Sometimes you just see something and it sets you off for an hour and you just have to do it, right then, scratch the design itch, regardless of how meaningless it may be to anyone else. It’s a lunchtime luxury not to have too many phone calls so today I got this out of my head and on to the screen. Whomph. Done.
Letters make such amazing patterns. I’m usually loathed to use Helvetica as I never seem to master where other excel, it but it’s got this wonderful regularity I couldn’t resist. So here is my little brain burp for the day. I’m dying to screen print them.
The brand had to describe this standpoint and appeal directly to young adults and the experienced church-goer alike, but the important factor was the delivery had to mesh well with the online world, be readable, simple, lively and designed for the iPad generation. These designs were put together for the initial stage to illustrate my early thoughts, taking directly from commonly used icons from blogs – one of the client’s favoured media – tailoring it to her with a website to match her online sales, keeping it light and lively letting her content do the talking next to it.
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While in NYC it was hard not to get obsessed with the stickers, stencils and signs. Everywhere someone turned a vulnerable surface into their own gallery, there was no rest – it sets a pace to the city, it smothered on layers of what the people made of the character of it all. It translated into the records and neons all over, bright, fierce, personal and sexy. Here’s to the next visit.
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Bleeker Street, NYC, December 2nd 2011.
Or thereabouts. Blindingly bright winter days on our trip to NYC. Even simple walls looked made up for vintage or vauderville. There were so many patterns in the buildings and bricks we walked for hours everyday. It’s an amazing town. I’ll be back, again.
Wishing any friends, family, fellow creatives and web dwellers a jolly nice holiday! Above is a quicky sketch for a card I’ve made in the dying hours of the studio before we pack up for the holidays that I’d like to share with you; a message in a tree – does what it says on the tin! Kx
It’s been a hazy weekend of October sun, it’s been brilliant. I should have gone to the seaside but I was too hot for the train, that and gardening beckoned. Instead in a super short post I wanted to show you what happened when you find a little lost canvas, some patches of acrylic paint that you should use up because you’re working on something else (more to come later when it’s done) and the urge to do something that you can finish quickly just out of self indulgence. So here’s the sea that I didn’t see.
One of the hardest things for me is a repeat project; the client likes the project enough for you to do it again but they’d quite like it to stay the same. As a designer the first thing you do is pull apart what you did the previous year and assess what’s ok to keep and what needs moving on – all the while trying to resist the urge to start over completely because you’ve moved on too.
This was one such brief – as seen here for last year’s edition, I had done the photography, design and art direction and was wondering actually whether getting another designer involved could breathe fresh life into it – but budgets did not allow and there was no time to start doubting myself as I we travelled all around west London meeting the people who use and run Westway CT in the back of any number of their minibuses. I can’t lie – I love this project the people are amazing and I get to test my brain taking pictures and trying to capture the angles of the stories they want to tell – how it allows the disabled to get to their jobs, how the elderly get to socialise and meeting the drivers that make it possible. There’s always so much to hear and I never feel that a single image does each person justice – this is why I really marvel at the skills of professional photographers.
The report is out and the AGM is today, there’s been some good feedback, but I wanted to share a couple of my favourite shots that didn’t make it into print but I feel speak about the people when I met them, Sonia and Elvis.
I’ve just recently been eyeing up the idea of doing some posters, then I stumble upon a new technique of vectorising my hand writing and a picture of Crayola crayons – which I still love. The rest is history and the future is probably a screen print.
My other half is a foodie, not just eating but making, baking, cooking, stewing, roasting, frying, but for the purposes of this project; preserving. Basically he’s gotten into the art of Jam making and all that goes with it. His blog is here: FoodForFraud, if you’re wondering what to make for dinner.
As such last Christmas, when a preserving pan (or in my vocab – massive saucepan) was requested from Santa, I couldn’t just hand it over before trying to dress it up abit. If you ask me, it isn’t the most exciting thing to can get for Christmas, but his Jam is pretty awesome so its win win really.
As such I thought I’d design him a brand for his future concoctions; luckily he’d already come up with a name so it was just a case of cracking on. I love the idea of preserving; there’s something Victorian about it – boiling things up in cauldrons and they’ll magically keep forever stashed away in a collection of recycled jars… if only I had the patience to do it myself. But this feeling of ancient apothecaries and sticky sweet treats lurking away was what I wanted to evoke with the monochrome palette and silhouette theme – afterall simplicity’s the key here when it’s what’s inside the jar that counts.
In the future I’d love to get some printed on clear plastic and just white out the areas to write on, so the areas of the logo that are dribbles of sauce turning into cutlery outlines seem to actually made of the contents of the jar to push the concept out further – I think he’s going to have to go into bigger production for this print run! Below is a quick scamp of how the fruit could show through on the 3 current label layouts.
His latest, and possibly greatest jam is Plum and Blackberry Jam (pictured above) – get the low down here: Food For Fraud’s Plum & Blackberry jam recipe and obviously were made some scones to go with them, here’s a link to my shot of them cooling down: My Food photos – Scones! - I had to find something to do while we waited – so delicious.
There are all sorts of lovely one-off briefs I see through clients, this was one proposal that I got to put forward when developing branding and literature to support an orchestral concert for a London Synagogue, the New West End Synagogue.
I decided it was time to flex the illustrative muscles, using the 2 S’s found in the title to abstract and echo the shape of the body of a violin, which was to be the lead in most of the pieces of music in the programme for the night. The stave of music became the title grid which also doubled up as the strings to the violin. Building with texture of the actual written music and expressive watercoloured splatters to invoke some of the feelings the musicians would create. These elements were to then be used to structure the continuing printed literature, tickets, adverts etc.
