Judge a book by its cover

We are doing Book Jacket design right now, fun fun fun! Dear people in my class, look at these links for ideas 'n' analysis 'n' stuff:

Covers

The Book Design Review

The Designers Review of Books

Who is the Bognor Birdman?

So here is what i produced for the Event Poster brief. The event i chose to promote was The Interational Bognor Birdman which is an annual event held funnily enough in Bognor Regis where a lot of fools jump off the pier in their own DIY flying machines, much like the Red Bull Flugtag or whatever it's called. It looks like a lot of good fun though and is a real grass roots event and i really like that. Seeing as its a DIY festival i wanted the poster to have a DIY feel, so working with the idea of the Bognor Birdman being a character intself i go to work with my trusty scissors, glue and ink. All the typography was hand drawn by myself, which was a really good fun thing to do and it was especially good being able to get away from the routine browsing of fontexplorer trying to figure out typefaces for the design. We also had to produce direct mail promotional items, and for this i made little masks you can cut out, so you too can be the Bognor Birdman.

I scored a 65 for this which is pretty good. Frustratingly though they did not give us proper crits as per usual so its really difficult to know where i went wrong exactly, and i was also therefore not given the opportunity to talk about my work. Strange, and irritating to say the least. No matter though as several of my friends got great marks so all is right with the world. They also now want us to do some stupid little presentation thing tomorrow where we explain our work to someone who has not seen it before. Doing this after getting graded for it feels more than a little redundant considering what difference does it make, and now i know that there is several things wrong with it, how am i supposed to sell it properly? "This is my poster for the birdman event, i think it looks pretty cool but i have been told the type should be smaller and some parts of it should be changed and improved"? Yeah nice one Art School, they're definitely going to take the bait.

Listen to Motive Sounds

Motive Sounds is a small independent record label run by my buddy Mark out of his house in Carlisle. They are dedicated to bringing out new exciting and fresh music as well as supporting new design talent - great records in great sleeves, what more could you want? (check out the releases page on the website to have a look, or if you're in Carlisle get yourself to Ruby Blue and pick up copies) My favourites on the label are probably Manatees, Skoud and most recent signing Over The Wall, who i got to see open for Youthmovies recently and they were pretty damn awesome, but to be honest you're not going to go wrong with any of the Motive Sounds releases.

I was lucky enough to be invited by Mark to design the front page of the website and art direct the news page (he selects a different designer each month) and he added my name to the designers list (i feel pretty famous right about now). The idea is that the image is full bleed, but it seems there could be some problems with that on bigger monitors/browsers, so if you keep it a bit smaller you'll get the right idea haha.

LISTEN TO MOTIVE SOUNDS.

Dear Dreamweaver, i hate you deeply, yours sincerely from Robbie

Cheeky screenshot preview of my portfolio website which will probably be finished and online sometime by mid january i imagine. Down with Web 2.0!

Ok, wow

Ok so i was on everyones favourite design blog yesterday (FormFiftyFive) and had a little look at the work of danish designer Mads Jakob Poulsen. He has a strong portfolio to say the least, and i especially like the World Cinema Dk posters, but what really bowled me over (so much so i had to make a post about it) was his packaging design for Widex Hearing Aids. You often see on the more obnoxious design sites out there the horrible phrase "good design is when you are jealous you didn't have that idea" - a frankly irritating and narcissistic sentiment - but damn do i wish that that project was in my portfolio. Anyway, please take a moment to view his work, and especially the video above displaying just how fantastic that piece of work is.

Our next project is experimental packaging design. I think its either going to be the best or worst project of year 2 so far.

Ads, the 50s and the US

Whilst working on the current event poster brief we have i got a huge book about 50s American ads out of the uni library. Its a Taschen book so largely just a massive compendium of images with a little preface, but thats ok because it gives you the chance to really analyze what's going on and really think about how things worked back then. Honestly, there are so many graphic cliches (well i suppose now they are more kitsch than cliche) but what is more interesting is how many things that are included in the adverts you wouldn't dream of seeing today. For example, a baby looking out of the page with big puppy dog eyes and a little cowboy hat with cute script type above him reading "maybe you should light up a Marlboro before you scold me mommy". Selling cigerettes using a child who is trying to avoid getting a beating? Amazing. My personal favourite has to be the one with the mushroom cloud exploding over a tropical island. The copy underneath reads: "Even this cloud has a silver lining!". I love 50s stuff, and the aesthetic associated with the era is just great. Don't the french have a word for nostalgia for a time when you were not even alive? If so, id use it now.

A musical interlude

Goodbye Enemy Airship by Do Make Say Think

I'm really into DIY fan videos at the moment, and this one for Do Make Say Think is a bit of a gem. For me usually simple ideas are the best, and the video and music come together perfectly in this piece. I'll post some more DIY videos soon, there are some real doozies out there, including a a great one for Deerhunter, and a personal fave put to a live Akron/Family track.

Corporate Identity

So we got our marks back from the corporate identity project today. The crit on friday went very well but naturally a little angst set in having to wait over the weekend to find out how i did. Well, i did very well - i got 78/a 1st again which is nice. This was a fun project to do, and it really feels like i have learnt a hell of a lot. Never really having tried my hand at corporate identity before it was interesting to get to grips with all the different facets of how an identity system works. The company i designed the identity for was a fictional relocatable buildings company of my own creation named Rebuild. The idea was that they would be a company specializing in quickly erecting temporary and relocatable buildings in warzones and disaster area, ranging from refugee camps to lo-tech hospitals etc. I was going for a bold, simple and authoritative feel, whilst retaining a sense of cool and style. A feeling of structure was also important to the feel of the identity. Above are images of the logo, stationary set (which includes a letterhead, business cards, DL windowed envelope and compliments slip) and selected spreads from the styleguide we also had to produce. The photos don't really show it very well, but the paper used for the letterhead and compliments slip is not white, it is very light grey (k10 to be precise).

Click the images to get a closer look, i apologise for any pixelation/poor photography that may have occured.

Work Diversion

I SHOULD be doing work right now, but i'm just going to leave it until i get in the studio tomorrow. Instead, i'm looking at this amazing thing that my good friend Emmie (of s e p e r a t e w a y s fame) linked me earlier. TBH i always loved her but this has confirmed her as one of my favourites. It has nothing to do with graphic design but is so good i thought i'd post it anyway, heres the link: WTF?

My buddy Karis had this to say about it:

"Don't you think those kids have pain in their eyes like don't you think they're being abused and it's being masked by a colorful balaclava "

I think that's fair.

Life Is Short

SO today i stated up my SECOND blog! yes, thats right, i've gotten blog greedy. I noticed that i was posting a LOT of photos here, so in order to not dilute the work i do in graphic design, or my photographic work, i decided to start a second blog dedicated to my photos. So here it is, i hope you enjoy, and please check it as regularly as you do this one: Life Is Short

Mmmmodernism

This is not my first post about Wim Crouwel and i don't imagine it will be the last. Anyway, i was browsing through Dafont.com looking for something to give me ideas for our current project (we're doing corporate identity) and i stumbled upon this little font called "Atmosphere". The eagle eyed and design savvy of you out there will notice that it is a copy of Wim Crouwel's famous "New Alphabet" - a must download, if you ask me. The even more sly of you out there will know why its called Atmosphere as well, if you do, tell me why in a comment on this post and the first correct answer will win a super fun extra special super prize.

on a completely unrelated note, isn't "Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness" such a class album? I only just got this...13 years after it was first released. I just got the new Fucked Up album recently too and it is fantastic, i also ordered the new Deerhunter today can't wait to hear that. Anyway, back to the graphic design...

St Catz! Pt. 2

Here is a photo of some oxford university freshers totally rocking the tshirts i designed for them - apparently they all really love them, so that turned out pretty well. Im getting sent one in the post soon so when i do ill get someone to model it for me and get good photos up.

New Work! Editorial Design project!

Well well well, here are the final pieces from the brief we've just completed for uni about Editorial Design. We had to do a splash (thats like opener) and a turn (what follows the splash, of course) spread, a front cover and a contents page. We were allowed to choose what the article was about and what kind of magazine it was. I chose to do an article about the photographer Terry Richardson (i'm a big fan) in a sort of dazed & confused-esque art/fashion/culture magazine. The tutors gave me incredibly positive feedback in the crit, so i guess it went pretty well. Oh yeah and i got a 78/100 (which is a 1st).

Mr Hellviper

my buddy Will is an illustrator of much radness, check out his blog. I knew this guy when he was a little kid, he used to be such a nice kid - what happened? Now he spends all day drawing these totally gnarly pictures of zombies and monsters and wizards and stuff like that. SWEET!

Mr Hellviper

No internet

i dont have the internet at home so no posts for a bit, but when i do WOAH, there's gonna be some good stuff. Maybe.

Norway reprise

re worked this poster that i posted up here aaages ago for a fictional exhibition about contemporary norwegian design, using my exprmntl typeface. I called the exhibition 'in the pines'.

Exprmntl Type.

You may remember this from long ago, well, i finally finished. More accurately, i finally bothered to finish. Think it turned out alright!

1234

Flash

Hold tight!

New posts of work coming real soon, in the meantime, why not take a minute to check out some people and things i really love right now:

Mario Hugo

Round

3 Deep Design

Mike Perry

Elisabeth Moch

Terry Richardson

Ryan McGinley

Marian Bantjes

Also in the spirit of posting a bunch of links, i've decided from now on ill only post images of my work/i have taken and only links to ones i didn't.

Hey James!

My good buddy James McCarthy has just started up a blog to show his work too, he's pretty nifty, check it out!

En-Route Graphic Design

St Catz Freshers 2008

I was invited to design the tshirts for the St Catherine's (aka St Catz) College Oxford Freshers students this autumn. Probably one of the more fun projects i've done for a long time and it'll be great to see them printed on the backs of beautiful and super clever young oxford students. When they're done and dusted i'll put up pictures of the finished project.

Diana+ 2

Some new photos ive taken with my diana camera. I love it a little too much i think.

TV Eye