some wrapping paper to send my books out in. Here's the design, quite excited about doing this! Been ages since I did any screen printing.

Here's a close up of the lads, I think my favorite is the penguin.

I'll pop some photos up when I print them.

Also!!
My housemate Tom has finally got round to putting his website online, it's a beauty!

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Merlin