It’s not long now (less than 3 weeks) that me & my mate Paul start our 3000+ mile walk along the Continental Divide Trail! Before we go both of us are selling off various things that we don’t really need to raise a bit of cash for a lager or two en route. Paul’s got his pride of joy motorbike on ebay at the moment. I don’t know much about motorbikes, but this one looks bloody fast! Currently bid is £1200, Paul was hoping for a bit more, so get on there and grab yourself a bargain!
There’s loads of great cards to by at Nineteen Seventy Three, the ones by Tado are my favourite.
Via What Katie Does.
The other day Nicky bought me this tea towel from Columbia Road, it’s made by Pintuck. You can even get a Made in England apron from their online store, will go well with my rolling pin.
If anyone comes across any other Made in England stuff, send it my way :)
Iwish I was in Swansea tomorrow to join Tim & Rob drinking their way round this custom monopoly board. I made something along these lines while at University, and have done the classic London pub crawl one. There can never be too much monopoly/drinking crossovers, brilliant fun. Good luck boys, send us some pics!
Sign Painter Jeff Canham makes these seaside themed typographic art pieces that make me smile, good work.
Isuppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you can buy private islands online, but actually I am! Also I thought they’d cost more money to be honest? My surfer mate Tim, reckons Nagigia Island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is a bit of a steal at £3,000,000 as it sitting on one of the finest and most consistent breaks in Fiji.
Not your cup of tea? Plenty more islands for sale on Private Islands Online, or to rent for the more modest budget.
I‘m hopeless at anagrams and even though there’s graphical clues in this motion graphic piece, I can’t decipher these book titles. If you’re able to without looking at the clues, I take my hat off to you.
But the wooden penguin-esque 3D book covers are simply amazing. While you’re there, check out Low Fidelity Car Dream, awesome.
There’s a lot of how-to step by step guides online, for building pretty much anything. But somehow Tampon Crafts has found a gap in the market… sorry. My favourites are the tampon blowgun & tampon toupee pictured.
Asi where do you find this stuff?
Currently I’m making some T-Shirts for the Poke band CRANK! Their first gig is coming up soon, not yet official, but likely to be April 16th at On the Rocks. Above is the design for one of them, he’s kind of a cross between Captain Caveman and the Wombles… Don’t really now why? Anyhow’s brighten up your desktop with him by downloading the image here.
Update:
Flying V guitars rule! Download this one here.
Another update:
Rocking out with his cock out… Should probably explain that the name for the band Crank came from the word cranking, meaning crying & wanking simultaneously. Just so you don’t think I randomly drew a cock on it! Download this one here.
More updates:
If you know the Poke band, you might be able to guess which member this is, smashing his guitar to bits. Download the slightly less hairy rocker here.
And finally:
The drummer completes the set! Download Mattias here.
As I posted about before, Andy Whitlock from Now in Colour is running Early Designs and wants us all to show some examples of our early work and talk about how it compares to the work we’re producing now. It slightly pains me to unearth all this ancient work, but I agree with the principle that it’s quite an interesting thing to see, so here’s some examples of my Early Designs:
Illustration:
I’d say my illustration style has changed a lot over the years. But actually after going through a load of old sketches and stuff, I’d say my hand hand drawn illustration hasn’t changed much at all.
Some stuff like life drawing, I was much better at then than I am now!
I think it’s the tools I use that have changed, this has had the biggest effect on my illustration. The early illustration examples above are hand drawn, pencil and ink. Spirit marker & pencil crayon. I started during 2000 (because of flash) producing vector illustrations, but these were still scanned in ink drawings, then ran through streamline. God do you remember streamline :P
Nowadays in 2008 I use Illustrator as my primary drawing tool. Which generally gives my work a more stylised & simplified look. I think my hand drawn sketches are quite similar to those of the past though.
Design:
I didn’t think I’d have much direct comparison work to show because I didn’t do web or multimedia design at Uni, I was a industrial designer back in the day. So my work (few examples above) is of products not websites. Even though it’s quite different, I can see my sense of fun in the handheld Sgt. Smiles teeth cleaning game for kids. Also my love of all things ancient and industrial, in the timer dials of the flip-top microwave.
Above is more recent web design work, not really a direct comparison, but I think has a similar mood? But wait, while looking through all the old stuff I unearthed a CD containing the first ever website I built! I kind of forgotten that I’d build websites back as early as 2000 – so bear in mind that this was the first thing done by someone self taught… Now re-uploaded and not seen on the web since 2000, here’s one of my final year projects at University called Jibber-Jabber. Makes me cringe a bit, but I am impressed by the amount of man hours that went into that thing…Blighmy when did I ever find time to do any drinking!
Some things haven’t changed much though. I’ve always liked making charts, diagrams and interesting ways of keeping scores. Above is a birthday scorecard type thing I made for a mates 20th birthday. You can see how the more recent King & Queen of Sports scorecard below, is kind of like an evolution along the same lines.
That’s pretty much me done. Hope you enjoyed looking at my old work alongside more recent stuff to see how it compares. Now it’s your turn! Unearth those old college sketch books and post your own Early Designs.
Or maybe it’s to keep your hands warm & your beer cold. Either way you’ll look pretty damn cool doing it with one of these hand knitted Beer Cosy.
