Aaron Draplin...

A couple of weeks ago, Paul & I went down to the sketchy streets of Shadwell, for an event 'Tall tales by a large man', that large man being Aaron Draplin, a designer out of Portland, Oregon, famous for the likes of Obama (The President), Nixon (Not the president, the brand), Nike Air Max (before they were cool), Field Notes (Mole Skine's biggest rival) and the now infamous COBRA DOGS! It was literally the best talk I have ever been to, there were tears (his), laughter (ours) and I have never left a talk so inspired. It's well worth checking out the Draplin Design Co site here

I managed to grab a LTD edition print of his poster too which I'll share, in due course.

You can grab a little insight to what Aaron was like here:


America Is F*cked.......(Graphically at least) from Jess Gibson on Vimeo.


But more importantly, there's an awesome write up by Paul on the Inferno blog here

Designer's Elbow...

It's not as weird as you think. But does anyone else suffer from this?

Lack of arm hair on the elbow, I think it's where I use my mouse / Wacom tablet.
Never noticed it before, thought I would share it. Can you spot people in the street that work in an office? I challenge thee!

disLIKE...

Quarter past a button...

Here's a little something I made for the lady as part of her Christmas present. (She's had it already, so I'm not ruining any surprises).

Purchased a wall clock from Ebay for a few quid, then nipped to the local market (which just so happens to be the biggest in South West London) picked up a wide array of buttons from various little sketchy looking stalls, the more interesting the better, otherwise you can just double up... and of course, some white spray paint & super glue and Voila! 

Stanley's Globe...

Just before we first moved into our shiny new offices in Covent Garden, I nipped over to Stanley's Post (Post production company, full of lovely people), and they gave me this fine t-shirt.

Disregard the photo pose, naturally I didn't take it.

Then shortly after they sent the crew at Inferno some lovely little welcome gifts soon after. (And my oh my, I LOVE freebies).

...and now I'm getting to my point.

The Jam Jar Snow Globe Competition.

A DIY snow globe kit with lots of little goodies to glue, stick, mould, mix, oh and a little added Glycerin, to thicken the water (I always thought this was something explosive... Nitro Glycerine? Perhaps?) I even added some white-tac as snow ball as seen in the work in progress design above.

Without further adieu, here's mine:

The distortion on the glass ruined my perfectly positioned Santa & Xmas Tree, so naturally I added a Panda from a colleagues desk, and made it a lovely little box, of the same said wrapping paper that I keep banging on about and Voila! It might not win, but it looks good on a desk.

Ooh-La-La...

Inferno had a secret santa this year (like they do every year), although this one was my first Xmas here... So here's a small section of people using the wrapping paper I made the week before last, mainly because it was free and mainly because a lot of people had left it to the last minute. Proof that it works, I suppose.

Oh, and here's the poster I made for it... The theme was burlesque, so I went for a simple graphic piece, rather than the other three more illustrated versions I created. Little bit of inside knowledge for you... Baranis' (the venue) interior architecture honestly did resemble the shape of the suspenders. Coincidence?

Give Ebay a sense of humour...

Why on Earth not?

I call it sense of humour searching.

Note: Check out the fine print (click to make it bigger).

Where touchscreen will take you...

With all the touchscreen devices taking over the market - in pretty much anything/everything digital, I wonder if, in future generations, we'll end up with fingers like this...

Rrip

I've launched a little side project of mine, mainly for fun, but probably just another thing to keep me busy. It's called Rrip. It's a range of custom wrapping paper (Random, I know). I decided to make my own this year and felt I could offer it out for things like birthdays in the future. 

For now it's free, because you have to print it out yourself. In the near future there will be a shiny new site called Rrip.it - but it's just forwarding for now.

Here's a few samples to get you started: 

(If you use it, all I ask is that you please send me a photo).

Xmas No.1

Xmas No.2

Ice Flakes

Xmas No.3

MINIMAL INK

Some, non-Xmas samples too.

Draplin Inspired

Pop

Nighttime

 Kelly

Logo Design...

Here's a little design project inspired by playing with Triangles... It's not perfect, but it's a work in progress, I think the K is a little awkward still. I quite like the simplified M though. Below is a detail of how I put it together.

Little fun design project...

Last night was the first of our two Inferno Xmas parties... I had a bit of spare time and designed the email invite, so thought I would share it. It turned out to be a fun little project. Naturally, I couldn't give away the details before now. I've also designed the second poster as well, so will post it up shortly. 

Goldfish?

Design Your Future...

My old Ad course at the University of Lincoln got in touch a short while ago, and asked me to write a piece for the course. It'll feature in a publication to be distributed at the Design your Future Exhibition at Manchester & London Olympia. The magazine includes some interesting grads from a wide range of disciplines...

At first I loved the layout/ type treatment for the magazine. I'm not so sure now, anyway... judge for yourself. You can grab a full copy of the magazine here

(Click on the image to make it bigger - if you want).

TEED Poster Competiton:

So I mentioned a little competition in a previous post for Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs to design their UK tour poster in February and my own entry.

Here's a selection of my favourites...

Cartoon illustration meets real life photo. I think it's something about the colour and seriousness in the face in contrast to the playfulness of the feathers.

The dinosaur thing is a bit of a given, but nice geometric shapes, just got to say it's a little different.

Purely for it's simplicity. Big bold type and clever spacing.

One of the best in my opinion, love the abstract but ages texture. Reminds me of that Nord Express poster from France around the 1930s.

Love the handmade feel to this, not entirely sure where someone has put the time and effort in to scalpel this out, I'm going to go with photoshop & illustrator, but it is lovely. Total maximalist design.

A designer currently working at JWT, got to be all about the colours, really bright & fresh feel to it.

10 points for being a clever sod. Nice use of origami, I can't fold paper like this for anything, still think they missed a trick by not printing something on the origami. Nice thought all the same.

For thinking about the era of my childhood, stickers were immense! Slight contradiction in the peeling sticker, even though it's under a plastic cover, but nice idea.

Brand Nu.

@brand_nu an illustrator represented by Jelly has put out a free new poster... and it's very nice! Get your copy here: http://files.brandnu.co.uk/BrandNu_Three_A3.pdf

You can't throw a camera...

...but you can throw a ball. Amazing panoramic shots from where you stand.
Only trouble is you have to carry a camera around that's the size of The sun!

D&AD President's Lecture...

Inferno asked me to typed up some notes from Rosie Arnold's first Presidential lecture as the Creative head at D&AD, which you can find over on their blog here

This time round it was Jaime Perlman with her thoughts as an Art Director at British Vogue and a sneak preview into her decisions for the re-design of the British Vogue January 2012 edition.

Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs...

So here's my design for the competition TEED are running (my Sunday morning in the office)...

Any thoughts? (Click img for detail).

Shoot a Footballer...

A few weeks ago I was asked to get some football shots, some a little unusual, some a bit more traditional. In the run up to the weekend, I thought, sod spending my time searching stock libraries, it would be WAYYYY more fun to go shoot some stuff, so I grabbed my housemate (like-minded creative-type), a camera, a football kit and headed down to the Common to grab some snaps. Here's a sample of the pre-prod shots...

Brutal Simplicity of Thought.

I'm a big fan of quotes, and well this isn't one, technically.
I'm sure it derived from a quote somewhere along the line, but I came across by way of my boss, paraphrasing.

A man once asked an old Indian man:
How do you turn everyday blocks of wood into such beautiful and intricate sculptures of elephants? 

His reply was simple:
I remove everything that doesn't look like an Elephant.

Kew-l.

Excuse, the cringe-worthy title.

Here's some photos from the weekend and my trip with the lady to Kew Gardens. I know what you're thinking, green, plants, flowers ...boring. Well, this place was magical when I was a kid, and yes, I didn't exactly pick the best time of year to go, but the last time I visited I couldn't have been much older than 8 years old. Now being 25, I was genuinely excited to go back. I was looking forward to one thing in particular though... The giant Victorian greenhouses, and the fact that you can still head up to the upper levels... they certainly did not disappoint. A friendly little Robin even swooped-by, almost landing on my hand, and hopped around us curiously, so thank you Mr. Robin.