Away for a week and a half

Away for a week and a half

No blog updates for a few days, going up to the lakes for a wedding. But after that me & Nicky plan to climb Scarfell Pike, Snowdon and Ben Nevis (in that order) before another wedding in Scotland the following weekend. So we’ll probably post a few pics of our progress to keep you going. If you’re not aware, those are the highest mountains in England, Wales and Scotland. The thing to do is try and climb them all in 24 hours, but we’re not doing that…

Above is the making of my first ever wedding cake, may well be my first ever cake for that matter… The cake was pretty easy, but the marzipan is proving to be more difficult than I had imagined to work with. I’ll not spoil the surprise by showing the finished cake, will post it after the wedding.

Stefan Kanchev

Stefan Kanchev - Stamps

Wow, the work of Bulgarian Graphic artist Stefan Kanchev is blowing my mind. Fantastic line, form and colour combinations to die for.

He style inspired by Bulgarian folklore and traditions, reminds me a lot of the more recent Finnish folklore inspired work by Sanna Annukka.

Stefan Kanchev - buildings stamps

I think I like his stamp designs best out of his vast body of work. It seems I’ve blogged about them before, but never knew the original designer. It’s funny I’ve drawn some trees recently almost exactly the same is these here, weird..

Logos by Stefan Kanchev

Crap load of great logo designs too.

“Stefan Kanchev was not just talented but also exceptionally industrious artist. All of his works to the last letter were drawn by hand. His passion was so great that often he worked night and day without stopping. The artist’s wife remembered that he was working at his drawing table till the last moment when he was taken to the hospital. Stefan Kanchev died in 2001 at the age of 85.”

Via: grain edit.

Suits you sir!

Social Suicide Yellow Suit

I‘ve a couple of weddings coming up on the next 2 weekends and I just realised that my suit looked a bit stupid on me after losing a few stone walking the CDT… Not to worry, I’m mates Simon & Tig (Social Suicide) make, in my opinion the most interesting suits around. Each one generally tries to do something that has never been done before and chock full of random features and functions that you wouldn’t usually expect from a suit such as their specially designed ‘Razzle’ pocket ;)

Ideally I would of like an orange suit, but I was quite taken by this bright yellow one. One of the wedding’s is my mate El, who I do all the branding for. I think it’ll be quite funny that I’ll be on brand at the wedding!

I got a bit carried away with poses this morning when I got Nicky to take the picture, rest on my Flickr, I really like the jumping shot, but too gay to actually post here.

Also you ladies, they’ve started a women’s line of suits (by Christy), not on the website, but I saw some down in their store.

Your name & the internet

Personas

Up until today I wished I made a more unique name than Simon Cook, there’s shit loads of them out there! I could never get near the top of the google rankings, although I’m now slowly making my way up there, currently 5th :)

But I’ve seen 2 things today that made me happy that I’ve got loads of other namesakes. First up is this Personas site by Aaron Zinman from MIT it searches the internets for you and your namesakes and creates a visual aggregation of their online identities. I think the final result is a bit of a let down (I’m sure Jonathan Harris could do some much more interesting with the data). But watching the other Simon Cook’s and things they are up to flashing across the screen was quite fascinating.

Craig Robinson

Then I randomly went to see what Craig Robinson (Flip Flop Flyin’) was up to. He’s snapped up CraigRobinson.com when it became available, and rather than use it himself, he’s made a site linking up all the Craig Robinsons out there!

I love the idea, I think there should be a law that ‘name URLs’ should link up everyone that shares the name. I would definitely do the same if SimonCook.com ever became available.

Neil Krug

Neil Krug

Apparently Neil uses old expired Polaroid film to create this vintage look, but it’s not just the colour palette, loving the angles and composition. These 2 shots are taken from his PULP ART BOOK project in collaboration with the rather tastey supermodel Joni Harbeck.

This was the first thing I saw after just watching Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo (The Mole), I’d love to see this guy do a remake of it.

ViaISO50.