Ideas

Here's some ideas I've been working on for a project at the moment. I intend to make a few shirts or possibly more and this is just an initial idea. 

Rubber dinghy rapids.

One of the best films I've ever seen, like properly good. It's a must see film, and I reckon it's going to be one of the defining films of our time. I have a habit of over reacting but I'm not even joking, Chris Morris is and always will be a comedy/visual arts genious.

Like the sunshine.

Good luck!

My girlfriend has got a marathon today then the biggest exam of her life tomorrow. Good luck Rebecca!
(she does biological sciences by the way -  just so the little poster thing makes sense)

Today was a good day.

I made this trippy load of bollocks to commemorate a really awesome and also pretty sad week for me. It has been a lovely week and I've caught up with a load of really great people from uni, and sunk a massive amount of real ale and super strongbow. All in all, it's been a chiller. But despite being a stonking day, I had to spend the evening packing up my stuff to leave halls which was quite nostalgic and a little bit sad. Never mind, onwards and upwards. Today was a good day.

FUCK COMMITTEES

(I believe in lunatics)

It’s about the struggle between individuals with jagged passion in their work and today’s faceless corporate committees, which claim to understand the needs of the mass audience, and are removing the idiosyncrasies, polishing the jags, creating a thought-free, passion-free, cultural mush that will not be hated nor loved by anyone. By now, virtually all media, architecture, product and graphic design have been freed from ideas, individual passion, and have been relegated to a role of corporate servitude, carrying out corporate strategies and increasing stock prices. Creative people are now working for the bottom line.

Magazine editors have lost their editorial independence, and work for committees of publishers (who work for committees of advertisers). TV scripts are vetted by producers, advertisers, lawyers, research specialists, layers and layers of paid executives who determine whether the scripts are dumb enough to amuse what they call the ‘lowest common denominator’. Film studios out films in front of focus groups to determine whether an ending will please target audiences. All cars look the same. Architectural decisions are made by accountants. Ads are stupid. Theater is dead.

Corporations have become the sole arbiters of cultural ideas and taste in America. Our culture is corporate culture.

Culture used to be the opposite of commerce, not a fast track to ‘content’- derived riches. Not so long ago captains of industry (no angels in the way they acquired wealth) thought that part of their responsibility was to use their millions to support culture. Carnegie built libraries, Rockefeller built art museums, Ford created his global foundation. What do we now get from our billionaires? Gates? Or Eisner? Or Redstone? Sales pitches. Junk mail. Meanwhile, creative people have their work reduced to ‘content’ or ‘intellectual property’. Magazines and films become ‘delivery systems’ for product messages.

But to be fair, the above is only 99 percent true.

I offer a modest solution: Find the cracks in the wall. There are a very few lunatic entrepreneurs who will understand that culture and design are not about fatter wallets, but about creating a future. They will understand that wealth is means, not an end. Under other circumstances they may have turned out to be like you, creative lunatics. Believe me, they’re there and when you find them, treat them well and use their money to change the world.

Tibor Kalman
New York
June 1998

?uestlove on Jay Dee. I have one of my good friends named J5 to thank for my love of Dilla.

Cellotape.

This is the mock up of a final editorial spread for a project when we had to create tea based typographic ideas for ceramics, then show them off in a magazine. But the flippin' decals didn't come for mine, so I cracked out the cellotape for a shite quality quick fix. You get the idea though. Click on it if you'd like to see it normal size.

Novel.zgdf.d

For my final brief I was asked to create a graphic novel type solution to an excerpt from the book 'The Tin Drum'. I spent weeks struggling with this as it is not really a strong point of mine but after some experimental work and ideas a week before I needed it finished, I managed to get a basic idea together. I used photomontage/illustration/computer generated type to create what I consider to be a decent effort as a first go at this type of thing.

watch out the tories are coming to get you. we're all fucking doomed.

Please may can I have?

These? BLLAAOOOOOW!

WE RIDE BIKES. CARS ARE FOR IDIOTS.

BYOP were good. And fit. And they were on XL.

Here are the pieces I made to print on my "hat&bag" project. I think that they work well at making you think about the content as opposed to distracting the eye. Hopefully they read well also. Grim content but designed to make you take a second thought.

Iraq war.

This is some work I did for a project where we had to make a politically themed bag and hat. Now this sort of thing really isn't my bag (forgive me), so I really had to think hard about how to go about it. I knew that I wanted to do something which questioned the legality of the war in Iraq but I didn't know how to translate this in to a bag, or hat. In the end I have created a bag shaped like a bomb with some screen printed type on it and a sack (similar to the ones I'm sure we're all familiar with seeing on prisoners on the news etc) also with screen printed type on it.

The idea with what I wrote was to evoke some sort of reaction from the viewer.

Thankyou to the lovely Annie Pendlebury-Beal for modeling them for my in a rainy, fly filled park.

Solway coastline

I made this poster for project a while ago, in screenprinting dept. Jackie is a massive dude.

Lazy days.

Found this earlier, it's by an illustrator called Marco Zamora and even though his stuff is "trendy" right now I don't care. It's fucking fit.

You can check out this little interview with him here on Fecal Face dot com.

I am really feeling this album today by Bonobo, it's in the same vane as Four Tet and it's as chilled as it gets. But holds on to a lot of rather complex rhythms and exciting patterns. I'm having a day of intense procrastination today in protest of the rather stupid amount of work I have to complete in the next five days.

It's all on spotify so you've got no excuse. And if you don't have spotify then get in the game you slowcoach.

More tea. Not more.

Today I sent off some tea logo-ish type things to be printed and then fired on to some hefty-sized cups I have cast. It's been a long day, here are a few out of the eight that I've done that I really liked. Time for a brew, Joshout.

Volcano fun?

Last week I faced one of my biggest fears by flying, granted it was only like 40 minutes to Amsterdam but still, it was over sea and everything. madness!

I had a pretty wonderful week apart from a few rather annoying hiccups like the airline wrongly booking my flight then changing me a fucking shit-ton to change their mistake and the tiny miniscule fucking VOLCANO EXPLODING.

Yes I got stuck in Amsterdam (which as a pretty sweet place to be stuck in I guess) but I had to be back, which prompted a rather epic trip across Europe accompanied by some good friends and nice weather, and it ended up being rather special.

Amsterdam is a beautiful city with some wonderful people and amazing places to visit so I thought I'd share some photos I took. Sifting out the Jedi.

This was in France, it was beautiful.

This is two of my good friends John and Jenny.

Smile.

I need a little bit of this please, a little bit of peace and some chill time. Thankyou to whoever grants this wild and unatainable requests.

Stretching pixels.

I did this a while ago. I was looking at the design associated with Brooklyn bands like MGMT Yeasayer Animal Collective Glass Ghost etc. I really like the psyche electronic look that has emerged over the last few years with these sort of bands, it is refreshing but familliar at the same time. I realise as design principles go it is wank, but i don't care. It was fun.

Spodni Pradlo.

Mighty Mystro.

Anyone who knows me at all with know if my love affair with Lowlife records, even after all the beef and falling out and Brains fucking off to Australia. I still love pretty much every record they've ever put out and that's where Mystro first entered my conciousness.
Now like 5 years down the line he still make me giggle freely like a kid and I've found his absolutely hilarious 'Mystro Investigates' series, to be honest I don't know why he's done it and I don't really care but I wanted to share it because to be honest it is funny as fuck.
SpineTV is awesome by the way, take some time to check that site out, quirky is the only word.



Enjoy.

It's been a while old friend.

It has been a while since I updated on here (due to being busy) and It's a while since I checked one of my favourite blogs La Blogotheque. It has helped me find some amazing music over the years and having come home from uni and procrastinating over some work that I need to do, I ended up back on there like going for a pint with an old friend.

I realise the following is of no interest to anyone but I'm on the verge of getting a new bike for summer, flying down hills and jumping off some big fuck off rocks and generally get my 'ard man on. Literally can't wait.

And on a totally different vibe, here's a dirrrrrrty beggars remix.

I know it sounds like a dream.

I wanna be better than oxygen
So you can breathe when you're drowning and weak in the knees
I wanna speak louder than Ritalin
For all the children who think that they've got a disease
I wanna be cooler than t.v.
For all the kids that are wondering what they are going to be
We can be stronger than bombs
If you're singing along and you know that you really believe
We can be richer than industry
As long as we know that there's things that we don't really need
We can speak louder than ignorance
Cause we speak in silence every time our eyes meet.

On and on, and on, and on it goes
The world it just keeps spinning
Until i'm dizzy, time to breathe
So close my eyes and start again anew.

I wanna see through all the lies of society
To the reality, happiness is at stake
I wanna hold up my head with dignity
Proud of a life where to give means more than to take
I wan't to live beyond the modern mentality
Where paper is all that you're really taught to create
Do you remember the forgotten america?
Justice, equality, freedom to every race?
Just need to get past all the lies and hypocrisy
Make up and hair to the truth behind every face
Then look around to all the people you see,
How many of them are happy and free?
I know it sounds like a dream
But it's the only thing that can get me to sleep at night
I know it's hard to believe
But it's easy to see that something here isn't right
I know the future looks dark
But it's there that the kids of today must carry the light.

On and on, and on, and on it goes
The world it just keeps spinning
Until i'm dizzy, time to breathe
So close my eyes and start again anew.

If i'm afraid to catch a dream
I weave your baskets and i'll float them down the river stream
Each one i weave with words i speak to carry love to your relief.


I wanna be better than oxygen
So you can breathe when you're drowning and weak in the knees
I wanna speak louder than Ritalin
For all the children who think that they've got a disease
I wanna be cooler than t.v.
For all the kids that are wondering what they are going to be
We can be stronger than bombs
If you're singing along and you know that you really believe
We can be richer than industry
As long as we know that there's things that we don't really need
We can speak louder than ignorance
Cause we speak in silence every time our eyes meet.

On and on, and on, and on it goes
The world it just keeps spinning
Until i'm dizzy, time to breathe
So close my eyes and start again anew

I forgot how much that song means, thank you Willy Mason.

Southerners; you can't live with them.

It was my good friend Lee's birthday yesterday, so I made him some stupid posters to laugh at.

First film from my Olympus OM30.

Went for a little walk into town today to pick up the first roll I've had processed from my recently acquired Olympus, I always get giddy when going to pick up photos and even more so when they are from a new camera! They've turned out lovely and as usual I used some cheapo out of date film, and if you can find a camera nowadays that will produce the same effect as out of date film then please let me know. Lovely Carlisle and some of my good friends.

If you want to see any more of my photographs, check out my Flickr page.

Request to live with the cool people...

Yesterday I had the experience of eating the perfect orange, juicy, sweet, tastes like you always wanted it to. Perfection!

You may question why I need to share this? Well even as a vegetarian I sometimes have a hard time with fruit and veg, especially over the winter when everything is all 50 weeks old and shipped over from Mars but I have achieved the dream, tasted fruit that tastes, well, like it should. Which is odd.

I need to get a life. Request to live with the cool people? ACCESS DENIED!

Once upon a cold day.

Here are some photographs I took at the end of last year when I went to Grange-Over-sands and Bowness with my family, it was a very nostalgic and thoroughly hilarious day. I love days roaming about taking photographs with my Grandma and Grandad.

For these photographs I was using my Yashica FR and I used my Rangefinder for a few as well.

Heteronyms

This is a piece of screen printing I produced for a project on heteronyms, I printed it on cotton sheet and it looks crisp! I was really pleased with how this came out, it really got me thinking and spending some time screen printing has got my squeegee juices flowing if you know what I'm saying.