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.