I'm so popular....

No, I'm not.

But I did get featured on Creative Boom Bristol, which is rather cool!



It features a ridiculous photo of me, as there wasn't any reasonable one's I wanted to use!

Click here to see!!!

I feel good right now.
Michael

A new subsection!

I did media studies in college, which involved, well for starters very little graphic design, a lot of video work. Filming and editing (both video and sound pieces) were a main part of it and I have been following the growing trend of music/promo videos being shot on Digital SLR's.

Not heard about it? Google Canon 7D, check the specs, you can shoot full 1080p HD on a DSLR, it's mind blowing! Get on youtube, search Canon 5d test, and you will see some outstanding footage tests.

The point, I used to do a lot of video editing and I always found it strangely calming, so I decided to try and join the cult of film making on DSLR's. I'm hamming it up a little here, I don't have the greatest camera, but as the video I was shooting was only for the web, so the concerns about HD were washed away pretty quick (however there is an adventure into this to follow).

I was happy that the exposure plate on my bridge camera would be more than adequate a youtube vid, so combine so old skills with some new ones and I got to this...



I had always planned to shoot this on DV or some form of video, I think it is safe to say, I may never go back to video ever again.

Fingers cross for the start of something new!

Links
End Of The Line Tattoo Studio
Music supplied by Samoans

A coding job I tells ya!

This is the first time I have ever been charged with the job of just coding, well, not just coding, but of designing, but not much.

Ladies and Gentlemen let me introduce to Richey Beckett's myspace layout...

















This job was a mammoth undertaking as this is still a myspace layout, but it has been dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up to suit Mr. B's needs, there are text scroll boxes, additional spaces, its a real gold mine of interest to anyone who is interested in this sort of thing!

It was a real pleasure to work with Richey again, after the success of the Captain Accident artwork, however in this case, I just gave him a PSD with some guides, told him to go nuts and then I had to move a few things round and make a random background.

Strong piece for him and a good exercise for me.

Sweet, some day I'll get this coding malarky...
Michael

Link
Richey Beckett's Myspace

Something for my band...

After nearly a year of trying to get our shit together, my band have finally got into the recording studio! It was an exciting weekend spent with good friends, doing something we love.

As much as times are changing for social networking, facebook has over taken myspace, twitter is getting more popular...blah blah blah...one of the best places for a band to present their music, photos, calendar, blogs...is still myspace. So I was charged with making a myspace and a logo for us.

This is what I did.











I really like the logo, end of.

One thing I really like about the myspace is the photo that is being used as the profile image, as I may have mentioned in the past my MA dissertation was on documentary photography and the honesty of the genre (that's a potentially long and boring story), the point being I took the photo on my point and click camera about 5 minutes before we were about to play probably my favourite gig we have played so far. It makes me smile seeing it in there.

Looking forward to doing the artwork, which has to be a re-adaption of this. I'll post a larger version of the logo then.

Oh yeah, the myspace is optimized for firefox, safari, chrome, opera...and everything but internet explorer. So if you are still using internet explorer, get a clue!

Few more posts then bed.

Link
The Modern Farewell Myspace

Shirt and logo...

I've recently finished a myspace for an illustrator, and he is in a few bands and we were talking about his new band 'A Thousand Arrows', conversation meandered towards logos and design. There is a graphic designer (on guitar) and he is an illustrator of great skill himself, but I had an idea about the logo, so decided to just do it. Sometimes you just have to go with things.

I did a concept sketch...



Which on reflection I quite liked, but thought there was room for improvement, I couldn't quite get the dimensions right without a ruler and by the time I got to a ruler I was right by my computer! So I thought I would just get one the macbook.

The logo ended up looking like this:



I tried to keep the lines on the 'A's to follow through into the point of the 'T', but it just didn't look right, so I extended it a little, because, well it looked better.

I have a strange tendency to get carried away with what I am doing sometimes, so I carried on working on things, adding details, changing details...



...and it ended up being far to much for a logo and started to look more of a shirt design. So I mocked it up.



I think it looks pretty good. I liked it enough that I posted it over at emptees as well.



This has been an evenings work, that I honestly don't know will be picked up or not, but I enjoyed doing it regardless, hopefully they will print the shirt, even if the they don't use the logo.

Links
Larger Versions
A Thousand Arrows Myspace
Design on Emptees

2 pick ups!

Certainly a cool feeling, I did 2 designs for Juliet Echo, (well they liked what I did with her CD artwork, so it only makes sense to follow through) I always try and produce 2 or 3 rough concepts for a client, it gives them a choice and it also keeps me sharp.

But in this case I did 2 different designs, I wanted to do one that was more geared towards being printed in several different colour shirts using the same colours and one that worked on black shirts with a few different printing schemes. Make sense? Good.

One:



better view of the artwork...



Do you get me now? This would work on more or less any coloured shirt, I just prefered the grey (ash grey on American Apparel if you are a nerd like me), so sent it and they liked it like this, so bonus!

Two:



better view of the artwork...



See what I mean, the (Canadian) Northern lights could be several colours, but I sent it in green and they liked the green.

The interesting thing was, I was expecting an email back saying, this one, but not that one, however I got an email back saying, "We'll take both!" ROCK ON!

2 sent, 2 accepted. I hope it works like that in the future!

I can't leave this post with out offering a heads up to Bob "Thrash Nasty" Kawa, who's crazy use of geometric shapes inspired the first design. I'll link him in a second.

I think that is most everything for now...
Michael

Links
Bob "Thrash Nasty" Kawa
You can buy it here
Larger Versions
Juliet Echo

Satisfying

This is about vindication and how nice it is to see your work come to life.

Artwork for Captain Accident was a really satisfying, it was done at break neck speed and looked great, so it was rather satisfying to see it up on Amazon.



Now I was not aware of this, but the physical artwork got re-done as there was more time for that. My logo stayed on it, but it was mostly redrawn.

I had no idea there were going to be tshirts for the release show, so it was a pleasant surprise to see this when I walked into the show...



Here, have a better view, don't worry he is a friend, so he pulled a stupid face for me!



Sweet times.
Michael

Links
Why not go buy it?
Larger Versions
Captain Accident's myspace.