Event Promotion

I know its once again taken me a while to update this awful blog but i have had a number of problems with my browser constantly crashing when i attempt to log into my blog.
Any who enough of the boring shizzle, below is my latest completed university project. For this brief we were asked to choose from a list of events that have some what of a "geeky" image to them and design an event poster and associated marketing material to go with it all. I decided to choose The Knitting and Stitching Show event as it may sound lame , it was something that actually interested me (i used to love knitting back in the day).

As this is a very hand crafted event, with mainly very basic tools being used to knit and stitch i began to look into the aspect of handmade designs, as i thought this would be very appropriate for a crafts skill event.

After flicking through many ideas i decided to use a very traditional hand made print method for my poster by using a lino cut. I spent two extremely long days cutting and printing my lino block (i only cut myself once while doing it) i ended up with a very interesting results that had a professional look but also had a hand made quality about it. I then took my prints and brought them all into the computer and added hand made text to tie everything together. The end result can be seen below:



I decided to play on the idea of my poster having some sort of fantasy theme to it, almost dream like with a notion that if you attended this event you could create and make your dreams come true(cheesy i know). I also wanted my poster to be very eye catching to viewer, so i used very dramatic angles and shapes to create this effect. The bird was added to enhance the dream theme and also play on the idea that birds are very good at construction of nests, very much the same as weaving and stitching.

Somebodys Going To Miss Us

This doesn't really have anything to do with design at all, but its something that plagues me everyday while I'm here at university.
Lets face it, we all have our bad days, but just recently i have been constantly finding myself upset and a bit lost and really rather frustrated with everyone and everything around me (apart from my wonderful friends, who i might add mean the world to me).
And its all because i left one of the biggest (and to me most important) pieces of my life behind when i set sail for the university. I know this sounds rather homosexual but my band was one of the things i actually loved to pieces, and when i use the term "loved" i actually really truly mean loved with every inch of my ever pumping heart! I wish that there was someway i could explain it, but i honestly cant pluck the words out of my mind, it's just something that feels so right when i do it.
I always looked back thinking i diddnt really achieve much with my band, But when i actually scratched beyond the surface we in fact achieved so so so much in such a short space of time. And with that came attached hundreds and hundreds of wonderful memories that i could honestly talk about for years to come and bore the crap out of everyone.

I know most of you reading this wont understand or even particularly care what i have to say, but creating music is something i loved to do, and i was so lucky to be able to do it with the most wonderful people you could think of. And not a day go's by while I'm here when i don't constantly beat myself up inside for ruining everything for my fellow band members and heading up here to Carlisle.

The excitement of waiting for everyone to turn up to band practice, the sense of butterfly's in my stomach when Rob strung a certain chord, the sound of my bass coming out of my amp when thrashing the crap out of it, that feeling of passion when everything all gelled together perfectly when the drums kicked in.....i cant even comprehend how much i miss these feelings and how much it truly meant to me. And the worse thing was we diddnt really ever sound that good, but i diddnt care, all that mattered to me was I am finally doing something i am proud of!


"what this is to me
is more than words could mean
i guess dreams do come true
this song itself is living proof"

The Starting Line - Given The Chance

Corporate Logo Design

Here are the designs for my latest university project. We were each given a celebrity and a company, we then had to discover the values of our selected celebrity and then apply them to our select company and create a Corporate identity and a set of Stationary to go along with it. My chosen celebrity was Alaskan Governor Sara Palin and the company i had to apply her values were an Alternative Energy company.
After studying Sara for some time and seeing that she has so many values worth exploiting, i decided to play on the idea of Sara Palin having a dark side. So with this in mind i decided to make my company an alternative "nuclear" power company that has a caring motherly logo but also has a very industrial dark driven aspect to it all (hens the choice of color i went for). Anywho here are my designs, i hope you enjoy them:

Business Card Front

Business Card Rear



Compliments slip



Letter Head


I was rather pleased with the outcome of this project and i put a hell of a lot of effort into my corporate guidelines that can been seen below. These next few pages basically explain what you can and cant do with my corporate identity.











My lecturers who were grading this diddnt seem that enthusiastic about my deigns, but they were please with how much passion and effort i had put into it. And In the end the feedback they gave me will really help me in the future. Because that's wonderful thing about learning, you never, ever will stop.

Even though i found this brief to be rather challenging, i am still extremely pleased with the work i produced, and in doing so i have learned a great deal.


P.S

Il be updating this blog much more from now on :) ............Promise

Something Left to Give

As soon as i get a chance, i will update this i promise!! I know i have been doing the exact opposite of what i said i was not going to do with this blog.



Anywho i have some News coming very soon!!

Also make sure you check out my friends blog links, they are all wonderful :)

P. S

Balls to logo design!

Sounds Like An Almost Bang'n Tour!

Here is the tour flyer i created for my old band Soundslikelazerfire! for the "Sounds Like An Almost Bang'n Tour" that we take part of every summer with two fantastic bands Sgt Wolfbanger and The Almost Super Heroes. The tour has become something of a tradition over the past 3 years as we all help to organise, promote and fund the entire thing ourselves. Some of you might be thinking "yeah that's just a walk in the park man, anyone can organise something like that" but trust me, it is far more difficult then it sounds (if any of you have ever been in a band you will understand what i am talking about) So i thought this year i would help out and go one step further by creating a flyer to help promote the events.
It was such a wonderful feeling turning up to the venues with my flyer pasted up on the walls while people were queuing outside, almost felt like we were all professionals. For about a week i felt like a right "hip, cool designer" kid ha ha.

To create this I used mainly vectors with elements of Photoshop CS3 added in later for a distorted effect. I pen tooled around a photograph of a gay biker guy with a rather awesome looking moustache then vectorised it in Illustrator and dived into 3 different coloured layers, that once were placed together created a very interesting effect. Overall it was a very quick process to design for and i was very happy with how it turned out, although the text might have been a bit hard to read for some people, but balls to it...... I liked it.

Because Everyone has got their little tune

I know this is rather old news (well in terms of my course anyway) but i thought i would upload the Magazine spreads i did for my Editorial Design Brief earlier this month.
Basically we were asked to design a grid and then explore its use and effectiveness in laying out images, typographic display elements and text matter. We had complete freedom on subject matter, so i decided to take a risk and try something that was a little different to the stuff i normally churn out. So i had a look into the wonderful world of fashion, and After flicking through many photography books in my university i stumbled upon a truly fantastic Photographer named Norman Parkinson who's portrait photographs are truly breath taking. (i would advice anyone who is into fashion to check him out) Any who here are the final magazine spreads i created:

These look a little weird and warped after i re-sized them, and i should have really put a solid edge around the spreads as most of the white bleeds in the web page. But you get an idea of what i was trying to produce and the kinda look i was aiming for.
(and for those of you who don't know what's what) The first page is the front cover, the second is the contents and other two layouts are the splash page and turn page. Overall i was very please with the outcome and i got a 2:1 with 2 marks off a 1st. I may refine these in the future and correct one or two things for my final portfolio, but at the moment lets just say its a work in progress.

Some Kind of Video

Earlier this year i was playing around with the idea of making a short video or film just for fun. Sadly i never got around to making a full film, however over the summer months i experimented with some ideas for a short promotional video for my band. The whole concept was of a very mysterious and dramatic images that didn't necessarily link with the band, but yet had a whole creative aspect of its own. I was inspired by many different videos on youtube.com, mainly videos of "people watching" and movement, when i stumbled on to this one video that really did take my breath away. I really loved how all the movement was sped up and how a sense of time was captured in the film, i must have had this repeating for days.

Here is my attempted at my own after being inspired by the previous:



The typeface i chose for the text at the beginning and end were completely wrong and not fitting with the film, but i did have a lot of fun playing around with my computers video editing software. Sadly not many people got to see this short video, and to be honest i am not really that proud of it. But you can see what kind of theme/idea i was working towards.

We're Gonna Need A Bigger Carpet

Well, today i finally sold out and acquired my very own online visual blog. I am very new to this experience so its all a bit touch and go for the moment until i get everything sorted and figured out. But in the long run i hope to be constantly updating this in the future and keep it more as a visual record to myself that others can hopefully be a part of.

Any who, i think i should take this moment to explain a bit more about myself and what i do. I am currently in my 2nd year of a BA Hons in Graphic Design Degree at The University of Cumbria based in Carlisle and i am really enjoying it. I have a huge passion for music and the people that make it, i am hugely inspired by music and design, and i love when both elements work together. I also write, record and perform in many terrible punk bands, but it's something i seriously love to do. (if your interested you can check out and listen to one of my bands here)
Slightly drifting off topic there, but this blog is mainly to showcase my design work and to share it with the world.

Here's to the future