Soul Band Evening poster

My friend Lucy asked me to design a poster for a Soul Band Evening held at my old school. I threw this together in an evening. Im not sure about it, but at least it has a bit of a sophisticated feel? Unfortunately 99% of everyone who will see wont even give the tiniest shit about the poster and a large amount of these will get torn down and ripped up (there's a lot of brats where i went to school). The photo is of two members of the soul band in their practice space. I used it, well,  it was the only semi-decent photo going. Its all black and white because they were going to get photocopied so colour was more or less pointless. How do you think it turned out?

Paper Toys

We got our new brief today and im very happy. We have to design characters and make them into paper toys. Kind of like those expensive vinyl ones you see in Magma and Forbidden Planet. This should be so so fun!

Anyway there's a few good free ones you can download and do yourself here:

Cubecraft

Readymech

FINALLY

This has been the longest three weeks of my life. Seriously. Today me and my friend Andy finished up our British Museum Signs brief. This has easily been the worst, most difficult and most frustrating brief we have had to do over the whole year. It doesnt make any sense, i havnt really learnt anything and everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. I would say that this brief was designed to make us 'think outside the box' or whatever, but actually it just massively over complicated an extremely simple problem. I would post pictures of what we've done but im not particularly proud of it, and i could write pages and pages of angry ranting about why i hated this brief but im completely drained of energy. Either way, this whole thing has been a mess. Crit tomorrow 930 (im glad about this, so i dont have to go to the whole day getting wound up...).

We have one project left of BA Graphic Design Year one! its four weeks long according to the timetable. I REALLY FUCKING HOPE ITS SOMETHING GOOD.

update: Just got back from crit. Was expecting a kicking but got a fair criticism, which is all i can ask for really. We didnt produce particularly good work so what can you expect? My tutor said my presentation skills were very very good though which is nice i suppose. Oh well, whatever, the end.

We Heart It

I just started using this site called We Heart It. Its great and lots of fun. You bookmark pictures you like, basically, and share them with others. Its all images of design, illustration. photography etc etc. It works by adding a little thing to your bookmarks bar on your browser, which you click when your on a website and it magically allows you to post the pictures on that site on We Heart It for all to see. Apparently you can do it with videos too but i dont know how. Its kind of like a fountain of snazzy inspirational stuff for when your bored. Its kinda like that slick site FFFFOUND but more accesible. Give it a go!

you can see my heart here 

Pictograms project

this is my final piece for our current pictograms project. The brief was to design 6 pictograms depicting six degrees of something. The topics we had to design for were drawn randomly out of a bag, and i got 'Heavy Metal'. Other topics included 'alien abduction', 'illegal parking', 'dj hand signs' and 'tripping in public', so you get the idea its supposed to be kind of a fun slant on an otherwise fairly dry area of design...

Anyway, my 6 pictograms are designed to show the degrees of hand injury after playing a totally awesome heavy metal guitar solo. The worse the injury, the more heavy metal you truely are! I drew everything and did the 'how heavy metal are you' type and the numbers. I used News Gothic for the rest of the text for three reasons: firstly its pretty neutral, so it makes the words do the talking and not the font, secondly i didn't want to be cliched and use a blackletter font or something you'd expect from some lame heavy metal graphics and thirdly, its a bit more interesting than our old friend Helvetica. Anyway, enough geeky type talk, have a look and see what you think. 

This is going to get critted tomorrow, i hope i do well, im feeling pretty confident...

click to enlarge and read the text :)

Best. Find. Ever.

so i was hanging out with my two favourite graphic designers (maria and deniz of course) in the tate modern bookshop the other day and i found a copy of 'Wim Crouwel: Typographic Architectures/Architectures Graphiques' which was published for the exhibition about the legendary typographer at the beginning of last year in Paris. The book shows his work between 1956 and 1976. Whats more, it was designed by Experimental Jetset! I know i recently made a post about getting a different Wim Crouwel book but you have to realise that a book about Wim Crouwel designed by Experimental Jetset is basically graphic design porn to me. good times.

You can see pictures of the book on Typotheque here, or by coming over to my house where i will force it upon you until you agree with me that Wim Crouwel and Experimental Jetset are super amazing.

Norway

The product of a bored afternoon not doing university projects. Not sure how well this went really, what do you think? It feels like something that could be worked into, or expanded on or something, but i cant really decide on what. The placement of the body copy is a particular issue that needs to be tweaked. The experimental typography is my own, but the body copy is just copied out of wikipedia...

You should be able to click to enlarge

Wim Crouwel

Today i received a lovely new book in the post. That book is 'Wim Crouwel Alphabets', which i snapped up when a single copy became available on amazon. It was quite expensive, and its quite small, but it is pretty much very amazing. For those of you who don't know, Wim Crouwel is a dutch typographer and graphic designer, who started his career during the mid fifties, and is one of the key designers of the modernist movement. He was designing typefaces that feel extremely modern even today when most of our parents (assuming you're a student like me) were just young whipper-snappers during the mid to late 60s and early 70s, and more importantly, waaayy before the advent of computer technology in graphic design. Anyway, i highly recommend looking him up, i think theres a lot to be learned from him...

(these two images stolen shamelessly from the always wonderful youworkforthem)

InDesign CS3

talk about a love/hate relationship

Helvetica

Just watched the documentary 'Helvetica' which i think was released last year but i didnt get round to seeing it then. It is really really good and if you are into graphic design and/or typography at all, definitely bother to see it.

Happy Birthday Deniz

shes 21 today

Sunset in the land of photoshop

A new addition to my on going ghostworld series (yes, named after the graphic novel, no, not really anything to do with it, im just a huuuge Clowes fan). You should be able to click to enlarge

Build

Build are a London based studio. I've seen their work around for a while but only finally bothered to look up their site. Man, i wish i had designed the poster above. I think they're rapidly becoming a personal favourite.

Get clicking!

Build

Things I like: Maria!

One of my best friends Maria just started a new blog. She is small and blonde and from Sweden! Its called 'The Things I Like (and things i hate)' - you may be able to guess she posts about things she likes and things she hates. So far she's just posted about things she likes, which is a surprise, because i know her, and i know she hates a lot of stuff. Its a really simple idea but i think its a really good one, plus she has lots of pretty photos and it looks very nice indeed (she just got a fancy pants new camera and everything)

Head over there and maybe Maria will like you too

The Things I Like (And The Things I Hate)

Happy Valentines Day

i made two posters for my better half. Sure, i didn't print them out i just showed them to her on screen but she said she really liked them. I did MAKE her a mixtape though (classic) and got her a book so I'm not THAT lazy. I may post pictures of that later also as i was quite pleased with the mixtape design. The small body copy on the posters is a series of injokes that only really me and her would get. :) .What did you do this valentines day?

p.s Vince Frost loves you too

Midnight in the land of photoshop

actual size

Photoshop + 2am =

2am seems to be some kind of creative hour for me. Heres some things i did on photoshop at this time, instead of sleeping:

   

Blood on the floor

a typographic doodle from my sketchbook i was quite pleased with:

Black Slabbath

Saw this whilst browsing the YouWorkForThem site. Its a poster titled Black Slabbath by YWFT, promoting a night of  heavy metal, beer and typography (whats not to like?). The typeface itself was designed by Stefan Kjartansson and is pretty much all about the colossal slabs and being blacker than black. Anyway, head over to their website right now and have a look around they have some really great stuff on there - i'm especially fond of some of their typefaces.

Doug Scott Photography

Ok FINE ill admit it, yes, i am shamelessly promoting my brother here. He is a photographer and illustrator (just finishing his third year studying illustration at Coventry university), and he just set up a blog for his photography stuff so people can see it easily and everything. He is pretty good if you ask me, so head over and check it out and leave comments and stuff.

Doug Scott Photography

Experimental Jetset

ok well i don't actually have any of my own work to post just yet (soon!) so i figured i would post a link to one of my all time favourite design studios - Experimental Jetset. Thats right, the pesky, helvetica loving dutch trio, who invented tshirts that

Look&

Like&

This&

Yeah.

Anyway, i love them a lot (am currently totally ripping on them for something i'm doing right now that ill post in a couple of days) and i think you should too, if you don't already.

www.experimentaljetset.nl

Hello.

Hello and welcome to my super amazing exciting blog. It's mostly supposed to be about my life as a graphic design student, and a place i can post stuff i've done and stuff by other people i like etc etc (all kinds of stuff mind, not just graphic design). It's also a place for me to spread vicious rumours about  people i know! Just kidding.

enjoy (hopefully)