Tip, and indeed, Top

Newsflash! Just heard that the Young Scot Annual Report has been nominated for a Roses Design Award! AS HAS Mike Marlin website!! Very very chuffed. Props to Mr Adam Smith, Ms Keli Mitchell, Mr Dave Buchan and Mr Colin Wiseman. Go team! Woooop! :)

Another Live one

Another website went live last week, allowing me to blog about it at long last. This project has been fairly epic - a vast illustration and design job covering EPs, Albums, Samplers, teasers, identity and online. Even BADGES. Wow.

The brief was an illustrator's wet dream to be honest: 'Give me a bunch of wonky fineliner renderings to illustrate the lyrics to a stream-of-consciousness song called Nearly Man. Then make said renderings live online and on album artwork. Oh, and I shall need a logo too.'

Ladies and Germs, I give you the mysterious Mike Marlin. I can't tell you very much about him because I've never personally met the man. All communiques were delivered by Alpaca. Sometimes by carrier pigeon. And once by a mute six year old boy in a poncho. All most irregular. To learn more you'll just have to visit the site and have a listen.

More updates and illustration details will follow once the album launches. Which will be SOON. Says here on this pigeon.

It's Aliiiiive!

Wheeee very excited! The project I did the icons for in my previous post has gone LIVE! Its an online learning resource to accompany a travelling exhibition of the Lewis Chessmen - chess pieces carved in the 12th/13th century in Scandinavia and discovered on the Isle of Lewis in the mid-1800s. School children up and down the country will be learning about the chessmen as part of their curriculum, and the National Museums of Scotland tasked Frame Digital with producing the online resource. You can experience it yourself here. I particularly love the preloader and the trading game. Whoop! What a team. :)

PS just realised I didn't make clear - I designed the rest of the bloody interface too - not just the icons. Must. Buy. Bigger. Trumpet.

I feckin love doin' icons, I do.

Very exciting project on at the minute with the day job's Digital peeps. Can't say much about it as it is yet to launch, but it is imminent. The site is aimed at pre-high school aged children, hence the cartoony style. I'll post the link once the site launches so you can see this in action. Sigh. I could do this sorta thing aaaall daaaay looong. :)

Scottish Design Awards

Well slap my face and call me Miffy. The Young Scot Annual Report has been nominated in the Best Corporate Literature category at the Scottish Design Awards. Which, if nothing else, means I get to wear a posh frock and drink lots of champers at the end of May. Whoop!

Ooooft (Dammit).

Occasionally (but not often :P) I come across the work of another illustrator who MAKES ME JEALOUS. The lovely Matt Stalker has a great eye for good work, and forwarded me this artist's etsy page. Going only by the name Matty8080 (methinks Matt's been googling himself again - arf), he produces awesome prints of scrummily detailed zombie creatures and animal face-masks. I also love how he's layered up that detail with big rough 'do not bend' stamps. Its a fecking awesome contrast and I WANTS ONE.

Right. Where did I put my fineliners...?

NB Have since been onto Etsy and got my sticky little mits on three of his prints. Am very excited. :)

Wee dudey icons

Another wee icon job that may never see the light of day, but was fun to work on nonetheless. Done for the digital boys at the day job - but turned out not to be suitable. Ho-hum. Here they are for your viewing pleasure anyhoo.

When I'm 64

Ok so I have been reassured by my client in this instance that the chances of his Dad stumbling across my blog are pretty close to zero, so I have his permission to post this before the big day. The lovely Matt Stalker had the awesome idea of recording a Matt Stalker & Fables cover of the Beatles' 'When I'm 64' for his Dad's 64th birthday this Friday. Apparently his Dad had loved the poster I'd done for Mickelmas and Matt asked me to do a simple CD card in the same style for the recording.

Pa Stalker is a bit of a pedant by all accounts, and Matt wanted to work this into the design somehow. So we had Dad partying on the front and correcting spelling, grammar and punctuation on the back.

Can't wait for the big reveal this Friday! Happy 64th Birthday Papa Stalker! Ain't you lucky to have such talented thoughtful sons? :)

Henna-nanaananananaaaaaaaa

Wee illy for the day job, for a Curry & Cocktails evening. Rather liking this grainy texture effect; I draw the shapes in illustrator, bring into photoshop and add noise, then burn/dodge shadows and highlights into the grain. Its a sort of retro airbrushy effect. Expect to see more of this! I have already used it on another job for the ever-talented Matt Stalker; which I will post later in the month cos its TOP SECRET just now and if certain folks saw it, it would ruin a surprise. Watch this space. ;)

Fighting Cancer with Music

In a bid to make myself feel slightly less mince for working as a dirty advertiser, it is necessary to do the odd charidee gig. This one was for a mate of a mate. She founded Fighting Cancer with Music; and is looking to hold regular fundraising gigs in and around her hometown of Austin, Texas, and hopefully featuring at this year's South by South West music festival. My mate was building her website and asked very nicely if I would have a stab at a logo. While a genius at code Mr Coco is not so hot at the illustration side of things; he did, however, come up with the pretty awesome idea of creating a treble clef out of the cancer-awareness ribbon. So basically I was scribbler-for-hire on this one. But he loved it and she loved it so I feel I have banked a few more karma points. Ah. I'm off to run over grannies now.