We wants it

GIMME!

Wallflowers take note

A one off brief came in from my lovely Club Noir clients a while back. It kept getting bumped due to other more pressing projects for them, but we've finally got round to putting something together.

They've been running sell-out Burlesque Workshops for a few months now, and felt the need to start publicising them properly, so briefed me to come up with a poster concept. I came up with the idea of an old 'before and after' ad, with real oldstyle ad-language and with the Workshops presented as the answer to all your problems. And here be the result.

Hello Dave

I have a lovely new freelance client who's been putting some nice work my way (including more SODDING WEDDING INVITES). I rebranded a friend of hers' IT company. The company was named after the street where it was based - Blackrock Road. I thought the Blackrock thing was too good a chance to pass up and decided to reference the famous black rock monolith from Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The monolith, or TMA-1 as us sci-fi geeks know it, was a representative of a technologically superior race, sent to earth to advance the technological capabilities of early mankind. Which, given that the Blackrock are an IT company, was just asking for it. EVEN better, TMA-1 had very particular proportions 9:4:1, so I kept these for the logo and used a monospaced font and underscore to reference oldstyle computer programming.

End result: Client was very pleased with the outcome, despite not being familiar with the monoliths (cretin).

GODAMMIT

I hate it when a plan doesn't come together.

I recently did a rather large illustration job for my former employers that required several very late nights hunched over a desk, sketching and inking almost 40 illustrations for a document intended for the NHS, with a very tight deadline.

Annoyingly, despite meeting the deadline, the client decided to revert to a previous illustration style. I bowed out at this point as I unfortunately couldn't commit to redoing such a large job; my back just couldn't take it! It means that all my hard work will never be seen in print - so Praise Be to Blogger. Here are a few samples.

Wedding Bells

In a bid to prove to the world that I don't care that they're all getting married and I am going to be an old maid, I've also done a wedding invitation recently for my friend/colleague Keli and her man William. They tied the knot last week in a very low-key but stylish ceremony at the Ubiquitous Chip.

We agreed on a lovely palette of reds and beige as red was to be a highlight colour for the tables and the couple's outfits. We didn't wanna go full on Valentine's red though, so the dark burgundies and beige helped tone it down a bit. The typography was created by halftoning a photoshop file with lines instead of squares/dots, then live-tracing to get the stripy effect that allowed me to slot Keli and William together with an ampersand. A wee tying the knot metaphor that hopefully erred on the right side of cheesy.

The bride looked beautiful and the groom looked handsome but their invites and place settings looked EVEN BETTER SO THERE.

Hi Strangers

Ok, yes, I know, its been a long time. Its a shoddy state of affairs and I feel suitably ashamed. Although I do have an excuse. I've been working my ample bottom off. Not literally (unfortunately), I've just been doing a lot of work for friends and relatives and some freelance jobs too that have left little time to share the fruits of my labour with you lot.

The most time consuming of these not-so-little jobs was a present for my Mum, who turned 60 years young on Friday 25th April. I had an idea to write a kids book about her life that she could read to her grandkids (who she completely adores of course). My Dad's pet name for my Mum is 'Maggie Anne', so I got the idea for a title first and the story stemmed from there.

So 'Maggie Anne's Magic Hats' was born. My mum's life story is told through all the hats she's worn in her time; a metaphor for all the roles she's fulfilled - Daughter, Friend, Wife, Mother, Boss etc. The punchline being that its not the hats that are magic at all, but Maggie Anne.

I illustrated the book too (obviously), taking my cues from 60s-era retro animation (like Bewitched titles), and the fact that as a kid, whenever I drew my Mum I drew her curly hair first. So that had to be a big feature. I hope she didn't take offence. She's been battling her curls all her life.

So Happy Birthday to my totally Magic Mum. You were worth every second.