New work: Media show programs

Just did these programs for the 3rd year Media Production end of year show. They look not bad although i don't think i am 100% happy with them really but they do the job, and besides i am never all that happy with my work i guess. It is an A4 sheet with a single fold, and the images are stills from the films which were shown. I had some grander ideas for this project but time was a little against me on this one. No matter!

New work: Deerhunter

Deerhunter could be my favourite band. Maybe i love them more than Sonic Youth? I can't quite decide. Anyway, today i watched 'The Office Christmas Specials' (the all time greatest tv show?) and got in the post 'Hunger' on dvd. I havn't watched 'Hunger' yet, but i am really excited about it, as i have heard only good things about it, and it is directed by Steve McQueen (no, not Bullit) who is a firm favourite artist of mine also. It is his directorial debut and won the palm 'dor at cannes and blah blah blah. Did you know that Steve McQueen is the only man alive to have won the Turner Prize AND the Palm D'Or. Pretty sweet huh? ANYWAY, i decided to make some posters about Deerhunter, just for a bit of fun. The japanese text SHOULD HOPEFULLY read 'Deerhunter live in japan' but i imagine its probably not right. whateverrr. Let me know what you think of the poster, i think i might work some more on it later.

This is really was just a post about favourites?

p.s you obviously want to know that i do also really like the US version of The Office but the UK version is definitely better.

When i grow up i want to be....a graphic designer?

Here is a poster i've just done for Concrete (which is pretty much Carlisles biggest/best club for all you non-cumbrian folk) for an end of term night they're doing where the theme is you dress up like what you wanted to be when you were a kid. I did this poster on the fly when i was at home for a few days so i guess its a little rough around the edges, but its not too bad. Let me know what you think! I've been invited to do another poster for them soon too. Fun fun fun.

Found

i found this when clearing out the loft before we move house in London. I love it. Its an invitation to a party i assume my parents went to many many moons ago. On the back it says to bing 'plenny booze'. I bet it was a good party haha. I found loads of other great stuff i scanned, expect to see it all soon.

Knitosaurus!

My nearest and dearest Zoe Davidson, aka Knitosaurus, studies fashion and textiles in bristol and specialises in knitwear. Shes a doll and her work is very amazing. Click her name to find yourself on her newly set up blog showcasing her work. Be nice to her and maybe she will even knit you a scarf or something.

A list of very awesomeness

a collection, in no particular order of designers, studios, illustrators, photographers and artists i dig right now:

Natsuko Seki

Zhuo Fan

Marq Spusta

Tina Berning (her book 100 girls on cheap paper is a joy)

Paul Insect

Hannah Davis

Maximilian Haidacher

RJ Shaughnessy (the Egypt fashion story is insanely good)

Anders Petersen

Keiichi Nitta

Patrick Fry

Praline

Telegramme

The Bird Machine (aka Jay Ryan)

Frank Kozik

that'll do you for now!

ATP

Just got back from ATP! What can i say, one hell of a weekend of beautiful music and beautiful people. This is the ideal festival for me because a) all the bands are handpicked, so there is no filler and no bullshit, and b) no. fucking. tents. anywhere. The chalets are pretty basic, but whatever, its better than a tent. Anyway, heres some photos and possibly some anecdotes:

The Bronx. First band we saw, and they were EPIC.

Bon Iver. Best set of the weekend (almost) hands down. Really really beautiful, especially at the end. The guitarist on the left of this photo would later compliment me on my tshirt. Awesome.

Ok so this thing may look like a weird and freaky sex toy but it is in fact what passes for a shower at Butlins. However, much like a weird and freaky sex toy, it has the ability to strip you of any dignity you thought you had, and then degrade you on a whole bunch of different levels. Trying to use this thing sends you on an emotional rollercoaster. Never before has taking a shower made me go from feeling confused, to homeless, to mentally ill, to orphaned and then to clean. I would later get very drunk and pretend that it was a stethoscope. 

Wire. Really, really good. Saw these on my own because the others wanted to watch CSS, but thats fine. Pink Flag will always be my favourite by them, they only played 12XU from that album, but whatever, it was class.

Shellac. Boring photo but no big deal because they were so good. Surgically tight. They played twice over the weekend, i saw them the first time but i heard the second set was better? Oh well.

Holy Fuck. holy fuck, Holy Fuck were so good. The most fun set of the whhoole weekend, without a shadow of a doubt. It was really just a blurry, sweaty mess and everyone went totally nuts for them. So, so fun.

James, loving it.

Deerhunter. Oh man, was so excited for this and it was my favourite set of the whole weekend. Deerhunter are officially one of my favourite bands. Set was absolutely magical and gave me shivvers on more than one occasion. Especially right at the beginning when the drummer counted time on his sticks and the sound came out backwards and Bradford Cox yelped into the mic, drenched in reverb as they slipped into "cover me slowly". They were effortless and charming throughout. Bradford Cox is also, as it turns out, the sweetest man in music right now. Kim and Kelley Deal came out and sang a cover with them too which was a nice little treat. Can you tell i was pretty into it? <3

Gang of Four. Absolutely classic band obviously ("entertainment" is a must have) and they put on a HELL of a show. One of the best performances i saw and one of my favourites as i didn't really have a preconception of what it was going to be like and they just kicked the shit out of pavillion. Here is a photo of the singer using a microwave as a drum. Why not.

Foals. I was expecting them to suck a little bit, but actually, it turned out they were really really good. Very danceable too.

Foals

more Foals.

Other highlights included:

Passing Kim Deal on the stairs

The Breeders, of course

Melt Banana playing in total darkness aside from two tiny torches.

Queining to get some fish and chips with Steve Albini

X and Billy Zoom's relentless shit eating grin

Going nuts to Pavement and Gang of Four in Crazy Horse at 4am

Super geeky girl crush

Tara McPherson art show/print sale

Getting totally wasted with Andy and feeling very VIP standing next to The Bronx

Ham and pringle roll at 5am

Getting a copy of the limited to 750 copies Deerhunter cassette :D

and so so so so so much more that i cant even think of right now. Thank you ATP! I will see you next time! Roll on december (curated by My Blood Valentine, and Sonic Youth are already confirmed. hot. damn.)

damn!

saw this on Tony's blog and HAD to repost. He got it via Magculture. Simply genius.

Photocopied

how have i not posted this already? This is a very short little film/animation made by my brother Doug, starring his friend Ricky as a young man who gets trapped in the photocopying room, and has to figure out how to escape. Check it out!

102!

I just noticed that the Silicon Zoo post below was my 100th post! hooray!

www.yooouuutuuube.com

www.yooouuutuuube.com is my new favourite thing on the internet. Basically, you put a youtube URL into it, and then it plays it, but instead of just playing it like boring old youtube, it plays every single frame of the video at the same time with beautiful rhythmic and psychadelic results. It works better if you watch the original version first, so i have linked them both. Here are some that work particularly well:

Electrelane "to the east" music video - original and yooouuutuuube version

Akron/Family "running returning" fan vid - original and yoooooouuuttuuuubbeeee version

Alice In Wonderland remix video - original and yoooouuttuuubbbee version

Found this over at Boooooooom! (one of my favourite blogs, make sure to bookmark it) which is also where i linked the above image from.

Silicon Zoo on VBS

So my good buddy graham told me about this video on VBS' show Motherboard (their series all about technology and stuff like that) in which they meet this guy whos job it is to take microscopic photographs of microscopic things. Anyway, to cut a long story short, when photographing some microchips he found that the microchips designers had been adding little drawings and tags to the microchips! GENIUS.

watch the video HERE

YES!

If you know me you might be aware that i freakin' LOVE Sonic Youth. Theyre my favourite band. Looks like me and sarah and tony might be hitting ATP Nightmare Before Christmas to catch them play with My Bloody Valentine, EPMD and De La Soul. If thats not something pretty special i dont know what is...

Tutor tony peart (hey tony) said he thinks theyre showing their age in this clip from jools holland the other night buuutt HE IS WRONG. New album is going to be class. Cant wait.

New Mika Miko album out really soon. hooray!

New work: Plastic

Art direction of design and photography for conceptual fashion and art with attitude publication, Plastic Magazine. This was the final project of the year and a hell of a lot of fun, especially in the photography stage, getting the model and photographer together, location scouting, making lots of phone calls, test shoots, and so and so forth. Extra super mega eternal thanks to Laney Gaffney my wonderful pink haired photographer and Loren Harker my pretty model. The idea behind the shoot is a girl who sells her soul for eternal beauty, there is a brief narrative at the start about performing a ceremony and being left feeling empty, which is supposed to run through the photos.

I tried uploading these from Flickr so they were nice and big and pretty looking here but the spreads are too wide and the stupid blogger template cuts the side off. If you go on my photostream though you can see all the images much much bigger and better. In fact, please do that.

We wanted to shoot on 120 film but because its so expensive we shot digital as back up. Fortunately the photos turned out really really good, Laney with her Bronica totally nailed it. I cant tell you how much i love that camera, i really want one of my own. Looking through the view finder on it is seriously BETTER than looking at stuff with your eyes.

You may notice that i recycled a lot of elements from my brickyard poster for my front cover. This is because i had an epiphany that i couldn't run the cover i had already designed (which you can see here) the night before i had to go to print and then got up at 8am and re did the whole thing. 

Thank you so much to all the people who helped me out in one way or another, ranging from advice to running around a forest at midnight, with this project, you guys are AWESOME:

Laney Gaffney

Loren Harker

Damian Sealey

Tony Moore

Judith Kinsella

James McCarthy

Tom Sinclair

That german girl who's name i cant remember but came to talkin tarn last minute with me

Natassia Gunn

James Lodge

Lina Scheynius

Here is a much shorter list of people who said they would help me but never actually did, but i would like to thank them anyway:

Sarah Smith

Lucy Johnson

Gary Thermo

Dawn Morrison

Anna Lachowska

Charlotte Michie

So that's it then, year 2 finished. Got a lot of personal projects planned for the next few weeks, so don't think im going anywhere! Although i am going somewhere: ATP, and hopefully Sweden for a bit too. Oh yeah and i PROMISE an online portfolio over the summer.

FINISHED!

LETS PARTY!

New work: The Brickyard

Here is the gig listings poster i've just designed for the good people at The Brickyard. The reverse has all the listings for May, but i didnt design that. I really had a lot of fun doing this and it feels like i'm getting my act together pretty nicely now. The collage is made from a combination of images from Flickr, ones i scanned from old books (amazing knitting Vogue books and early 90s fashion guides, thanks to Tony for those) aaand photographs that i took myself. Ignore the little grey boarder around the edge, that is just from the photoshop window when i took a screen shot, not part of the design.

I wonder how long before i should retire that graph paper scan?

Whilst making this poster i listened to:

The Sonics - Boom

Big Black - Songs About Fucking

Glass Candy - deep gems

update: These are going to get printed on uncoated heavy matte awesomeness. 1000 pieces. 

Total Badass

look at this kid! what a total bad ass! He's got style and he knows it. I found this in an old (80s/early 90s?) Vogue knitting book. Quite interested in acquiring old fashion, illustration and reference (photographic and illustration) books at the moment if anyones got any recommendations or offers or anything please get in touch :)

New work: Mapping

So here is the mapping project i did, i chose to map The Creative Process of a Design Student. It should be pretty self explanatory! Its a bit of fun and supposed to be somewhat tongue in cheek. Hopefully you can read it if you click it. Anyway apparently i got a 68 for this which is not too shabby. It's pretty weird how we've only got one project left now though, this year has gone so fast. Next year is going to be insane.

Life was short

I deleted my other blog, Life Is Short as it became apparent that everything i posted on there was infact relevant for this blog too, i wasn't really updating it AND i dont think anyone was looking anyway, especially with hopefully the full proper actual fancy launching of my personal portfolio website in the coming weeks, so whatever, welcome to the dawning of a new era of MYGD!

I hate graphic design

Its 2am. Stop me before i design again.

Sarah Smith

Guess what YES THATS RIGHT my favourite Sarah Smith just hooked herself up with a blog. She is a beautiful and talented photographer from Sheffield. If you don't believe me just have a look at the self portrait she did at the top of this post. Bookmark it!

Square America

Square America is an amazing collection of found retro photos documenting american life and history. Truely something else. Click on each image to view a full gallery of related images.

Scott King

Classic poster by Scott King for Joy Division show. The text along the bottom reads:

Joy Division, 2 May 1980, The High Hall, The University of Birmingham, England. 

You may notice some similarities between this poster and the poster i did for Something Else! Hopefully one day i can be as influential as Mr. King haha. His work neatly treads the line between subtle and subversive.

a bigger version of the poster can be seen here

Taken from Scott King's website:

"Scott King trained as a graphic designer. He worked as Art Director of i-D and Creative Director of Sleazenation magazines, for which he was awarded 'Best Cover' and 'Best Designed Feature of the Year' prizes. King occasionally produces work under the banner 'CRASH!' with writer and historian Matt Worley. King’s work has been exhibited widely in London, New York and European galleries including the ICA, KW Berlin, Portikus, White Columns, Kunstverein Munich and the Museum of Modern Art, New York."

Vancouver & Seattle

I've just been on a lovely little trip to Vancouver & Seattle. I got to go to a stellar record shop called Zulu Records, many different American Apparel stores, visit the actual real life location of Twin Peaks learn about native canadian art and see lots of totem poles. Pretty good trip if you ask me! Unfortunately i did not get to hang out with Obama when i was in the USA though, but you know you can't have everything. Canadians are just the best people in the world so if you get a chance to visit, DO IT! (Americans are cool too obviously)

Something Else

poster i've designed for Sarah and Mikael and the rest of photography year 2 exhibition they're holding at the end of the year for their final project. Initially wanted to use some of the photos that would be put in the exhibition, however it quickly became apparent that that would not be a possibility for various reasons, so i had to come up with...something else. There is a flyer for this i've done also but i don't really like it so i am not going to post it. Definitely get down to see this if you are about when its on because there will be some good stuff. Not wanting to plug her work too hard but i've seen some of the early/test stuff that Sarah's been doing and it's really looking good.

Something Else

A Collection of Photographs

The Bank Gallery (Upstairs at The Griffin)

Court Square

Carlisle

CA2

4-7th May

12-5pm

FREE ENTRY

In other news i am going home to London tomorrow and i am very excited. You can take the boy out of the city but you can't take the city out of the boy as they say. James is coming with me too and we're going to tear it up. As much as i hate carlisle though, there's a handful of people i will miss very much. I am only going to be away for 2 weeks, how much of a sissy do i sound right now? Anyway, none of that matters because on monday i am going to CANADA. My brother moved there last november so my mother and i are going to visit him. He lives in Vancouver which, from what various people have told me sounds like some kind of liberal, anti corporate artist record collector utopia so that sounds pretty good. We will be going to visit Seattle too which im excited about. Ill wear ripped jeans and listen to grunge the whole time. Another little treat will be on the way down to Seattle getting to visit the little town where they shot Twin Peaks! freakin' awesome. I think im going to have to have a twin peaks sesh tonight in celebration.