Hydro74's banging business cards

Hydro74, AKA Joshua M Smith has the coolest business cards ever, largely because I wouldn't want to throw it away if he gave it to me, it's far too cool, might be slightly costly to produce but it certainly provides a more memorable card than anyone elses i've ever seen.

YouYou.co.uk site redesign

Over the past few weeks I have begun doing a redesign for a web recruitment company YouYou, it was quite an interesting challenge reworking my previous branding for it to change it and give it a new feel but still keep the core feel of the brand. Below are some of the new pages:

Al Gray, old skool illustration style

I've always been a fan of the old japanese style of painting so these illustrations are a really nice modern take on it.

Blood sweat and vector's cool cars

Blood Sweat and Vector, a collective of talented vector artists have just put these cool 50's esque cars up on their blog, they're part of their mista mista range, which features apparel and prints and the like.

Resonance teaser trailer

Resonance Trailer 1 from SR Premium on Vimeo.

Resonance is a series of short motion graphic/3d animations coming out later this year, this is the first teaser for it which just shows the kind of general really really gum-dropping graphical fluid squibbles and all sorts of 3d jiggerypokery. This trailer however shows hardly anything but the others are expected to be released soon.

Sachin Teng and his cool illustration style

I really like the style this guy has, a lot of his illustrations remind me of children's books but then some of them look like some kind of macabre Akira-esque spooky faces and the like. They're kind of like dreams.

Check out some more

Fool Proof Flyer

Be Ready, a south London based events group commissioned me to make an A6 flyer for a night they were putting on in Brixton, they said they wanted it to be like packaging of some sort.

I found it fun using the gradient mesh tool and trying to get the conventions of packaging across while still giving the idea that its a party, I've found my work more and more steering towards digital illustration as something i'm the most interested in.

Aimei Ozaki

I can't actually believe this is a painting, like seriously, it's some sor tof airbrush boudelaire business, but the level of 'realism' is a bit flippin ridiculous.

Check out the rest of his stuff at 50 Watts

Lolipop Business Cards

These are the business card designs for the lolipop brand, I wanted to keep it colourful and fun to stand out a little and represent what the brand is about.

Nice repurposing of a tube map for the human body, by This Guy

Lolipop Posters

Some marketing posters for lolipop, I wanted to keep the style simple and minimalist, with bright colours.

Shaded Lolipop final logo

After creating my logo in illustrator, I bopped it over to photoshop and shaded it to give it a more comfortable and warm feel, I also made a quick black and white version for use on b&w letterheads and such.

Lolipop logo development

Having decided to adopt a candy-cane-esque style for my logotype I started to create the pattern rush needed for the paths so I could then trace over my chosen typeface and create a new logotype.

I also messed around with a few different colour combinations but settled on a slightly lighter pink version of the traditional candy cane format.

Si Scott is Resonating some talent

Si Scott's illustration series entitled Resonate is pretty flippin awesome, if I had some money I would buy at least three of these different prints for my wall, alas all I can do is set them as my wallpaper.

Stencil-tastic

Partly as part of my project at the moment and partly because I haven't made a stencil in ages, I used to make loads and miss it soooooo much. So I made a stencil of a lollipop, As I didn't have a printer I had to trace it off my screen from an illustrator file I made and the mount it, cut it and then take it down to my local skate park to spray up the place.

New project

Having started our new project in which I have to brand a made up company, made up by me. I have decided to start doing the branding for my a sweet shop called 'lolipop' I started about collecting various moodboard-ish images that I think should help define the visual style of my brand.

Joe Fenton can DRAW

Illustrator Joe Fenton started work on this back in 2010, needless to say it took him a while to finish it, to say it's simply amazing seems like a bit of an understatement, it measures about 8ft wide and is drawn in only graphite and talent.

Alex Varanese Future Retro vibes

Alex Varanese designed a series of posters marketing goods such as i-pods and laptops as if they were invented in the 70's, I thought this was a really fun idea and the styling and presentation of all of the posters is consistently entertaining.

Check It Out.

Final NYJC logo

These are my final pieces for the NYJC branding exercise, there are two alternate versions of the logo, this was partly because I couldn't decide which I preferred and partly because I thought they could have dual usage for certain occasions when the logo didn't need to be so big. With the poster design I was a bit hesitant about using the treble cleff as it is a bit of a cliché, but I was quite pleased with the result and I think it gets the message across of the nature of the organisation swiftly while incorporating the logo elements into it.

N.Y.J.Come on then

After managing to establish a colour pallete for I started trying to simplify my earlier shapes concept and chose four basic shapes to work with and then four corresponding colours, I also decided on a logotype I wanted to use something strong and sans-serif as I think it appeals more to younger audiences, the thickness of the type I thought also gave some more impact, but this was still only experimentation.

Jared Nickerson is one serious vector man

For quite a while now Jared Nickerson has been one of my favourite vector artists. I really like his plain simple, almost cartoony style and vectors just give such a nice look to them, he also has a great use of colour, the piece has a large amount of colours but they work somewhat harmoniously and I think this can be said about a lot of his work.

 You can see more of his work at his website JThree Concepts which is also a really well designed site.

Mo' Jazz

Here are some of the early experimentations I have been doing for the NYJC branding. I started using scatter brushes in illustrator to create this kind of fragmented effect but I found the shapes were too small and it was hard to get the right balance considering the logo would have to work on small formats as well. initially I was not pleased with many of these results so I tried some other ideas and tried to simplify the shapes.

Geometric Jazz

When we first started brainstorming ideas in groups about our NYJC branding my personal initial thoughts lead to me thinking of procedurally generated geometric patterns of some sort, these ideas of fragmented shapes forming other things appealed to me as it seemed to have a lot in common with the ideas of jazz, and we all wanted to stay away from any clichéd symbols such as saxophones.

I did some research on generative, procedural, fractal art and all that jazz (excuse the pun) and found a very interesting project called Advanced Beauty which procedurally generates geometric based art by reacting to audio stimuli, i really liked the look of the interacting shapes and also the shading of them as it is I think in some way 3d rendered gives it a nice look and is something I think I may try and imitate in my work.

David Mascha - Fauna

I find it hard to say that much about this illustration as it speaks for itself in how damn good lookin' it is. But nonetheless I love the colour use palette, almost an autumnal vibe, combined with the subtle use of textures and of course the curvature of it gives it such a natural feel. 

You can see more of his work here.

NYJC branding

Last week I was given the brief for our first project, mine is to re-brand, or rather brand the National Youth Jazz Collective, an organisation dedicated to mentoring young talented jazz musicians. They wanted an entirely new identity to give the idea of creativity, spontaneity almost an explosion of  harmonious chaos. Or at least thats what I got from it.