birthday cards

i'm glad my family have got used to the fact that i'm a designer and therefore know a good birthday card when i see one. The top is from my parents. i think my constant photographing of bizarre reflections must have embedded itself in their minds. how awesome is it though??

The second ones from my auntie and uncle. i actually laughed at it. genius little illustration!

The next, from my sister, is a Kurt Vonnegut quote. im not great with fonts, but im going to assume its based on helvetica. i like weathered look, and the quote itself.

The fourth card is from my ates from durham anna, myke and stu. im guessing anna made the card (shes a fan of stick people). interestingly, she wasnt aware of my love of masking tape. and i love the illustration of me haha.

PHLEGM COMICS

Absolute genius. I dont think i need to say anything else.

Designign gig posters

Funny story...

I got offered a gig in Durham, accepted it and offered to design the posters/flyers. The promotion company said yes. I produced the top one thinking "happy, summery weather, image for all the acts". Then Stuart (fm Abraxas Promotions) pointed out that James Addison would get laughed off stage in The Angel for my description. I suggested that should make the whole poster 'grittier' and he said that was exactly the word he was looking for. So what did i do? I smashed the guitar and branded his company name across the top to keep him happy.

All's well that ends well.

Its a very typical DIY poster, but thats to appeal to the audience, who wouldnt be expecting vectorised spaceships blowing up skyscrapers. For some reason i really like how "THE ANGEL" stands out on my final design. I think its cos its my handwriting but elongated.

Book of 100 - TRIALS

These are just some over-ambitious trial books that i couldnt apply my concept of hiding the least public of my models' actions to. They are much more 'my style' of work - scrappy collage - so it is interesting comparing them to my final piece, whih has much more refined and "graphicsy" style that i am branching out into (despite the fact that i dont really feel that you can have that much of a personalised approach).

Book of 100 (a bit late)

I'm really pleased with how my book turned out. I had some moments during the development when i realised i was aiming very high with what i wanted to do. My trial books (see next post) show this, but because of complications, the way i was working didnt really work.

My finalhas come out as probably one the most precise pieces of graphics i have created. It was a turning point in the course for me as i started making my work conform to the world of graphic design. Even tho i was very dubious at first, it definitely paid off.

The double-sided idea works unbelieveably well and i have had people questioning their lives when they try to work out how its put together.

Chemtrailers!

For our Chemtrailers project, Andy, Nate and myself all worked on different aspects of the brief - Nate did the website design and myself and andy workwd on the branding of the company.

My initial idea was the black and red design, then Nate introduced a yellow/grey colour scheme that can be seen on initial poster designs.

The posters then developed into a series of three warning of three consequences of chemtrails - poisoning, mind control and weather control. My final responses to poisoning and weather control are included in this post.