This is the book in the limited edition packaging I bought it in. The design reflects the tacky design styles used for most of the products shown



I bought this book recently because I thought it was a great idea for a book. When I travel abroad I often notice the ridiculous names of everyday products and wonder what the hell they were thinking when they chose them. Here are some examples, LadyGay Hair wax, Golden Stream water, Bra milk, Boobee juice, Sico condoms, Mysore Rose soap, Fanny Flow cd and Cream Fantasy biscuits. Will update with pics of the products soon, have lost my camera usb cable.

Marketing Week: Orange is launching an animated TV campaign this week to promote its new pay-as-you-go Speak Easy offer. The tariff allows Orange users to speak to anyone on any network or landline at any time for 15p per minute.
The campaign, which also features outdoor and press ads, has been created by Fallon, which has handled Orange's advertising account since last year. The TV ad is animated by hands flicking through a flip book.
The stop-frame story shows care-free birds relaxing without the worry of what their fun is costing them if their friends are on other networks. The campaign marks Fallon's third piece of work for Orange this year.

This ad is so simple and effective, flip books are such an easy way to animate illustrations and they have an innocent quirky visual language.

Jimi Hendrix on Fire - Goodbye Art - 04

This is an incredibly imaginative way of creating art that really reflects the nature of the music and the legacy of Jimi Hendrix. It is an excellent of a piece of art that completely fulfills the title.

Book Jacket Design

This is a collection of book jacket designs that use unusual techniques or styles that are very effective.

I love the simple, clean,monochrome colour scheme used in this book cover. Combined with the embossed pattern this jacket has a nice texture and sophisticated appearance.



The screen-print or woodcut style of this jacket design combined with the limited colour scheme and use of rustic coloured and textured background creates a style that works really conveys the witty nature and ukranian heritage of the book.


The child-like illustrative style used for both the cover of this book and Mark Haddon's most well-known book (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time) really conveys elements of the subject matter. It is as if the covers could have been drawn by the main characters in both books.



This is one of my favourite book covers. It doesn't try to tell or allude to the storyline of the book it just uses colour, texture and pattern very effectively. It recognises the importance of the feel of the book in the reader"s hands. It is a cover that resembles elements of excellent wallpaper and gift wrap design, it implements beautiful and delicate decorative patterns to reflect the title.

I started drawing an art nouveau influenced portrait and began to think it would look good as an illustrative hair advert with the possibility of animation. I decided to create a new identity for a hair product using the style of art nouveau to impart its tonal values on the product an therefore decided it should be an organic product. Obviously these are just initial drawings which need to be worked out on illustrator. It would also be an interesting package design project, looking into the possibility of the bottle being made from organic materials also.

My illustrations inspired by previous post

This was a really interesting and liberating task to set myself. I'm used to drawing from pictures or having a specific subject and so to fill an A3 piece of paper without having any particular idea of what to draw was initially quite a challenge. The previous video post inspired me to go draw anything that came into my head. I wanted to loosen up the usual rigidity of my illustrations and while doing so hopefully come up with some characters or ideas that would be well adapted to animation when I have access to some digital software. I wanted to recapture my imagination that I often feel I lose during the long summer holiday. I am pleased with the outcome of this illustration but it still appears tentative, I'm going to continue to set myself tasks like this to improve the confidence and originality of my illustrations. I want to discover how I can design illustrations that have a use but also stand out from others, this work perhaps a little to recollective of other illustrators works.

Minilogue/hitchhikers choice - short version (Longer on DVD)

This video animation for me really captures the process of drawing and shows how the imagination works, where one drawing sparks off another. Its inspiring and makes me want to go off with a pen and paper and draw until theres no ink left. The use of a whiteboard and wipeable ink is interesting too as it highlights the disposability of art and also takes guts from the artist to constantly erase their work in order to adapt it and create new drawings.

Computer arts magazine

The Computer Arts Projects magazine is a monthly magazine that has branched out from Computer Arts Magazine and this months edition revolved around Illustration. The magazine showcases the work of designers who have developed new techniques of illustration. Illustration in combination with other media is becoming hugely popular at the moment and is an area I am completely facinated with. I feel the most visually stimulating work is illustratively based and find it a hugely flexible medium when combined with new software and digital applications. It is this revitalisation of the role of illustration in design that is swaying me to consider it as a dissertation topic, either that or find a different way of combining illustration with a digital media.

Hand built by robots

I bought this album recently and was really intrigued by the cover illustrations. They're very elegant and delicate, in a historical, old-fashioned sort of style although the characters seem to have no connection to each other. I have struggled to find a concept behind this design or any information on the art director and designer Steve Stacey which is a shame as I would have liked to have seen some more illustrations by the same artist and this random collection of figures really makes me want to find a reason behind this design.

This is a really clever site that makes you think about the way you interact with websites. It highlights the extent to which we are used to clicking when using a website. The website is easy to navigate and uses rollover buttons so there is no need to click. Can you resist the urge to click?

Logo Design That Works: Secrets for Successful Logo Design

This a great book for investigating why successful logos have worked and giving insight into the process behind creating effective logos. It is really useful as it describes the brainstorming behind certain logos and also provides rough drafts and experiments that led to the final designs. Here are a couple of the logos that i was most attracted to:

Kinetic

I love the visual language of this site. It is completely handrawn and other than the body copy it is constantly in motion. It is also incredibly easy to navigate and the constant movement of the illustrations make you want to view the whole site. It is clever and visually stimulating yet relatively simple. It also uses the media creatively by using it in the way animations were achieved before such programs as flash. You'll find the site here.

Web Design

I was given this book a couple of months ago and have found it a fantastic resource for providing examples of experimental and inspirational creativity in flash design and navigational systems. Its a great starting point for any research into successful and imaginative flash based websites. It acts as an encyclopedia of interesting websites and as with any such resource one must go and look at the sites themselves to understand how they work and the full concept behind each site. I have found it particularly useful as I was struggling to find such creative examples of flash in the massive number of sites on the web. It has opened up to me what sort of things you can acheive with this media and looking through the websites has begun to spark off several ideas for my own website showcasing my work.

Radiskull and Devil doll

About 6 years ago I came across this flash animation series by Joe Sparks and quickly became addicted. This is the first time I remember seeing anything like this and left me with a definite fondness for flash animation. The characters he creates are quirky, the storylines are witty and the voices and songs are genius. For me it is the combination of the illustrative style, quirky subject matter and the catchy nature of the songs Sparks creates that make these episodes so great. To view all 8 episodes visit http://joesparks.shockwave.com and click on the linux versions as the shockwave ones no longer work. They're very entertaining and definately worth a look.