SpeakOut Issue 2

SpeakOut Issue 2 is out now and here's a few photos of my layouts. The deadline for articles and contributers for the next issue is 9th January so if you want to be involved get in touch here.

4 Talent Photos

Been meaning to post some photos from the latest 4Talent for a while, below is the great cover illustration from Christain Zebitz and my spreads featuring illustration from Kate Copeland. Not sure what the future of 4Talent Magazine is as the dreaded 'R' word seems to have claimed the jobs of the Networks teams. Real shame as they were a great bunch to work with and the magazine since changing from Ten4 to 4Talent looks and reads better than ever but we shall have to wait and see. My previous spreads for 4Talent can be seen here.

Links from December

Here's a round up of some great links from the last month or so.

Spoongraphics round up of cool designer toys and vinyl figures

Strange| Beautiful inspiration site full of all sorts

From the makers of the Behance Network comes Served, five sites full of design inspiration split into Typography, Photography, Industrial/Product Design, Fashion, Motion Graphics.

3 part photography/ photojournalistic review of the year, with some amazing shots from global events in 2008

Some great illustrative prints from Alberto Cerriteno

Everyone's been bigging up Magdalena Czarnecki's work on several blogs but it is outstanding, I especially like the origami packs for WWF fundraising

Round up of 10 most innovative concert visuals from 2008 on accent feed blog 

'Static and reactive' visuals from Portuguese Art Director Nuno Trafaria

Illustration portfolio from New York based Jinyoung Shin

The Creative Review Blog takes a look at Elliot Young Studio's hand stitched programme for the Royal Variety Perfomance. 

A Bit of Christmas Cheer

Well I noticed I've not been very festive in my blogging, Christmas wind down just hasn't happened yet, but I have had a couple of interesting yule related briefs. Firstly, below is my E card for Equalities charity Brap, it has an alternate Christmas message focussing on work to be done in 2009. Secondly my design for Trent FM's Charity Ale pump, if your drinking in any Nottingham pub this weekend why not get yourself a pint and do your bit for charity at the same time. Finally a desk top advent calendar for the Hit Music Network's clients, printed with the stations logos foiled on.  

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Hit Music Network- Part 2 of 2

Continuing from my previous post here's some more of my print designs for on air promotions for the Hit Music Network.

Hit Network Radio Designs- Part 1 of 2

Well as the end of the year approaches I thought I'd put together a bit of a retrospective of some of the work I have done for a regular client, the now Global Group owned, Hit Music Network. They are a great small design team to work for and hopefully I shall be continuing to freelance for them in the new year. Always a challenge to come up with new idents that give consistency to the brand but stretch across a number of local stations. The basic rules of thumb, Avant Garde & an adapted Century gothic, the core brand colours pink, green and black and a clean visual approach. 

MUTO- A Wall Painted Animation

Just mental, god knows how long this took to produce, find out more on the blublu blog

Links from November

A quick round up of the interesting sites & articles I have come across in the last month.

Beautiful paper illustrations from Yulia Brodskaya.

Great round up from DesignM.ag focusing on interesting typography.

I've been a big fan of M/M{Paris} for while, since their visual collaborations with Bjork on a number of her CDs & DVDs. Their new catalogue of work for sale has some great, but pricey limited edition prints.

Not had much chance to play around with this but looks good fun, Hobnox have made online versions of Rolands old music mixers and pedals, you can twiddle away to your hearts content and record up to five minutes of your sampling. (Just a point to note you need the latest flash player to view)

If you use a Wacom tablet then this round up of tips and tricks again from DesignM.ag will help you get the most out of it.

To be honest most of it is hot air and only relevant to large companies but there are a few interesting insights in Design Weeks Creative Survey.

Poladroid

Do you love your 100 mega pixel, 50x optical zoom, image balancing, super Digital SLR Camera? Great as they are, for some images I miss the personal feel and wonky colour balances of the old Polaroid photos. Mourn no longer Polaroid's decision to stop production of it's film (planned 2009), now you can turn any jpeg into a one of the litttle beauties.

Poladroid is a free mini application with a great interface that will develop your jpegs into high res polaroid style photos. The image develops on screen and you can pick it up and shake it as you would the real thing to speed it's development. 

True you could quite easily set yourself a template in photoshop in no time but would miss out on the randomness of the tones/ sharpness of the images, just like the real thing. It's only available for Macs at the moment but a PC version on it's way according to the website.

CG Arts Online Magazine

Well don't know much about this one as the magazine and website is in Chinese but it's worth a download, especially if your into fantasy or character illustration. Quite chunky files 50MB+ so don't say I didn't warn you!

Cubist Sound & Vision

Here is a couple of interesting videos to some great live music visuals. Firstly the muched talked about Killers performance at the EMAs, very reminiscent of Etienne De Crecy's live shows this year (see last video). But for a truly immersive experience check out Barcelona's Kubik club, an outdoor nightclub with walls made from glowing industrial containers that pulse to the beat of the tracks.

Creative Resources

Just added another post to the MTB Blog, with a top 5 free Creative Resource sites. If you are a regular to this blog you may already have seen these but worth a look non the less.

Media Talent Bank Post

Just added another post to the Media Talent Bank site, this time discussing every new freelancers first question, 'how much should I charge?'

Plus 2008 a Visual Overview

Better late than never above is a visual guide to this years Plus festival. Only had time to whizz round for an hour or two with my camera so missed the Jonathan Barnbrook talk but all in all the event seemed to be a success, though some of last years contributors were noticeable by their absence.

From talks with some of the exhibitors, this may be due to the current crowd that the exhibition attracts, mainly students. Whilst this is great and I noticed a few coaches outside the venue from around the country, speaking from a business point of view I think a lot of local small companies are becoming increasingly weary in these belt buckling times. 

If you are spending not an insignificant amount of time and money to exhibit the main return for companies is to showcase their skills to potential new clients. Perhaps the entry charge of £15 a day is off putting to a lot of the general public and local businesses. 

I get the feeling the main thing that comes out of the event for many companies is to be inundated with CVs from visiting students. It's a shame as I'm sure the event costs a lot to put on and margins are tight but I do think the entry price a little steep to reach the broad audience the event deserves. 

Regardless of the above it's all about some great work on show. Especially from Fluid, (having done a fair bit of freelance for them recently I was very impressed with their stand and publicity material for the event, as I know how busy they have been of late). Great to see the Cov Uni stand and chat with one of my old tutors, complete with some very nice work and a selection from it's metal type vaults, takes me back to my Uni days! The Baskerville headstone in development was fascinating to watch and I was very impressed with the quality of work from Sutton College. 

The Forgotten Project

Well I had grand plans for the last month, unfortunately most went out of the window due to heavy work load. One of which was to exhibit at this years Plus festival. Started some initial faffing and then got waylaid. The title for this year was Hybrid and I started some typographical musings getting quite hung up on the word 'mongrel' and it's connotations to the modern day graphic designer; a cross breed of traditional and digital technologies and working with widening media. Anyway it got swallowed in the workload but here is some initial ideas, no idea where they were going and probably never will!

4talent Issue2

Here's a sneak peak of my layouts for the forthcoming 4Talent magazine, for an article on crime fiction from Northern Ireland. Not sure when it's due out but will post some photos when I get a copy.

SpeakOut Issue 2

Well here's one of the projects that has been keeping my busy over the last couple of weeks. Issue 2 of SpeakOut magazine will be available in and around Birmingham in the next week or so. Quite pleased with the layout of this one, helped out by some great photography by Michael Correll & Karen Strunks

Belated links from October

Sorry for my lack of postings recently had a busy few weeks, so in an attempt to make up for it take a look at my hot links from October.

Haunting photography and post production images from Oleg Duryagins.

Multicolr site lets you pick your key search colours and it searches flicker to find images with these colours in them. The best bit is the site allows you to specify up to 10 colours at a time, great for helping to create moodboards.

 

Who is Max Kerning? Find out by viewing the link, quite funny in a nerdy graphic designer kind of way.

Very good portfolio site from Mate Steinforth.

Australian Graphic Artist Justin M Mallers folio site, Superlover.