LCAD & SundayClub

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

BUSY-BUSY-BUSY!

Been non-stop recently :)
I've been working on a pitch for the Leeds College of Art & Design end of year show promotional material, an image of which has been added to the typography section. For this I had to call in skills of photographer friend Nathan Beddows! In a creative trade off I built him a portfolio website, designed to really simple to update and gave him some dreamweaver lessons! I created a simple identity for his site, that would happily sit in the back ground and let the images do the talking.



Other projects I've got on the go at the moment include finishing all the kerning pairs for my recent 'AllThePies' typeface, a logo for a Leeds based community arts project, finishing 'YCN' and 'Design North' competition submissions as well as creating some packaging to sell my fonts at the next 'Sunday Club'. Oh and I'm still trying to track down work placements!

New Work Added

To the typography section.
AllThePies is a new bold and striking display typeface; ugly in parts, huggable in others, fat all round.

Sorrell Foundation/Equilateral Business Cards

Printed the business cards for Equilateral Design today, as part of the sorrell young design programme. They are printed on Robert Horne Revive 100, which is 100% FSC recycled, and rolls out at 300 GSM, lovely!

Also the Equilateral website is now up and running, check it out here.

Crank the Busy-O-Meter to eleven!

I've started my involvement in the Sorrell Foundation Young Design Programme. I'm working with two other students, one from art & design and another from interior design, to try and improve things at the Notre Dame Sixth Form College in Leeds. I was responsible for the naming and identity of our design group. I came up with the name Equilateral to represent our belief in the value of simple functional ideas. Three people, with equal input. The logo reflects this with simple geometric letter shapes.

This week I went to the future work event at the Round Foundry Media Center, which is part of Holbeck Urban Village, a regeneration scheme for the old industrial area of Leeds. It was a fun evening, providing some useful insight into the commercial world of graphic design.

Last weekend was the second ever Best-Joined-Up live drawing party at the Faversham.

A good time was had by all, and their was some nice drawings. It had a really positive atmosphere, and it was encouraging to see how much creative talent their is in Leeds.

This was my drunken attempt to represent Norfolk!

Also this week was the Don't Panic Media poster exhibition, you'll have to excuse the quality of the pictures due to my bad camera phone. But the quality and variety of the work was really good.


This one is by London based student and designer Kate Moross.
Her work is ace, and despite still being at university she has managed to do a lot of commercial work, including nation wide poster campaign for Cadburys. She was also named on the Creative Review 'creative futures' list.


I find her work really inspirational. Being a student you can only really compare your work to other people from your class or things which are out their in the real world, sometimes it's hard to make a link between the two. It's great to see people out their being fully involved with both areas of work successfully, and making the leap from being 'just a design student'.

The January/February issue of Dig Magazine is now in the shops. Thanks to the printers messing things up about 5,000 of them have last issues cover on the front! I did the photo layout and illustrated type for the 2-Hip article (above), which despite being a bit of a last minute rush came out quite well!

And finally, Leeds has been underwater all week! Watch your carbon footprint kids...

The Caterpillar Project

A friend who I'm working with on this project (an RCA competition brief) just sent me these photos of her little brother wearing a promotional T-shirt that I designed.

Looks like he is enjoying wearing it!

Quick Update!

Got some paid work coming up from a company called 'yorkshire event services', I'm designing all of their promotional material and mail outs for the coming year. Should be starting that one in a week or so.

Due to lack of finance, my friend Simon's photography website that I was planning to build has downgraded into a microsite off of this one, check it out here.

Also this week I have started the Sorrell 'young designers project' alongside a YCN competition brief, more news from both of those soon.

Also this week I've decided to start learning how to play the harmonica!

This guy is now my hero. See him shred the 'Mississippi sax' here.
xx

wheeeey!

after a three week internet blackout, xmas and a snowboarding holiday I'm back in Leeds, ready to start working again and proud to announce the launch of my new-look website!

I've been doing some xmas reading, firstly is a new magazine publiched by YCN called 'ideas illustrated'.

its the first issue and its theme is 'communication', an interesting read with nice pictures, a bargain at £5!

I also picked up this skate magazine in france for a euro (about 60p!)

I love the colourful and playful nature of skate magazine design, and it is definitely an influence on the work I do for dig magazine.

finally, my business cards I ordered returned from the printers!

this is the first time I've ever got anything printed directly, and it was a fun and valuable experience. I choose some 320gsm recycled board to print on, and it looks/feels lovely!

right I need to pop to the shop and get some food in!
more soon, xx

websites, typography and the end of term!

Been busy with my web design module this week, helping my friend Gus build a website. It's currently online, but yet to have all the content added. Check it out here. I'm going to be spending some time with him over the xmas period polishing it off.

While helping gus design his site it has got me thinking about this one a bit, and I've decided I want to change it. I think its a bit ugly, and detracts from the images.

this is my new design idea, a lot simpler and cleaner but still with a strong sense of identity.

Also finished my type module this week, and I'm really pleased with the outcome. It's a pamphlet guiding the reader through the nitty gritty side of type design which folds out into an A2 poster. Unfortunately I've had to hand it in for marking before taking any pictures, but I will stick some up when I get it back after xmas.

Finally, today is the last day of term!

Its been pretty stressful this year, and despite having a few projects to work on over christmas I'm looking forward to turning down the stress-o-meter a notch or two!

Music, Business & Books

Went to an event today which was designed to bring together bands from Leeds College of Music, and artists from the design college. I decided that today was probably the time to sort myself out with some business cards (something that I've been meaning to do for a while). So printed a few of these off from home onto isometric paper backed with thick coloured card. Think I'm going to get a few small changes made to these and then get them printed professionally.

Met a few people from different bands, and exchanged contact details, so hopefully they'll be some collaboration work coming out of this. I've always liked the idea of doing design for bands, but never known anybody who was in one, hopefully that will all change now :)

A little update on the interdisciplinary group RSA competition brief I'm doing at the moment.

This is the logo for I've designed for 'the caterpillar project' a hypothetic government initiative to educate and motive primary school children to recycle. The name comes from the custom built recycling bins being made for the schools which are caterpillar shaped. These can be custom built in sections for each classrooms individual needs, and can easily emptied into a larger bin by the children, involving them more in the process. My role in the project is all the graphic identity, including this logo (the caterpillar bit is a custom drawn typeface especially for the project), I'm also responsible for the design of posters and leaflets and all other print related collateral with the project.I'll put more pictures when I get them!

Finally...

finished the book I was making for my collections briefs,

here is a few pages for you to look at!



Right, thats enough of that... I'm off to bed, ta-raaa x

It's book O'clock!

Hello!
Just a quick overview of some of the books I've been looking at recently as research for various projects.
First up is the 'Buro Destruct" book.

Contemporary, clean swiss graphic design with an emphasis on typography. Despite being only a small studio of five or six people, they have built up an international reputation and work for a whole variety of clients.

Next up is 'Poster Design',

Showcasing the best of modern poster design, it features work in a wide variety of styles, and has some great typography in it.

Then we have the Josef Muller-Brockmann book 'Pioneer of Swiss Graphic Design'

Muller-Brockmann was one of the leading designers of the 'swiss style' during the 1950s &1960s. This book features all his best and most experimental work. I really like the simplicity and cleanness of the swiss style, and it still looks contemporary to this day.

Finally, we have 'hand job', and I actually bought this one!
It's by New York based artist Mike Perry, and is a catalog of hand rendered type styles. Needless to say I love it, and I'm glad I forked out some money for once! I really enjoy hand drawn type, in the day and age of computers it is such a rarity that people can be bothered to make the effort! I'm going to try and do more of this in the future!

Oh and finally, I've started work with illustrator Gus Farnes on his portfolio website. We've registered a domain, and I've put a mini disco there while we construct the site. Everything going well it should be online in about two weeks.
www.lookatmelookatme.co.uk

Ta-raa x

Nathan Beddows

My friend Nathan got in touch today, here he is!

Nathan is an illustrator and freelance photographer that I've worked with a good few times doing contributions for 'Ride BMX Magazine'. He has just set himself up a blog, you should have a look. Here is an animation I've made from from our most recent collaboration; a trick how to article for the december 2007 issue.

It seems people in BMX have a really weird idea about how the magazine industry functions. They seem to have the idea that Ride Magazine just goes to different places around the country to find people to photograph. The whole article involved a few weeks of planning, emails, phone calls, location scouting, traveling, photo shooting, writing, photoshop work, uploading photos to servers ect. I'm not really the subject of the article but a collaborator with Nathan and the magazine. People never seem to understand that! haha

Anyway, Nathan plans to have a full website sometime soon with his illustration work on as well. I'll keep ya posted!

Recent Activity!

I've been working hard and fast on our typography project at college, I'm making a pamphlet that gives a basic guide to typesetting. It folds out, and on the reverse side their is a poster. This is my first draft for it.

Some minor fettling and that should be ok. I'll post some pictures of the whole printed thing when it's finished.

Found these this week,

illustrations by Linzie Hunter, the inspirations comes from spam emails she receives. It's nice to see somebody turn something so annoying and invasive into something fun and pleasant! I'm getting really into hand drawn type recently, it's so fun and lively, a visual rarity.
Have a look at her website here.
See more of the spam illustrations here.

On the subject of hand drawn type, this was left unused from my recent batch of work for Dig Magazine. Thought it would be nice to show it on here.

Still needs a bit more work to be honest, but I like it.

Been really into to these guys recently, discover upnorth.

Great selection of original type styles. And an interesting mix of clients. It's good to see small commercially successful type design agency's like this, I want to get into doing more stuff like this!

Finally... Here is a Xmas card I've been designing to send out to a few friends and family members who feel similar to the way I do about Xmas! I love spending more time with my friends and family, I'm into eating lots of food and drinking sherry, but... I'm really not a fan of everybody buying each other useless presents because they feel they "have to". So for the last few years I have boycotted Santa Claus, and told everybody I know not to buy me anything. Instead I try and do a "monthly special act of thoughtfulness & generosity", where I treat my friends or family because the opportunity is right, not because "it's the done thing". So anyway, here is my fictional characters birthday card (aka Christmas). (I much prefer the pagan idea of celebrating the summer and winter solstice, at least it's tangible!)

Oh yeah, and Santa Clause used to be green before coca-cola turned him red. Oh and coca-cola created the Fanta brand for the nazis (true story). In other Christmas trivia, a few centuries ago, Christian fundamentalists tried to ban Christmas! They asserted (quite correctly by their own lights) that the 25 December had no biblical connection with the birth of their messiah and that the Christmas festival was therefore essentially pagan.

Win some, lose some.
xx

Good things...

Found this article of the creative review site, documenting 'the day in the life of a designer'. It got quite a bit of bad feedback on the site, but as a student I found it really interesting. I'm pretty sure I want to be a designer, yet I have only have a vague idea of what this actually entails on a day to day basis. The designer they focus the article on is a guy named Micheal from 'build' there stuff is ace.




Also recently found a website called typophile,

where they host little type competitions every week. Looks like good fun, going to have a go at one when I find the time! Check it out here.

Finally, this weekend was Cat from our courses' birthday party, with a mask theme. Me and my house mates decided to avoid spending money, and to get our hands dirty.

Some interesting looks going on there... Needless to say a good time was had by all!