Site Updated

Two years and two jobs later than it should have been, I've had some time off this week and finally got around to updating my website. It features some highlights of my design, artwork and photography over the last nine years or so.

Movember

I've never been a big fan of the razor so I've decided to put my laziness to good use and raise some money for charity.

Obamania (part 2)

A beautifully succinct way of summing up what a historic election it's been. Illustration by Patrick Moberg.

Guardian Photo Competition

I took this photo in India last year and I must have entered it into about 20 photo competitions so far. I don't take many good shots so when I get lucky I want to make the most of it! Finally the law of averages prevailed and I made it into the shortlist of The Guardian's monthly travel photo competition. Fame at last (well, sort of!).

Obamania

Is it wrong to be more interested and excited about an election in a foreign country than ones in your own? What better way to celebrate than with a great free mix. I can't quite picture artists being galvanised to promote Brown or Cameron in this way but you never know...

Image by Shepard Fairey

Tilt & Shift experiments

I did some quick experiments in trying to create an artificial 'tilt & shift' effect through using Photoshop. Some are definitely more successful than others.

Views of landscapes from above, with brightly coloured small areas of interest seem to work best. Even on the images which don't work so well it still creates an interesting feel, although they don't have that 'model village' look.

This was inspired by an article on Acejet170, together with a quick look around at some photoshop tutorials.

Madrid Photos

Photos from a recent long weekend in Madrid.

Chalkhill Blue

At the beginning of the year I was approached by a former colleague called Rachel Spratling who asked me if I could help her with the branding of her new venture, Chalkhill Blue. This was great fun, albeit on quite tight deadlines, and entailed creating an initial suite of materials which could be used for presentations.


I started with a logo, which then led into a typeface and colour scheme. A Chalkhill Blue is a species of butterfly, which closely relates to the nature of their business – training and development. We fairly quickly decided that a butterfly image was too obvious and tried to push the logo development a bit further in the time allowed. We settled on a geometric solution and then tweaked the colours to make them slightly punchier. We chose Caecilia as the typeface from a shortlist I'd compiled. It manages to be smart and modern without being too formal, it also has a wide variety of weights making it quite versatile.


Once we'd settled on a logo I then set about creating the collateral they needed: brochure, stationery, powerpoint templates and a website holding page. It was difficult to find relevant imagery on a limited budget which wasn't too clichéd. Instead we used elements from the logo to help reinforce the branding at this early stage of the company.


It was an extremely satisfying project to work on as it's not often I get the chance to work on such a broad range of materials and from such an early stage. I am very grateful to Rachel and Andrea for giving me this opportunity.

Swanage

Spent the weekend camping in Swanage and took a few snaps...


Phone box marooned in the sand dunes.



There's a couple more on my Flickr page.

Stating the obvious

You know what they're trying to say but somehow, someone's got a little confused along the way. Sign spotted outside an office on Little Portland Street, London.

Malaysia Photos

Just got back from two weeks in Malaysia, we had an amazing time and here is a selection of photos from my Flickr account.

India Photos (again)

I found an amazing piece of software today called PictoBrowser which lets you display images from your Flickr sets in an image library on your blog or site. I've used this as a flimsy excuse for showing off my India photos again. It's stupidly easy to use, very quick to set up and completely free. Can't ask for more than that really...

Random Flow

Just finished doing some logo work for a friend and ex-colleague of mine, Ben Banyard. Ben has set up his own internet-based record label called Random Flow, and asked me if I could look at doing a logo for him.

It's always a pleasure to do creative work for friendly clients, especially when it's for a field I'm so enthusiastic about. After some work we settled on two colour variations of this logo, I'm not sure yet which one he's going to go with when he sets up his site, we'll have to wait and see. In the meantime go and download his FREE album, well worth a listen...