Inspiration

Ben Tallon

Clare Mallison

David Sparshott

One of the things I talked about back in January was changing the look and feel of the blog so it became more of a showcase for my work as a designer and work I find inspiring. As such, I'm just going to throw some inspiration here and there, every now and then.

Harry Pearce

Although he has a name right out of Spooks, Harry Pearce is one of the most influential designers at Pentagram's London office and I was lucky enough to catch him at February's Typographic Circle event.  

Have to admit, I hadn't really heard of him before the talk (obviously did some research) but he was to be blunt, pretty amazing. His work touches many disciplines, from spatial design and identity to print, ( Halfords, Waitrose, Sainsbury’s, Anish Kapoor and the 2011 Summer Exhibition at the RA, Phaidon Press, the Science Museum, Saks Fifth Avenue) packaging and posters and he ran us through it and his thought processes in an engaging, funny and informative way.

His work for Witness (see poster above), an international nonprofit organization that uses the power of video and storytelling to open the eyes of the world to human rights abuses was particularly engaging and brilliant. 

Angus Hyland

Bobbed along to a packed Typographic Circle talk at JWT last week to see Angus Hyland, Pentagram partner, give a talk about Symbol, his new book. It was a great intro into the history of the visual language of symbols and how they interact with the design world.

An added bonus was a breakdown of the thinking behind the redesigning/rebranding work he has done over the last ten years (along with his wife Marion Dechaurs who I spoke about before Christmas) for Cass Art. The designs are clean, colourful and when added to a Swiss design bring intelligence to what is basically a simple idea. There's a nice explanation on the eye blog about it.

Kenneth Branagh

I haven't really done a lot of drawing recently, but since we're meandering towards the end of 2011, here's a few sketches I did from a Kenneth Branagh interview in the Guardian. 

Happy 2012!!

New Year, new blog..

So in next March, it will be two years since I started writing and posting on this blog. It's been fun and well worth it but it needs a lot of life breathing into it. New layout, new design?! Definitely some new creativity.

I also need to update my portfolio with new work and look into getting a website up and running. If so, I might start to incorporate the blog posts into that.

There's a lot to think about. In the meantime, this is my kick up the backside.

Happy Christmas

Belatedly of course.

I like these adverts for the Denver Theatre Company. A cool way of representing the three ghosts and consequently Scrooge's entire journey.

Internships

If you haven't seen Mr Bingo or his work then you should. He is damn fine illustrator and as you can see above his view on working for free is pretty clear. Spot on. What happens though if you're just starting out? Maybe this time last year you had a brain fart and decided to follow a dream, thereby consigning the last 15 years of a career into the bin marked "STARTING AGAIN".

In this recession? Are you kidding me? Squeekybumtime.

One of the scarier moments during London Design Week was being told by an design agency that in order to get 'my break' I would have to accept working free internships, maybe for the next 12 months before getting my first design position. I'll be honest in saying it frightened the crap out of me.

To be fair there are a lot of paid internships inside great design agencies but they sit alongside those three months internships where they offer to kindly pick up your lunch tab. Yeah, well thanks. As you'd expect though competition is high - I mean how do you measure a three year course against a three month one?

Fortunately I'm writing this at the end of December. The interviews did start to come, though it took a good four months to happen. I've been lucky, I'm working a paid three month internship until the end of February at Oceanbarefoot.

It's a full service branding and creative agency and I'm loving it. It's a steep learning curve, but I'm gaining valuable experience and within reason, some space and time, to learn a new career. I'm getting faster in thought and process and I guess more importantly, I haven't broken anything so far..

Marion Deuchars

Towards the back end of the summer a few of us spent the day wandering around London, mainly Dalston, Shoreditch and Old Street talking to designers and illustrators as part of London Design Week. It was really engaging and as an opportunity to get into a variety of differing studios well worth it.

The highlight, beforehand for me, was the chance to meet Marion Deuchars and to be fair she didn't let me down. Her style is free and open, just what a great illustrator should be and while it's very much replicated I love it.

I thought we'd get ten minutes, but she gave us a good hour of her time, discussing her career, how she got started, ambitions and her working process, in and out of various design collectives. All in all she was pretty inspiring.

Happy Halloween!

And so I'm back...from outer space.

Well, almost. I've been away from blogging for a couple of months now as I have been busy trying to find design job/internship. I never had any expectations that changing careers would be difficult and I have to say unfortunately those expectations have been proved right. But I'll blog more about that in the next few days.

In the meantime I love this Guinness advert for Halloween. A really simple and brilliant design. Happy Halloween!!

Day 50: Full Circle

So here we are. Fifty days, fifty blogs, even if it's taken a little longer than I envisioned. This is the final version of my book cover. You can see the original one here.

I said back in March 2010 when I started this blog that "the end always has a start" and it still holds true. Having said that I never really thought I'd be here in such a short space of time, but starting to blog was one of the key creative kicks I needed. I'm a blogger disciple in that respect. You should all give it a go if you have the need to say something. It's really rewarding, honest!

It's been a lot of fun and it doesn't stop here. But for the moment, if you haven't already then why not wander along and see my design portfolio.

Day 49: Monkee looks happy

Just a few random shots from a wander around Spitelfields looking for inspiration for the fashion brief we did towards the end of the college course.

Day 48: Tweet Up Goodie Bag

And the sun shone. Behold the goodie bag from the #crtateup. It's a sock puppet in the making..

Day 47: Creative Review Tweet Up

Last week I wandered along to Tate Britain for Creative Review's Tweetup evening. Yes I'm on twitter @northernmonkee1 as well.

It was an amazing night with private view of the new Vorticists exhibition and the opportunity to meet other creatives and have some fun.

I spent most of the evening sat on the floor with the lovely people from NeonNiche drawing heads, bodies or feet with felt tip pens. Rather unsurprisingly I drew the football boots. As you do. A pretty good 'goodie bag' was included. No luck with the lucky dip lotto ticket though.

Day 46: Graduation

And so I'm done. All graduated and the like. The last couple of weeks as we rushed to get our portfolio's complete were 24/7 hectic with a few late night/early mornings but we made it.

I've had the best three months in terms of getting to know a whole new bunch of cool, fun people and spending the day designing with them.

Now I need to find a job as a graphic designer. Whoop Whoop!

Day 45: Wooden Toy Magazine

Had a guest lecture from Timba, an ex-Shillingon grad from Oz today. He illustrates, designs and self publishes Wooden Toy magazine. He's pretty cool and it's definitely a labour of love. He kept it straight, gave us honest sound advice as well as being inspiring. Especially with my illustrator/designer hat on, it just made me determined to have something of mine in a future issue.

Also finished my last brief today. That makes 38 over the two and a half months. Very strange to look back and see how things have evolved from the start and where I am at now. Have to keep reminding myself I've only been doing this for such a short space of time and that I'll only keep improving.

Tomorrow it's just the one-2-one with a tutor to work out what I'd like to put into my portfolio and what should go in to make it great. Then what looks and feels like will be ten days of no sleep....

Day 44: Fashion, turn to the left..

It's Fashion brief time. It's been a full on tough two and a half months. Time's a ticking and I think we're all getting a little crazy. There's so much to do with what feels like so little time before we graduate on the 15th. I'm still loving the course, kinda sad it'll be finished in one respect, but looking forward to finding a design job. 

We all got a little kick up the arse ("be creative, it's fashion..") this morning and to be fair the reboot worked. I wandered around Brick Lane for inspiration while the sun shone then cut into Gotham Light, to create my Acolyte title and pulled this together.

Day 43: Lovely Bones book cover

Redesign a book cover. In a day, (over a weekend). Sorted.

Into the last five weeks of the course. I'm too tired to blink at the moment. We've spent the last week working on email marketing and website design. To come is a packaging brief, a branding project and everything but the kitchen sink.

The last two weeks is all about taking briefs that we have done over the last two months and re-working them into our portfolios.

Day 42: I am your Father

Here's the BFI Film Festival poster I've been working on the last few days. Vader needs a bit of tweaking but for the moment, I'm pretty happy with it.

Day 41 - Saul Bass

This weekend I'll mostly be working on a Science Fiction Festival poster (between cups of tea) but I saw this quote and thought it was spot on. There always has to be a good idea behind everything.

Trying to work a Saul Bass angle into the Sci Fi poster somehow. His work especially for Hitchcock and Kubrick was brilliant. I love the way he used shape, type, and colour. 

Olly Moss is also rather cool and nails it in a similar way. 

Day 41 - National Geographic

One of three double page advert spreads for a travel expedition company. The main brief here, a little like the earlier theatre briefs was to pull together a 'series' of adverts for the client. 

My other two, for Peru and Mongolia are complete apart from some minor amends to the maps. We had a day to do all three. Walking around class as part of the critique at the end, I think it's fair to say everyone hit the mark. 

Day 40 - Melbourne Parks Newsletter

I'm reasonable happy with things at the moment. Aesthetically I feel ok with the visual side of design. There's also a book cover brief next week which is pretty open so I'm planning to get some illustration into mine. 

Layouts and I have, however, been trying to work out what we like about each other. It's the bread and butter of being a designer and yet somedays it's a little of 'you push and I'll pull'. Then we play rock, paper, scissors to settle things.

Having said that I think I'm starting to get there. It just takes me a bit longer than I think it should or I'd like. Practice makes perfect.

Day 39 - Snowboarding Brief

It's been a little while since I posted anything I've been working on. Tomorrow is the end of week seven which means there's five left, then two weeks for pulling our portfolio together.

The briefs are flying in at the moment. As a rule we tend to be given four to five photos, article copy and client requests, demographics, art direction and hierarchy. 

Here's a three page spread (the first two are the double spread) that we were briefed on for Transworld magazine. 

Day 38 - Jagger Lips

Jagger lips in er, interesting places. Aceness.

Day 37: FA Cup - The Final

At last something to hold, though I've not actually managed to get my hands on it just yet. Next time I'm home maybe. For now though this feels like the start of something exciting. Let's be honest, it's about time. I've waited long enough.

Just a brilliant, wonderful, awesome, shout myself hoarse day spent with friends watching City win the cup. 

Day 36: King of Limbs

Check out the King of Limbs Newspaper showcasing Stanley Donwood's artwork. Just awesome.

Now if the exhibition I went to the other month had looked half as great as this...

Day 35: Come with me let's be..

I think I'm gonna use this as my day to day philosophy...

Day 34: Normal service will continue..however..

Once again I've missed a couple of blog days. I've just been so busy with the course. As such I've decided to temporarily stop trying to blog every day for fifty days on the bounce.

The pace of the course has stepped up in the last week. It's too important to me and I need the time in the evening to really study and practice what I'm learning in the day.

I'll carry on blogging until I get to the 50 but it's not going to be every single day.

Day 33: Black Sheep

Day 32: Cool Girl

Thirty Two days on the bounce. Eighteen to go. Almost there. It's been a struggle but fun to try and get something worthwhile to post here each day. Have to admit, there's been a couple of things from my sketchbook. This is one of them..

Day 31: Captain America

I heard something about Marvel Comics being fifty years old on the tube. 

Day 30: Bridget Riley

There's a free exhibition of Bridget Riley on at the National Gallery. I saw it today and it begs the question..is art there just to be enjoyed on a visual, emotional level or create debate. I think it's role is to fulfil both in whatever way works for you.  

The exhibition is more an introduction to Riley's work and having been introduced I'm not sure I'd pay to see more. There were a couple of paintings that I enjoyed, but it was purely visual. She certainly didn't rock my boat on an emotional level like Edward Hopper, Pablo Picasso or Mark Rothko. 

In fact I think I agree with Will Self's take on her art. 

Day 29: E=MC2

You just can't keep a good man down. Looks like Einstein was right after all.