Confession time. After a week striving to produce fabulous concepts and design work for our clients I sometimes like to unwind by looking at fabulously bad concepts and design. One of my favourite places for this is a wonderful blog called Awful Library Books, the brainchild of Mary Kelly and Holly Hibner, a pair of public librarians from Michigan who catalog the outdated, weird or just completely insane books gathering dust on library shelves across America.

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It was billed as creative flair versus strategic nous. Those blokes in jeans and trainers versus those guys in suits. It was a hard fought match… for fifty minutes the game was too close to call, but a late flurry by Creative sealed victory for the boys with Macs and sent the PC guys running home with their tails between their legs.

With the help of some Precision Burner energy drinks saved up from a pitch for EAS… Creative were primed to take this game by the horns from the kick off. But credit to Account Handling… they were more than our equal for a long time and even took the lead a few times which only spurred on my brave warriors… dressed in black and playing like footballing Ninjas… we raised our game and produced some wonderful flowing football.

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After a few fun, intense days of editing I’ve just uploaded my entry to the Getty Mishmash Music Video Remix Competition. From the moment I heard about this competition I knew I had to enter as it gave me the chance to dabble in two of my favourite things: music and film. There was also the small matter of a shiny new 17″ MacBook Pro with Final Cut Studio installed for the winner. Phwooar. The rules to the competition were delightfully simple: make a music video using Getty footage and music. Er that’s it. After whiling away a few hours sampling the delights of the Getty film footage catalog and music collection an idea began to taken shape. You can see my video ‘The Devil & Mr Jones’ here. I’m excited about the result although i’m up against some stiff competition from those pesky professional film directors/editors.  Feel free to post ego massaging comments after you’ve viewed it. Thanks.

It’s not often you purchase a book so big that it comes with its own display stand. Believe it or not the version of Sumo that graces our reception is the mini version… the original release was so big that it came with its own table and broke records for weight, dimensions, and resale price!

I first came across Helmut Newton’s work when I was studying photography and was immediately captivated by his distinctive, seductive and original style. I hunted down images created by him and even had a scrapbook dedicated to images that I had found by him… images that I would try my hardest to emulate.

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Imagine a museum of British Design and Art that has over 100,000 items for you to view… but rather than walk round this museum, you can get round it with a few clicks from a computer mouse! Welcome to the Visual Arts Data Service (VADS)… the online resource for visual arts and design.

VADS has provided services to the academic community for 12 years and has built up a considerable portfolio of visual art collections that are freely available and copyright cleared for use in learning, teaching and research in the UK… and now this entire collection is available to view online.

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Marchetto - Living Cartoon

If you’re an avid watcher of the Royal Variety Performance Show, circa 1998, here’s a face you might recognise, if not the name – Ennio Marchetto. Described by some as a living cartoon, and by others as human origami… on a cold and wet October Sunday I went to see if he could brighten up the dark evening (and cheer up my hangover from the night before) with his colourful performance.

For one night only, Marchetto was performing at the Lowry Theatre in Salford Quays. The show opened as the low murmur from the audience settled in, curtains already open and a bright light lit stage that looked like the cleaner had forgotten to sweep. From around the corner, a sleepy paper caricature (paper pyjamas, paper wig, paper candle) yawned and stretched its way to the front of the stage. The audience had silenced themselves for the evening’s performance and as Marchetto blew his paper candle out, the lights in the auditorium switched off. The show had begun. Read more…

One of the great things about my High School in Bradford wasn’t the fact that we were taught by Nuns and Priests… no it was the fact we had a Dark Room. Growing up I loved photography and so developing my own photographs was a natural progression for me and I would find that I could easily fly through a few hours thanks to some good music, a dark room and some recently taken black & white pictures that were snapped on my trusty Pentax ME… a camera I still own and love today.

One of the many Photographers that I studied at this time was a guy called Robert Capa, who was best known as a Photojournalist and documented wars including World war 2, The Arab-Israeli War and the First Indochina War. One of the reasons I loved his photographs was because of how he went against technical considerations when it came to photography and instead focused on capturing ‘the moment’… and boy! What moments he captured.

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David Gray Music Tee Front

Everyone knows that buying CDs is on the decline and when it comes to owning music… digital is the way to go. But you have to credit the people behind The Muisc Tee for getting us to part with our hard-earned green stuff for something more than just a digital download.

The Music Tee is a new product line that combines digital music and fashion in one eye-and-ear-catching package.  Music Tees are high-end t-shirts that feature album art and a tracklist. Each shirt comes with a unique code that can be used to download a digital copy of the album associated with that Music Tee. This enables people to discover and purchase music in fashion retail environments, then hear and wear an album!

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Old stylie vinyl records

As a child of the 80s, I’m old enough to remember when buying music meant a trip to the local record shop, browsing through vinyl collections and being mesmerised by the cover art. If you were lucky enough, your chosen album would come with ‘extras’ such as snap shot photography taken during a live concert, maybe a small bio of the band members and more often than not, the lyrics to all your favourite songs.

As we approached the digital age, records became CDs, which to me, never had the same impact. Sure there was the additional CD booklet, but they lacked the tactility of records, and the brilliant photography lost some of it’s shine squashed into the smaller not-quite-square format. CDs will inevitably be replaced by downloads, if they haven’t already, (I don’t really know anybody who buys CDs any more), but what about all the cool ‘extras’ we’ve come to expect?

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Abram Games was one of the most influential Graphic Designers that this country has ever seen. He created some of the most memorable designs of the 20th Century by following his own personal belief of: Maximum Meaning, Minimum Means… and back in the early 90s, maybe ’92 or ’93, I had the pleasure of attending a talk by this true great of design at Icograda (the International Council of Graphic Design Associations) Conference.

To be honest, when I attended Icograda that year, I had absolutely no idea who Abram Games was. In fact as far as I was concerned he was just a warm-up to the main attraction… Neville Brody. Yet as I entered the Odeon Cinema where Icograda was being held that year and was greeted by his work… it soon became clear that even though I did not know the name Abram Games… I certainly knew his work.

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