Kin- A Creative Family

Well I've been quite busy working in house for clients recently but when I'm not you can often find me at the Canal Basin in Coventry, working alongside a very talented bunch of freelancers at Kin Creative. The breadth of skills within the small but highly qualified team allows for high end design at a lower cost than your typical agency. So if you have a meaty project that requires more than one set of creative hands get in touch. 

SpeakOut

Once again working with BRAP I have produced the first of an initially scheduled three issues of SpeakOut magazine. The project aims to investigate what it is like to live in Birmingham, and explore the different lives of it's inhabitants. I created the logo and layout for magazine which will be distributed from the start of September so look out for it. 

The editorial team are on the look out for anyone wishing to contribute, whether your a writer, poet, photographer, illustrator or artist. If you fancy getting your work in print and seen by all of Brum, get in contact with the editorial team.

4talent

Channel 4's Ten4 magazine has had a re-launch, it's put on a few pounds (now bi-annual and just shy of 200 pages) and is now known as 4talent. Still has the same mix of showcases, advice and interviews stretching across all creative media but just looks that bit better on the coffee table. 

I designed a four page spread for the first issue, an interview with Scottish Radio presenter Diane Knox. Only having two cheesy publicity photos to go with I embellished the first spread with floral based vector illustration with hints to radio paraphernalia. 

Find out more about 4talent and all contributors here

Chocosho

Recently found this nice little website of oddities Chocosho. It's a collection of fashion and lifestyle bits from emerging (mainly American) product & fashion designers. I especially like the 'tape' dispenser above, not sure I can justify the $25 shipping charges on it though!

Bread & Butter

Well it was a while back but found a few nice pics on my mac from the last Bread & Butter tradeshow (click on the images above to enlarge). All about what's hot for the coming season in the fashion biz, but a good inspirational visit for designers too. Unfortunately it's not open to the general public and you have to be invited by a exhibitioning brand or be a buyer for a retailer. If you can blag your way in and fancy taking in the sights of Barcelona for a couple of days it's well worth a visit.

The branding and invites for the event are always themed really nicely too, international air travel when I went, complete with boarding passes and stewardesses on arrival. 

LIFT Branding

I've recently hooked up with a lovely new client BRAP for the branding and ongoing marketing materials for their equal opportunities training program 'lift'. I have created their logo and am currently working on information leaflets for the four strands of the training program.  

The logo uses a clean rounded base font, with a vibrant highlight colour. The simplified 'helping hand' graphic visually portrays lifts aim to provide support and prop up those working for equality in the work place. Four secondary logos were also completed for each of the strands with the corresponding letter in the acronym highlighted and 'lifted'

All the leaflets will follow the same format with different colour schemes and simplistic layout to keep the uniformity of the brand. Hopefully, budget permitting, when all leaflets are complete I will produce a square format folder which will double up as a mailer to potential clients.  

JG Ballard Crash competition

Well finally there's a tiny bit of news on the Times Online JG Ballard Crash Cover Competition. Still no news of any shortlist; the best six are meant to be presented to the great man himself to choose the winner, but judging is now underway. Apparently the amount of entries mean they are still looking over the work, with the May winner announcement long gone! 

I shall post a link to the winning entries when they put one up but here is my entry along with a couple of other concepts I considered. I decided the strongest concept was the first one; Banksy meets HR Giger at a porno show. Although I quite liked moodiness of the other concepts they didn't quite convey the fetishistic aspect of the novel.

A few of the other entries can be seen on the rather nice Ballardian website here

Welcome to My Design Blog

Hello there! Thought it was about time I tried out this blogging malarkey so here it is. I will be keeping you up to date with what I've been up to work wise and posting a few design gems I have found on my travels. Feel free to post any comments or send me some of your thoughts, ideas and work to hello@russelljhall.com and I'll post up the best of them.