you can call me al__blog

Snow way!!!!

2010-01-05T17:01:00.005Z

Ok, back to back snow posts aint that great really, surely I've done something more exciting in between than watch snow. Well, other than have a rocky couple of months with the business and stress myself over Christmas, the simple answer is no.

Actually I tell a lie there, I started a new job this week as Creative Director of Manchester based design studio Pixel8, which will be a brilliant move for me. As much as I've enjoyed working for myself I soon realized that I needed more people around me, so I'm taking my clients with me and gonna kick some ass in 2010. Keep your eyes out for pixel8 this year, got a lot of great plans and some superb projects lined up over the next few months.

Anyway, back to the snow. So day 2 of new job and what happens? Total whiteout in Bolton!! Game over, road chaos, train fails, buses cancelled, schools shut, it was like something from a disaster movie round our way.

Picture the scene. I get up nice and earlier, get up and go to the car. I notice through the windows that there's been some kick ass snow but I'm ok with it. Until I see this.

But I soldier on, taking it easy to get to the train station just over a mile away. But there roads are like this.

But it's ok, once I get to the station carpark I can find out what the trains are like. Until I get stuck trying to get on the carpark, which then turns into me getting stuck trying to get out of the entrance too. Stuck. But luckily a nice bloke saw my plight and ran over with a shovel and dug me out. Amazing!

So I drove home with the idea of trying to just drive into Manchester instead, which failed also, after over an hour I managed to get near home but was stuck again, this time 4 guys ran over and pushed me round the corner and on my way. Good times. So I decided to dump my car near home, hoping the council don't do me for parking on single yellows (like you can see em). After some checking it was looking bleak. M61, chaos. M60 carnage. M6, M62, M58 you name it they were all hammered and causing serious injuries and misery.

So I decided to work from home (the power of emails and Macs eh) and take some more pics of the snow. If you compare the pics here to those below there's an unreal difference in depth which I've never seen before in my life.

Hopefully, tonight will be mild but from what I've heard we're in for more of the same.

Oh dear.

Let it snow, let it snow...

2009-12-22T12:09:00.004Z

Well, well, well, I've been wishing for snow for years and I think all of my previous wishes have all been rolled into one great BIG wish and dropped all at once. INSANE snowfall round our way.

Thing is, I can't really get mad about it like others seem to be, I just love the snow too much. Maybe I need to speak to someone about this, I think I'm holding on to too many childhood memories of making snowmen at my Nan's house in the 80's. Ok, so a couple of neighbours had to help me dig the car out and push me out of the backstreet this morning when I was taking my girl to work and that most of our great little plans of visiting farmer's markets and picking up bits and bobs have really gone belly up, but, all that aside just look at it. Amazing!!

I also managed a sneaky snowball fight with the neighbour's kids the other day, 7 year olds are really aggressive aren't they?

Here are a few snaps from our house this morning...before more snow came.

The mighty Tim Burton.

2009-11-13T11:12:00.002Z

Well I wish I was either living in New York or had a bunch of money to go there because MOMA is showing a retrospective of Tim Burton's work, from November 22nd right through to April 26th, which if we're honest about it should be pretty fantastic.

I'm a huge fan of Burton's work, not only in film but I love his doodling style of drawing and his dark but not nasty humour, it cracks me up. If you're not familiar with any of his printed work then you MUST get a copy of The Melancholy Death Of Oyster Boy book, it is absolutely superb. The book is full of cute but grim short stories, poems, dittos...etc of some real oddball characters such as the boy with nails in his eyes, stain boy, the girl with many eyes and of course, oyster boy.

Anyway, back on track, this short has been directed by Tim Burton to promote/tease the launch of the MOMA exhibition. I love it.

Wish I was in NY. Enjoy.

Football Hero.

2009-11-05T08:58:00.004Z

If you haven't already seen it, check this peachy slice of creative genius out. I'm a big fan of Kasabian's new Underdog track which this is promoting and the guys responsible, Phil Clandilon and Steve Milbourne have made something truly brilliant in my eyes. Nike/Umbro have had a masterstroke with this one, becoming involved with this kind of project is a great move forward in getting Umbro back up to where it should be as a football brand.

The idea is such a simple one, blending the fame and love of Guitar Hero with football is too good and the way it has been presented is perfect if you ask me. Maybe a huge living room set would have been cool to toy with the whole playing scenario of the original Hero games, but it's easy to try to add more to someone else's genius aint it?

I absolutely LOVE this kind of creative, the kind that actually makes you smile and enjoy every second, rather than just looking pretty or being lost in a sea of complex narrative.

Check out the vid below, plus the making of below that.

Brilliant!

Braaaaiiiiiiiiiinzzzzzz!!

2009-11-02T17:45:00.009Z

Well what a great end to the weekend!! Zombie Aid had its second outing in Manchester on Sunday (1st November) and what a blast! A bunch of us dressed up for the occasion, as you do, bit of clothing, some fake blood, latex, face paints, mud, more fake blood and plenty of moans and groans and off we went. Everyone met up at the Printworks and by everyone, I mean EVERYONE, around 3000 I think all dressed in all kinds of insane Zombie get ups, from simple crash bloody messes, to nurses, to businessmen, to lollypop ladies...it was a superb sight. We were going as an active Zombie Marine Unit and I ended up as a kind of Zombie marine cum Highway Patrol guy, which worked.

If you haven't heard about it, Zombie Aid is a charity run event organized by Carl Whitely with all proceeds going to Christie's Cancer Hospital. There is a large Facebook presence and a group too so search it out.

The night consisted of a couple of slices of Zombie action, the first was an attempt to break the British record for the largest mass Thriller dance that was held at the Pure nightclub...apparently we smashed the record, which was cool as I found the dancing super hard. The second part was a huge Zombie walk around the city centre then through a closed Arnedale Centre, which was amazing, just like being in a film.

Enough waffling, do some searching online to find out more about it, but for now check out some pics of us lot having a bit of a laugh, my brother and sister-in-law rocked some awesome make-up so next year is gonna be HUGE!!

New blog! (ish)

2009-10-30T11:36:00.002Z

Well I decided rather than wait until my site is up, then mess around installing WordPress and getting my head round that, it would be a good idea to at least update things so they look better. My Twitter has been tweaked to my styling upgrade so thought I'd sort my blog out too. I think it's looking a bit nicer than the harsh colours from before and there's more scope in the new vibe with all the links from the different woods (my name's Woods...see what I did there?)and how all that can tie in as a theme.

I'll do a nice big branding post when I'm done, bit of insight into how I think which is something I think more designers should do to be honest.

Let me know what you think, it won't be for everyone but that's kind of the point I suppose.

Exciting times.

2009-10-28T18:08:00.002Z

Well things are coming together now. My proper website is more or less designed, in the process of being built and looking good. I got my domains and email stuff sorted out finally and a cool email signature (always a necessity if you ask me) and got my promo design style kinda sorted too. Onwards and upwards and a big push for new business begins in December.

One problem though, this blog may have to be canned and a new one started from fresh. Blogger has been great and has helped me learn loads, plus I'll be keeping my DubMissile blogger site as there's too much stuff on there I'd rather not bin, but I'll be leaning towards the WordPress darkside very soon and starting a nice fresh spanking blog to go along with my tweaked identity and the rest of it. Gotta be done I'm afraid unless I change my mind.

I've had quite a lot of recent events workwise that have kicked my ass but also helped me understand my market position so all this will help me promote myself a lot better I reckon.

Looking forward to it.

Love cheese.

2009-10-15T13:54:00.003+01:00

Just had some dinner with my girl Tracey and she shouted me into the front room to watch this amazing ad for some cheese.

That's pretty much it if I'm honest, I think this ad is brilliant!! It's always good to see humour play a huge part in ads, plus, when it's done well it can be superb and this is, well, in my eyes anyways.

Enjoy!

Yeah, it is quite nice.

2009-10-02T14:51:00.003+01:00

I received this in the post last week, bit late with the blog update due to busying myself with work and contract agreements but it's Friday so no better time to update.

This wonderful book, or journal/annual/magazine whatever you like to call it is the second edition published by the awesome creative site It's Nice That. It's a collection from the past 6 months of site content, all rolled into one handy to browse and enjoy book. Nicely set out, easy to read and full of great work, interviews and interesting articles. Silly value at £10.00, although I payed a little more for a pre-ordered copy.

If you haven't visited their site I suggest you do, great for us sponges.

PLUS I got a Rob Ryan print, which is always nice...that.

Great things on the horizon.

2009-09-28T12:36:00.003+01:00

Well I've been trading for almost a year now. A few ups and downs, lots of lessons learned and lots of new knowledge in the brain. The business plan has changed a few times and considering it has probably been the hardest year for businesses I'm super pleased with how I've managed it all.

So, my actual website is in the process of being built which is about 8 months too late but it'll be worth it, don't worry the blog won't go, that will be linked into the site as I think these are such an important part of modern communications, to give potential clients an insight into what kind of a business you are and the kind of attitude towards work they can expect. The blog will get a once over as I've made some branding changes, only minor changes though, good ones too.

Big push now, finish the year on a high ready to go into 2010 all guns blazing.

MORE 8-bit awesomeness!

2009-08-26T16:50:00.004+01:00

Spied this little beauty today on the old Twitter malarky, tweeted by Engine Creative who found it at Ventnor Blog.

I don't know too much about it other than it's from a band called rymdreglage from Sweden but it totally rocks my 8-bit world.

Just watch it and make your own mind up, some dodgy bits in it but fun to see all the games they've sneaked in there. I know Rainbow Islands, Outrun, IK+ and possibly Sentinel are in there from the C64 days.

8-bit awesomeness!

2009-08-21T18:53:00.004+01:00

Now this is something a bit special, well, I think so anyway. If you LOVED the 80s then I'm pretty sure we're on the same wavelength here aren't we? I bought this the other week, one for me and one for my younger brother for his birthday...and it flat out rocks!! The upshot is this, back in the day when the C64 was THE games machine of choice and every penny I had was spent at Cannings in Leigh on games I had an all consuming love of all things Commodore. I loved sitting there for 10-15 minutes waiting for the games to load, listening to the loading music or just watching the coloured loading stripes dance all over the screen, occasionally having a small heart attack when they'd pause for a few seconds. This was all part of C64 life and the music on the games was amazing, these guys were our rockstars and reading about these guys in Zzap64 and the like was awesome.

So what is it? Well, it's a double cd set that slips inside a moulded plastic case, resembling the shape and colour of the old C64. One of the cds has a dozen or so original tracks from two legendary 8bit maestros, Rob Hubbard and Jeroen Tel, whilst the other cd takes this brilliance to another level. The C64 orchestra from the Netherlands worked alongside Hubbard and Tel to re-arrange and produce some fantastic classical versions of the 8bit classics, really needs to be heard to appreciate it.

Check this.

Alan, Alan, Alan, Al, Al, Al, Alan, Alan....

2009-08-18T08:49:00.002+01:00

My pal Ben rang me the other night in stitches and asked if I'd seen this on the BBC...I hadn't, so I looked it up aaaaand it cracks me up no end. I really need to get this as my ring tone.

Ballin' on the beach!

2009-08-03T09:07:00.008+01:00

When you're working your ass off and not had much time to think, its always a good idea to make some time to have a bit of fun I think, so, the weekend that has just left us gave me a chance to do just that.

My pals and I used to play pro paintball a few years back as a hobby, which kind of led into an obsession and we actually became very good at it, even played all over Europe and in the first European X-Ball premier league called the EXL. Anyway, times change and you need your money for other things so we had to call it a day and move on in life, always with an eye on what goes on within the sport. As a designer I loved it as I could have some fun designing all our custom jerseys for our first team (K2) then the special jersey for the EXL team we played for from London (Shockwave). Staying in touch with people from the sport has led to me designing a few bits and bobs here and there, most recently a logo for the newly formed promotions company, Balls Out Promotions. These guys do a fantastic job organizing events that players really want to play and are hugely selfless in their approach, opting for a longer term plan rather than going for the quick buck that most series promoters go for. Their latest event, which gets me back to the point, was labeled 'Ballin' On The Beach' and was played at the South Pier in sunny Blackpool. The guys who run BOP are pals so the whole logo design thing was a trade for trade affair, which I didn't mind at all as playing tournament paintball can be expensive, especially when you're trying to save for a wedding, so a logo for a weekend of top class paintball was more than a fair deal for me.

I have to admit the logo looked great on the banners they'd had done and the staff tees were striking, plus whoever did the website and flyers have followed the theme and carried it through the branding which works quite well. Its good to see them really making an effort to do things properly and actually taking the sport, which in the UK has been on the decline of late, forwards and back up where it belongs with all the other fringe extreme sports.

Quick run down of how the game works. The format, 5 man X-ball, has 2 teams of 5 players, but each team will have around 7-10 players in the squad to rotate around but only 5 on the field at any one time. Game time is 10 minutes with each team having a buzzer in their starting point. The idea is to shoot all 5 players with the main aim of hitting their buzzer, by hand, to gain a point. Then the clock stops. 2 minutes to get off the field, cleaned up, load up with paint, air and re-evaluate your game plan. Back on the field and the clock is restarted from your original 10 minutes...game on!! This happens until the 10 minutes is up or one team reaches 4 points quickly. Awesome game, exciting to watch and intense to play, a real good extreme sport that is a little different to all the others out there.

Here are some pics of me and my buddy in action from various games, to be honest, we were still pretty awesome considering it'd been a while, only problem being I think we've got the bug again. I'm in the red mask and my boy Latham has a yellow one.

Big thanks to Rich Harris and all the Balls Out Promotions crew for putting on a paintball saving event, special thanks to Rich for hooking me up with a spot on his team, Legacy and a huge thanks to the young guns on Legacy who let us 'old guys' sneak in to see if we still had what it takes.

I think we did.

Can't forget to add a HUGE thanks to my wonderful fiancee Tracey, firstly for coming along to see what it was all about and actually admitting she really enjoyed it, and secondly for taking loads of cool shots of us throughout the weekend. We both really enjoyed having our girls there after years of them listening to us whine on about how awesome paintball is, they now know why we loved it so much. X

Gotta love Tron.

2009-07-30T13:48:00.005+01:00

I've posted a couple of things regarding Tron on this blog. One post explains Tron being one of the major influences for my recent work on the Manchester United Premier Cup World Finals next month, the other for an awesome cardboard low-fi ode to the great film itself.

Now next year's sequel, Tron 2.0 (possibly Tron Legacy), looks amazing but all we could see was a shaky and fuzzy camera job from last year's Comic-Con, now there are some high def versions of this plain awesome trailer all over the webz so here's one I found with an embed option from good old YouTube.

Sit back, don't dribble too much and enjoy what has the potential to be the perfect CG movie for 2010. Come a long way since 1982, hopefully it'll rock.

Also, see the original tron trailer form 1982...still is amazing now.

Tron 2.0.

Tron (1982).

Gotta love a gimmick.

2009-07-30T10:21:00.003+01:00

Not really had chance to post much up the past few months due to insane workload, but, I decided it's time to start controlling things a little and try to take some time out to keep this mother updated with interesting stuff.

So, until I pull together a selection of my favourite pieces of MY work to talk about and show off, I'll be dropping some visual candy of stuff other designers have done that makes me wanna eat the pics from out of the screen.

Today's little does of awesome is from a Japanese guy called Kozzy Osbourne aka Koji Sueyoshi and, although it may be an idea that has be done quite a few times, I just really dig it and this kind of gimmicky twist always tickles my creative armpits.

Love it.

Adam Yauch.

2009-07-20T20:00:00.003+01:00

Well, just found out this evening that Adam (MCA) Yauch from the Beastie Boys has developed a cancerous lump on his neck area which he needs pretty sharpish surgery on. This means the new album and tour will be put back a little, which you'd expect for sure with this kind of thing. All I can say is I hope he makes a full recovery as he and his boys have done nothing but entertain me for the last 20 years or so.

Here's the man himself explaining it all.

Kick its ass Yauch!! Love ya man!!

Grey's Anatomy finale.

2009-06-26T10:00:00.003+01:00

Well what can I say, I'm not a cryer, I'm an emotional sensitive guy and feel it coming but it never really happens that often and last night's Grey's Anatomy season finale very nearly took me down. I always find that Grey's is quite an emotional show which chokes me up most weeks but the finale has kinda stayed in our minds. I know, how girly is this post but hey, blogging is all about letting people learn a little more about you as a person right?

So we were expecting for weeks, months in fact, that Izzy was gonna be the big emotional atom bomb with her cancer situation and to some extent she was. They've been building it up to that point for a while, so you kinda saw it coming I suppose. Thing is, the last two episodes still kept things quite busy elsewhere so you were thinking 'when is it gonna drop?'The episodes just carried on with sub plots going off all over as usual and generally kept your mind busy all the way through. Then the whole George thing started up and the big trauma victim arrived, which took a big chunk of focus off Izzy. The last episode ticked away, 5 minutes or so left and all along we were thinking that there was something going on with this trauma victim, then the penny dropped...real hard. I'm not gonna give away any real details in case you haven't seen it, it really is an awesome piece of tv.

Great finale with a very hard ending which will stay with you for a while. Credit to the creators for doing such a brilliant series time and time again. Next season's opener will be a killer for sure.

Love Tron, love this.

2009-06-03T13:31:00.002+01:00

Spotted this little gem today whilst looking into Tron footage for a project I'm working on for Manchester United Premier Cup09. I love Tron and the light bikes scene is legendary but what these guys have done is fantastic!!

Hope you love it as much as I do.

Aint no veggie.

2009-05-11T11:40:00.002+01:00

My good buddy Chris Aldom sent me this through today and although I can see how some may find it a little offensive, I think its pretty awesome.

I like meat and I like business cards so when you add the two together you get Meatcards.

Genius.

Busy week again.

2009-04-27T10:01:00.006+01:00

Well, the last thing I'm gonna do is complain about being too busy, especially in the current climate (it's almost second nature now for people to drop those last 2 words in a sentence). Got a big week lined up with Nike/Manchester United plus some amazing work for Manchester United Premier Cup, is starting to look pretty cool if I do say so myself, if you like Tron and football, you'll like what I've done. I'll also be starting to plan out and start the basic coding for my own website at some point this week, which I'm really looking forward to.

Here's a little taster of the Manchester United Premier Cup 09 creative. The players don't show very well here but I've treated them to look pixelated like in an old school video game. These are initial visuals, the work I post up soon will be a lot more finished and make more sense when I do a dedicated post about it all.

This guy is my hero.

2009-04-25T12:24:00.006+01:00

Twitter is awesome. Fact. Not everyone gets it, mainly because they don't really know what they want to use it for. One of the great things is people firing up great links, whether it be for tutorials, news or whatever and today I found possibly THE single most inspirational piece ever found on the interweb.

Posted by my man Alan Valek is this...enjoy it.

Check mate.

2009-04-20T12:30:00.003+01:00

The link below was tweeted today by Fact of Liverpool and is super awesome!! I started to play some chess again to massage my brain a little more and quickly remembered how hard a game it really is when you start to think it out more and this kinda appealed to me.

Anyways, this stop-motion plasticine battle chess game posted by Ricx78 is short enough to not bore you but just long enough to be thoroughly enjoyable.

CSS time.

2009-04-17T11:23:00.002+01:00

Well, took out a couple of library books on CSS, printed off some comprehensive tuts and about to purchase CSSEdit2.6. The website build is about to begin!!

I'm aiming to create a very simple, clean but nice site that focuses on the work and ease of navigation rather than have a million and one little icons or stock image add-ons all over it. Clean site, clean code. Should be fun.

I'll keep you all posted on how quickly I can develop my skills.

Onwards and upwards!

2009-04-14T11:03:00.002+01:00

Ok so the Easter weekend is now over, the house is full of chocolate and I can now officially get back on the caffeine, sweets, cheese...etc. Thing is though, I've actually noticed that I feel a lot better all round without eating so much dairy and drinking so much caffeine, so I've made a brave move to keep it up. I'll cut my brews right down and keep up the herbal revolution as I've got a real taste for some of it, peppermint is just so refreshing and I think all the chocolate we have will see us through for quite a while, so healthy-ish times ahead I'd say.

It's also healthy times ahead for business. I have a very busy few months lined up with plenty work from Nike/Manchester United especially with the imminent Premier Cup World Finals at Old Trafford, but that is for another post. Hopefully Manchester City will make up for last week's European result so we can move forward there and my own clothing brand, DubMissile™, is now moving along nicely now that I've tickled the blog, the Twitter account and new online shop. It all looks great now and once I get my screen printing prices in today I can start on my range plan. On top of all this my fantastic client, Amber Lounge, have some busy times ahead with the F1 season well under way and their first VIP event at Barcelona should be fantastic.

Much to do, much to be excited about.

CSS is fun!!

2009-04-11T10:34:00.002+01:00

Not something you hear that regularly I suppose and I can't really claim to be a coding god in 2 days...because I'm not. BUT I've been playing around with the CSS part of the DubMissile™ shop I recently set up to tweak the layout a bit and figure out a few things, very basic stuff but it's been a great introduction to learning the essentials.

I've recently bought up a couple of domains, dubmissile.com and youcancallme.co.uk so the next...however long it takes...will be spent trying to learn some decent level coding so I can build my own site properly to showcase my work and go about selling my skills more. On top of all the work I have on at the moment this will be a push, but, it's something I'm definitely looking forward to doing.

Game stepped up!!

The learning process.

2009-04-06T13:06:00.002+01:00

Since leaving my comfy in-house job I've been really pushing myself to get back into the designer bubble, which wasn't really that difficult as I've always kept up to date with most of it. The one thing that kinda scared me though was the whole web thing. When this all came about I made a conscious decision to leave it well alone as from what I'd seen it takes a ton of time to learn, a ton of time to manage and once you've learned it it all changes so you start again. Not for me that, or so I thought. Since being self employed I've found a new interest in all this side of things and found out that no matter what people may say, web presence is more important and popular than ever before. Quality web presence even more so with all the free resources available today.

So, I'm now stressing out because I like to know things and I like to know how to do things and I like to know how things do what they do, so, I'm gonna be spending the next few months trying to learn as much as I can. I fully support using people to do what they do best, however, I also believe that to design things it really helps to know what you can do with the media involved. I've learned little bits from tweaking templates in blogs and finding out little pieces of html code here and there to see what they do, which I'm finding fascinating (geek mode on) and to be honest I think I may have missed out on something I would have truly enjoyed.

I'm in the process of buying up a proper domain now and will design and build my own website as a test project. This may take longer than getting someone to do it for me but in the long term it'll be the best thing I ever did.

Word of advice? If something comes along that you don't fully understand and think you don't need, learn it, otherwise, like me, you'll find sometime down the line that you really wished you did.

Wii Spray amazingness.

2009-04-03T09:56:00.004+01:00

Just how cool is this?

Only just found this today whilst having a quick interweb mooch but it's amazing!! From what I can gather it was a Bauhaus University student project by Martin Lihs, you can have a look at his stuff here if you can speak/read German. There is also another site that is all about the Wii Spray itself. This was done sometime last year and from what I can gather it hasn't been developed into a real thing by Nintendo...yet, but I will have a deeper delve into all this as I think this is just bloody fantastic.

The basic concept is you insert your remote into the can, select colours on the projected screen from a palette and away you go, just like the real thing. Whether it works as well as that, who knows, but if you check the vid on the Wii Spray link you can see for yourself. Gonna keep my eye on this one.

Blue Wednesday.

2009-04-01T17:27:00.004+01:00

Ok, not quite Blue Monday but still.

I had a meeting with Manchester City Football Club today to discuss potential creative opportunities and by the looks of things the meeting a success. I'm trying to build on my football club portfolio, whether it be direct work from the Clubs or through Licensing partners. In this instance the work I do on various ranges and possible future projects will be dealt with directly, which is fantastic as that means I can have input to and from the source without any middle men involved.

Many thanks to David for giving me the time today, it's always good to talk with those who will be directly involved and who have a passionate understanding and involvement with the Club and the brand.

Exciting times ahead, hopefully my experience will pay off for both of us.

DubMissile progress.

2009-03-24T00:21:00.003Z

At last!! As mentioned somewhere else on here, DubMissile™ is my clothing label which caters for performance VW lovers, particularly water cooled. This has been heavily on hold while I got my act together setting up the business but now I'm refocusing on it as there is some money to be made there, as well as a lot of fun to be had with the artwork. I love cars, my golf vr6 especially which is what turned me on to dubs and in turn, as with everything I end up doing, I started to play around with some design work and actually sensed a bit of potential with it all. So, I applied my branding knowledge, came up with a nice identity (after many various incarnations) and have nailed a style for all my merchandise. Some schmoozing here and there meant I managed some magazine exposure in PVW and Retro Cars, which was fantastic!! Now I'm a bit more savvy and excited again about it all I've built a Big Cartel online shop, set up a Twitter and revamped my DubMissile blog site. All I gotta do now is work on finishing off the half a dozen new designs I have and ship them out to a good screen printers. The previous ranges were done by hand by heat transfer which worked out pretty well but was far too time consuming and now I'm a, ahem, businessman, time is money right?

Check out the DubMissile blog link in the menu on the right, you can also follow me on Twitter from there too. Cool stuff, more even cooler stuff to come and it's all a bit of fun.

Time flies!!

2009-03-17T00:30:00.003Z

Bit of a quick pre-post this one. Just realized whilst working my buns off that I haven't posted for quite a while. This is all for some very good reasons, mainly due to hectic workload, which also means I'll have some nice shiny new work to post up within the week. Quite a few projects are on the go with some nice pieces too if I do say so myself. Manchester United's Premier Cup event has been overhauled with a bit of Tron influence, which looks pretty bold and cool, a few logos have been done for a friend of mine who runs a paintball tournament series, not to mention the many, many design style options I'm working on for the potential outcome of Man United's season.

All work and no play...keeps Jack in the black.

Let it Reyn.

2009-03-02T18:02:00.003Z

Quite a catchy title that one isn't it?

So, every now and then you are totally blown away by something. Whether it be a film, an album, a sweet piece of art or design or whatever. Now being a huge 80's fan and practically living on my C64 as a kid I've always stood my ground on the subject of the C64 being the greatest ever games machine. I love my Xbox360 and the new games are at a level that you couldn't even dream of back then, but, it's all a bit too accessible nowadays. I remember saving a tenner, going to Cannings in Leigh and spending it all on a game. A game which would take 15 minutes to load and very often crash, but the wait added to the whole drama and excitement of game playing back then. You'd sit and play it until you were physically unable to move, or you finished it.

One of the great aspects of gaming back then was the music and for me there was a battle between 2 guys, Martin Galway and Rob Hubbard. Galway was my boy as I loved the Imagine label games which he did most of the tracks for. Now I recently fell upon this amazing Dutch fella who, along with being involved with various game scores back in the day (Last Ninja 3 for starters) has done some unbelievable renditions of some old favourites using his impressive array of equipment.

Check the Reyn on YouTube link, look at all his other stuff on there and check out his own website Reyn for more info.

Galway would be proud!!

Arden fan.

2009-03-01T09:46:00.002Z

I posted up last year when I started this blog about a book I receieved as a Christmas present. That book was Whatever You Think, Think The Opposite by the late Paul Arden. I thought this book was awesome to be honest, mainly because he confirmed a lot of my views and ideals of the industry, plus, it was a nice surprise to read something that wasn't the usual 'I've been doing this for years so listen to me...' crap.

So I went out and bought another of his books and this is also a brilliant read. Much along the same lines (in fact, I think this book came first) and gives you great insight into how to think inside and outside of the creative bubble we live in.

People always label certain books with the 'a must read' tag which often puts great pressure on that book, however, these truly deserve to be called must reads. Why? Well, you must read them, that's why.

28 of 28.

2009-02-28T17:23:00.002Z

Et voila! Here it is, the last link of my 28 February web posts. it's been a cool thing to do, dug out some old links and found some great new ones. I'll probably do the link a day thing again but maybe when I don't have a million other things to do. March is definitely the month for me to get my work up here instead of spending time showing off others.

That aside, the man David Airey needs a mention here, so he gets today's final link for his brilliant Logo Design Love site. This is superb for all you logo lovers out there. He makes a good effort to pick out current and worthy logo subjects to show off and open up for criticism...which they get...often. The site itself is super easy to follow and within minutes you'll be throwing your 2cents in over some god awful logo hash up that is happening. If you want to know what huge re-branding projects are getting messed up by the big names, some are done well too of course, then head over there for a look.

That's it. Done. Roll on March.

27 of 28.

2009-02-28T16:58:00.003Z

Not really a design led thing as such, although visually the site looks impressive, mainly due to the overwhelming repetition of love hearts and sweet, sweet nothings.

I love you more than blank is quite a neat idea. You enter a few details, select a category (which don't seem to have anything to do with the messages in them to be honest) then your short but sweet love message and you're done. Brilliant. Maybe they're using the messages for other purposes, who knows, but take the blinkers off and it's nice all the same.

Feel the love.

X

26 of 28.

2009-02-28T16:39:00.002Z

Keeping with the making you smile and feel good theme, I thought I'd share this beauty, which is new to me. Maybe I'm way out of touch but I only found this the other day and from now on if my day starts to go bad I'll just nip on here for ten and see how others are fairing.

Fmylife (you can guess what it stands for) is a super simple site where people post up something stupid they did that helps them understand just how tasty their shoe is.

Real simple, real funny and the one post I've shown kind of sums it up.

My life is ok at the moment.

25 of 28.

2009-02-28T15:56:00.002Z

Aaaaaaaand breathe.

Been a busy ass week and priorities being priorities meant the blog had to suffer unfortunately, so the link per day idea fell at the last hurdle. Yep, I could post up the links and alter the dates but being an honest kinda guy I thought better of it. So, sit back and absorb 4 days worth of links, as promised, just a little late. What else are you gonna do on a Saturday afternoon?

Number 24 is quite a cute link. Not cutey as in cutesy, bubble and bright colours but more cute as in the playful idea of it. The Superest is the brainchild of artists Kevin Cornell and Matthew Sutter and form what I can gather is more about having some fun together and sharing this with other guest artists and illustrators. The premise is, that one artists creates a super hero, or villain with a specific talent, then another artists has to respond to that with an opposing hero or villain. This then escalates as one character defeats the next, no finishing line other than a history of fun and games. It's definitely worth checking out just as a cheer-me-up as some of the characters are really cool and very well sketched.

Good times.

24 of 28.

2009-02-24T17:59:00.003Z

The end is nigh.

Here's a nice site for you with some amazing work to go at and plenty of it.

Waste have a brilliant folio of some really inspiring work, ranging from some nice modern graphic work and some illustrative stuff that blew me away. Again, my love of old school Ed Roth-esque work was tickled giddily under the chin with some of their lovely and a bit strange artwork. It's odd as whilst looking through their folio I thought some of it had a familiar look about it and it turns out they worked with my favourite design studio, Burn, on a lot of projects. Which is cool. They have a good mix of illi and pure graphics in there and manage to create some really awesome work that is super busy but looks great.

Check em out!!

Go Panthers!!!!

2009-02-23T16:24:00.002Z

Here's a heart-warming story for you.

One of the girls I worked with at Nike, Emma, has a young lad (about 8 years old I think) who plays basketball with his pals for his local team, the Prestwich Panthers. Apparently they haven't really won many games and all the kids were feeling a little down, plus, all the other teams have matching kits with their team names on, but alas, the Panthers don't. Which is kind of sad I think. That is until now!

Emma asked if I could do some numbers for the kit she bought, some real nice Nike vest and short sets, seeing as I did transfer printed tees so, being for the kids, I said yes. I didn't think numbers would really be enough, so I knocked up a logo for the team too to hopefully help lift their spirits and make them all feel more like a real time. Being a fan of US sports logos I thought I'd have a bit of fun with it, a splash of collegiate lettering here, outlines all over and a mean looking panther for good measure. All in time for their game last Saturday.

I haven't heard anything yet about the result but I do know they were made up with the designs.

So get your foam hands out and cheer, Go Panthers!!

23 of 28.

2009-02-23T15:19:00.002Z

I was saving this one for nearer to the end, not sure why but I just did.

In-keeping with the old school theme I thought I'd introduce you to Mr. Mike Giant who is my favourite artist at the moment. There was just something about his work that I fell in love with a couple of years ago that just says AWESOME to me whenever I see it. As with any artist or designer there are some pieces that I don't really like and there are elements of how he does certain things that I'm not too keen on, which I think adds to why I love his stuff so much. I'm a huge fan of black and white artwork, most of the designs I do for my DubMissile label are black and white, there's just something so powerful about creating a design to work in single colour that gets me feeling good inside. You're not relying on crazy techniques or pretty images to sell the graphic.

There's a great crossover from his tattoo and graffiti work to his art and graphic pieces that he's managed to maintain. I always find it frustrating when you see someone try to take their work over into a different media and fail as they lose the soul part to what they do. I don't think Giant's work becomes lost in translation.

Anyways, have a look and hopefully you'll enjoy it for the same reasons I do, if not, I hope you enjoy it anyway.

22 of 28.

2009-02-23T09:52:00.002Z

Oh dear, this is going a bit south aint it.

Busy weekend so again I have to double link today. So first one is one that I really like. The style of it all is bang on the money for what I'm personally into, old school hot rod culture, tongue-in-cheek, fun, simple and all that jazz. There are some real sweet tees on the site, not really original as in cutting edge design but really well done themed designs that keep the overall flavour of the brand working. There are some real cool little vids on the site too showing the stores and various related stuff.

Check out Johnny Cupcakes if you want to feel nice about cool things. I find this kind of attitude to design quite inspiring, have some fun, enjoy it and do stuff that you KNOW your customers will like, plus, do things that you know YOU will like. I suppose that's one of the advantages a self owned clothing label has over a regular designer. The store design is something to enjoy.

Love this stuff but a bit too poor to buy anything at the moment, which sucks a bit really.

Bon appetit.

21 of 28.

2009-02-21T18:04:00.002Z

Today's is a bit of fun and is also a follow on from yesterday's link. This is part of Derek Yu's site but I think deserves it's own link due to its awesomeness.

No pics for this one, you have to log-on and have a look for yourself.

All I'm gonna say is it's called the Accidental Video Game Porn Archive.

Enjoy.

20 of 28.

2009-02-21T17:55:00.002Z

Another day late on this one, but hey busy times.

This guy is pretty cool, I really like his mixed styles he's got going on, plus, he loves his games which is always a good thing if you ask me.

This is Derek Yu who is an artist, illustrator and works on game design. As you can see of lot of his work is centred around games and their characters, which are real nice but I gotta admit I have a huge affection towards some of his pencil drawings.

Check his site out, plenty to go at plus some interesting bits and bobs here and there.

19 of 28.

2009-02-19T19:14:00.003Z

This week is really wearing me out and I still haven't done half the things I wanted to do. I could stay up til super late/early and sort it but that'll just make me sleepy like a lion in the jungle.

That aside here is number 19 of my 28 February dailies, although they should really be early eveninglies now. I properly love this stuff from French artist/illustrator/musician Matthieu Bessudo AKA McBess. The guy is only 24 or something like that and already has some seriously awesome artwork up his very talented sleeves. Check out the work, all of it, every piece is pretty cool. He does seem to like girls with their hands down their pants and guys with beards, but to be fair, don't we all? I've got a beard myself right now so two thumbs fresh!!

Mosey on over and have a look, it's really great, plus his music is cool, his showreel rocks and on the blog there's a cute lil' song he did which made me smile.

18 of 28.

2009-02-18T17:50:00.003Z

Okey dokey, back on track.

Today's main event is a heavyweight art contest, ok, one featured artist but at least the intro sounded good right? Another rabbit hole find which landed me at Nils Jawa who is one half (I think) of Jawa and Midwich. But I'm focusing on some of his own artworks here, which I think are amazing!!

The few pieces I've shown here blew me away. I'm a guy and guys like robots. Fact. I also like aggressive art so mix that style with robots and we're talking the right language. I also like his approach, he's not trying to put himself on an awesome art pedestal. He seems to like what he does and that's about it. I don't know the guy but that's what I get anyway.

Check out his site, plus his collaborative works too, you might just enjoy yourself.

17 of 28.

2009-02-18T17:27:00.004Z

Well, 17 days in and I fluffed it. I aimed to hit up a link every day for February and yesterday...I failed. I was one busy s.o.b. and didn't even get to visit this page at all and it was this morning by the time I had the chance, so I have 2 mighty links for you today, both with heavy illustrative ingredients.

Link 17 belongs to...Andrew Groves, AKA I Make Things. I recently filled my hands and eyes with the Custom kicks book, which is awesome! I've wanted this book for a while and it didn't let me down, so I've been slowly checking out some of the featured artists and having a nice little time to myself. I was drawn (bad pun, I know) to the cool lil' monster and mountain illis he did which is a bit of a theme throughout his work, which are lovely.

Have a look around and see what you think. Nice work. Love the monster mountains.

My work you say?

2009-02-16T17:54:00.004Z

I know, a month of posting links to other sites isn't really showing off my skills or helping any potential clients decide, so, I'm working on some snaps of my work that I think should go up here. They'll all be posted in their own menu of course so they don't vanish and I'll be putting up a good selection of the stuff I do, from logos to licensed sports packaging to clothing to products...etc.

So hang tight and enjoy the dailies for now and I promise there'll be some of my work here for you to check out soon.

Thank you, you've been a wonderful audience.

Goodnight.

16 of 28.

2009-02-16T17:07:00.004Z

Wooooaah, I can't believe how bloody fast time is flying at the moment. Literally not enough hours in the day.

Anyways, procrastination aside, on to today link of dreams.

Found this one this morning whilst doing my morning wake up web mooch and think it's bloody brilliant!! Streetsy aint a fancy looking site, but the best sites are the ones with awesome content, which this one has. If you dig your graffiti and street art (yes they are different in my opinion, but that's a whole other conversation/arguement) then this site is right up your painted alley. Jake, the guy who's site it is, has this, a Flickr and some other resources on the go where he literally shows off pics of art/graf that he sees and likes. If you want him to show yours, send some pics and he'll think about it (I think). There are heaps of name sot follow to see some insane works which will take up far too much time so I'll be hitting this one up every day for a good while I think. The dear Streetsy section as also cool as it shows off emails sent through from readers with stuff to show off. PLUS there's a forum too if you wanna join up.

Well worth a look if it's your bag, if not, take a look anyway and enlighten yourself.

Good stuff.

15 of 28.

2009-02-15T11:09:00.004Z

Found this little gem last week which is a fantastic site for all you Polaroid lovers out there and let's face it, I don't know anyone that doesn't love a good Polaroid. Polanoid ROCKS!!!!

There's so much more to this than I'll be saying here. As with my other dailies I give you a quick idea of what I think of the sites from a first glance angle, not a heavily researched essay. The idea behind the dailies is that you can make your own minds up and find out about them yourself.

The bones of this site is similar to Flickr I suppose but with sooooo much more soul to it. Sign up and you have your own profile where you then take pics of your Polaroids then add them. There are a bunch of groups and projects on there so you can add to them, such as the favourite album cover project where everyone either posts a Polaroid of the cover or, in most cases, they recreate the album cover using a Polaroid. Real nice.

I recommend you read the 'about us' pieces as there is some real love shared in what they write and you get the impression that they could write sooo much more on a subject they clearly truly love.

Have a look it will make you feel all warm inside. I'm gonna post up some pics from my New York trip for my girl's 21st in 2000.

Happy Birthday angel x

2009-02-14T16:48:00.005Z

Bit of a special treat this one. Being Valentine's day n' all it is also my girl's birthday, but not just any birthday, it's her 30th. So, come on down sweet pea, today is all yours, nobody else's.

I thought I'd take this moment to wish her happy birthday again AND happy Valentine's day again as well as give you guys the chance to see what kind of things she's into with her blog. She's my angel but is also amazing at craft things, painting, drawing patterns and making things from pretty much anything. There'll be more progress on all her stuff over the next few months so keep an eye out. 14 of 28 belongs to her, as does the rest of the day. Please feel free to say happy birthday here and on her own blog Tracey Loves Pattern.

Love you baby x

XOXO.

13 of 28.

2009-02-13T18:40:00.002Z

Jeeez what a day. Super turmoil in the financial department which pretty much wrecked and destroyed my day today, but, as always, I'm still smiling...somewhere. Life rolls on right?

AND so do the dailies!!!!!!!

So today's, or tonight's should I say is one I've been meaning to put up here for a while but kinda forgot if I'm honest. that is until I received my first newsletter yesterday and thought, DAMN, better get these guys up!!

So, Toy is an idea that unites independent artists for commissioned projects. Working collaboratively to apply a range of styles across product, motion, print and screen. Well, that's what it says on their site anyways, bit of a showcase of selected illustrative and artistic talent with some real nice work to boot. I like the site how it is super easy to use and doesn't try to get all crazy on you. I'm favouring sites that really focus on the work at the moment, something that I'll be doing when I launch my proper work site.

Do a 'view all' as it's easier to see what's what and enjoy the work. Just like me. Oh and sign up for the newsletter thing, it's quite nice to get stuff like that I find.

12 of 28.

2009-02-12T12:19:00.003Z

So today's link is quite nice, well I think so anyway. The site has been done in indexhibit so simplicity is the key here but the work is great. A mixed bag of old school hot-rod/comic/skate style artwork seems to be in there which is what drew me to this, something I have a bit of a love of myself.

Erosie has some brilliant bright and vivid graffiti based artworks as well as some simple throw-up art scattered around the streets of various places. I really do like the variety of themes throughout but my favourites have to be the illustrations, especially the 3024 sleeve art, that really jumped out for me.

Looks like he/they have a lot of fun with their work. I've only posted a handful of examples on here but there's some really cool pieces on there.

Take 5, have a look and enjoy.

11 of 28.

2009-02-11T09:25:00.002Z

I stole this link from one of my fellow Tweeters, Colorburned, yesterday and just couldn't stop looking at it. I didn't feel sick, I didn't feel ill, I just looked in sheer awe at what was on show.

This Is Why You're Fat is just a feast for your eyes. Ok, it aint really a link of pure art and design genius (although I do like the look of the site) but it will truly enlighten you in ways you can't imagine. It will also confirm the fact that you can have fun with your food, but, ultimately, you will have a heart attack and you will not get your money back. You can submit your own killer foods too which could be a giggle.

My personal favourite is the meat ship which you can also make yourself if you follow the process here at Supersized Meals. 17,000 calories. Har har me heartee attackees!!

Check it but only after you've had breakfast, unless you're looking for some ideas.

lovehelvetica.

2009-02-10T12:54:00.002Z

Not an official link for the day but it was a great chance for me to play around with some logo design.

LoveHelvetica I found today on Twitter, randomly thrown out in a message so I had a look, who wouldn't right? Not 100% sure what will go on the site, I can kinda guess a lot of Helvetica related stuff, but the post on there is logo feedback. So I posted a comment about how he could maybe take the logo and I banged this out.

It only took me 5 minutes, literally, from thinking about it to knocking it together (hence the less than perfect drawn up heart and letterspacing). I liked the idea of merging the two words, Love and Helvetica, especially seeing as you only need the 'O' to complete it. With some work it could be quite a nice logo I think.

I hope the guy doesn't mind me posting this, sometimes its good to see how quickly you can respond to something and not think too hard about it.

10 of 28.

2009-02-10T11:27:00.003Z

The whole point of me posting daily links this month was initially to push me into creating an online research rhythm, to help me learn something new or stumble on something new every single day, even if I can only spare half an hour. I urge anyone out there to give it a go, it really does help and you can find some truly great things out there. Today took the cream for me, a total accidental find whilst searching for something.

Danish artist, Peter Callesen can do some amazing things with paper, glue, scissors and his imagination. He studied architecture initially but then moved on to art, which I think we can see helped him nurture his skills in build and make. I've added a few examples but you really need to see what this guy has done to grasp the sheer scale and beauty of it all.

Seriously, take 5, have a tea and take it all in. Truly mind blowing.

9 of 28.

2009-02-09T10:06:00.002Z

Another one of my favourites this one. I haven't actually been on their site for a good while but I knew they were sorting out a new look, which I can honestly say is bloody lovely.

I Love Dust, for those that don't know (not that many I should think) are a superb agency with a bright and colourful illustrative angle to their work. Their portfolio is very impressive and shows that you can have a ton of fun doing work for big clients. You'll also know a lot of their work without actually realizing it.

I'm really into their colourful approach, something I'm real keen on and the way in which their work is shown off and the fact that the site really focuses on the work is a huge plus point. There are also enough little web toys in the nav system to keep you interested too without getting on your nerves.

If you haven't seen it before, have a look. If you have, look again, it'll make your Monday that little bit brighter.

8 of 28.

2009-02-08T11:09:00.002Z

I was doing the washing up this morning and, as you do, my mind wandered a bit. I was thinking about this and that and as normal, my train of thought drifted away with itself. I started to think about questions that are normally asked, your favourite band, favourite colour, favourite film...etc so I started to think about who my favourite designer(s) was. Which brings me neatly to today's link.

BURNEVERYTHING are amazing. Simple as that. They are a fantastic studio based in Liverpool and consist of various design talents, some of which worked together for studio Splinter, many years ago. The examples I put up here don't even scratch the surface of the talent on show so you really need to spend some time going through their site, you will be inspired. The great thing about these guys is that one of the senior members, David Hand, is a very good friend of mine and we studied together at Wigan College doing ND Graphics. Its not often you can say one of your friends is one of your biggest inspirations now is it.

Check em out, they really are amazing and the interiors they've done for a number of cool bars, particularly in the Liverpool area, are something else.

7 of 28.

2009-02-07T18:41:00.002Z

Maybe a cheat this one as I've already mentioned his site before. Thing is, I love this guys photography, he manages to capture everything in the shot. I know that is whole point of being a good photographer but there is a fine line between being a good one and a bloody amazing one. Julian Germain, in my eyes, is a bloody amazing one.

His site has a nice feel to it and sets the tone for his work, which absolutely oozes character. To be honest I could ramble on about it all for a good while, but as they say, a picture paints a thousand words, so check out his site and enjoy every shot.

Lovely stuff.

6 of 28.

2009-02-06T18:17:00.004Z

These are getting later.

Here comes numero 6.

I spied this little beauty today following a link posted on Twitter by my main man David Airey. He posted up about how Space 150 like to change their identity on a very regular basis, in fact, these guys change it every 150 days and I don't just mean the odd business card, they re-do the lot, which I kinda like. But, that aint the link I'm featuring today, that would be cheating. I went down the rabbit hole and ended up at this guy, Ned Wright.

He is a designer, based in the Mid West. That is all I know. The site is super simple and I'm noticing a lot of sites now go for this horizontal scrolling work thing, which looks cool and is a really nice way of having a clean and tight framework, then having a long image band kicking out and taking you away from it all. His work on there is really nice, especially his type led pieces. I like how some of it has a touch of early V23 about it, beautifully complex, which isn't a bad thing at all.

Good stuff.

5 of 28.

2009-02-05T11:04:00.002Z

Well what can I say, early start today. I emailed the guys at Vasava (yesterdays chosen link) to say how great I thought their work was (and to point them to my blog of course) which I aint too proud to do. if someone does great work then why not tell them right? I like it when people say my work is great too so share the love in my book. Anyway, back on point, one of the guys there, Enric Godes, mails me back saying thanks for the props and directs me to their shop site and guess what? Yep, that's just plain awesome too!!

So, this leads me silkily into today's link which is Spanish purveyors of amazingness Vasava's shop site Vallery. Have a look around at the good sized collection of clothing, prints, vinyl toys...etc from a collection of various artists.

Right, I'll get on with some work now and maybe I'll actually post up some of it this week.

4 of 28.

2009-02-04T18:03:00.004Z

So here's todays little nugget of web niceness. Can't remember where I stumbled upon this one but although there isn't a lot of work on there, the stuff they've done already is pretty great, well, that's my opinion anyway.

Take a look at what Spanish designers, Vasava have to offer. I love the illustrative core of their work and the mix of filling all the space available with awesomeness, yet still managing to keep a simple feel to it all.

Enjoy it, I know I did. DSL and Red Bull kicks ass.

Busy, busy, busy.

2009-02-04T18:01:00.002Z

Well, before I post up today's link, a bit late I know but man I've had a busy week. Gotta be said though, way better having things to do than worry about what to do next.

I love my job!! Beats working for a living.

3 of 28.

2009-02-03T10:43:00.003Z

Funny how things go isn't it. I was actually going to post up a link to a completely different site today (Pixelcarart), who are a brilliant resource and playsite for pixel art of cars, but I ended up looking at all kinds of other pixel based awesomeness, which led me to today's official link, so even though I've actually still linked Pixelcarart it won't be in my 02.09 dailies list.

Lovepixel is a fantastic site if you, like me, love the nostalgia of pixel-based art and design. I was born in the mid 70's which means I'm an 80's child really and the whole C64 thing ruled my life. This means I've a huge fondness for anything with a retro edge to it, especially pixel stuff. From what I can gather the site is Jason Huang's, based in Taiwan, pixel art site where he puts up some of his bits of art and a few pixel games.

If you love Eboy, like I do, then I'm sure you'll like this. There isn't a huge amount of stuff on there but I like it. Plus, the home page is immense!!

2 of 28.

2009-02-02T13:58:00.004Z

Here's good one for you all. I've been following this for a good while now so yes it isn't a new link but it may be for some of you kids out there. Ever thought you'd seen that tee design somewhere before or that ad looks strangely familiar? Well the guys over at you thought we wouldnt notice take this skullduggery seriously and like to 'out' the guilty design criminals. The great thing about this is that you can register and submit your own rips that you may find and everyone can comment on whether or not the rip off is legitimate or more of a homage.

Well worth a visit, not really for the look of the site but just to see how much of this goes on, especially in the fashion tees/clothing industry.

1 of 28.

2009-02-01T17:17:00.003Z

Here we go, February the 1st so let's start the link fest. I hope anyone who's sites I post up here don't take offence but see this as free exposure.

Little Factory have created some very low key but lovely products on their super simple site. I like super simple, not a big fan of all this daft over-designed and over programmed stuff that either confuses you or doesn't load. They have only been up since June 08 but I really dig what they're doing. The scarves are simply amazing and the stationery tees made me smile. Hopefully they'll be adding things regularly in 09 that make me smile even more.

Have a look, see what you think, enjoy and add to your bookmark bar if you don't already have it.

1 new link per day.

2009-01-30T15:22:00.005Z

A bit of a challenge this one to see if I can post every single day in February, nothing new I know but bear with me. I'm finding new stuff online all the time, design related or otherwise, and there are some seriously cool sites and blogs out there. So, rather than find new links and just add them to my menus I thought I'd post a little something about each and every new thing I find in February and see if I can keep it up all month. It's hard to make time to check out new stuff and this time often turns into hours of web mooching, at least this way I can do a bit every day and have a great resource by the end of the month. A lot of the links I post won't be new but they'll be new to me or I just want to put them up anyways because I like em.

Tester, not a new site by any means but Tokyoplastic are crazy. These guys look like they have some fun with their work, I especially liked their Fanta ads but if you have a look around you can see some real nice bits of animation work. Super nice style and finish and the Sci-Fi channel shorts are properly cool.

Enjoy.

The Designer RIPublic.

2009-01-27T09:50:00.004Z

Now THAT is a much better headline.

Anyways, I heard that The Designers Republic have fallen victim to the horror that is the credit crunch™©® (which has become a brand all in itself don't you think?). Every self-respecting designer who has even half a finger nail on the pulse know that tDR have produced some awesome visuals over the past number of years. It's a bit of a cliché to mention the Wipeout gaming series for Playstation but I think we all fell in love with the sheer bombardment of logos and icons they threw at us with that almost signature flat colour, Japanese-esque cyber punk style. Of course their style grew and their ideas deepened over the years and they created some lovely subtle work also, the Autechre cover art (pictured in blue below) is beautiful.

I remember Ian Anderson (the main man at tDR) doing a talk whilst I was at Salford Uni 97/98, he came across quite 'not arsed' and maybe a bit 'whatever' but he had a way about him that made you listen.

Love em or not, they're gone now, well until they are reborn with a different design team that is. Maybe they, like a lot of companies I think, took the current financial situation as a great way of clearing out the regime and starting again or maybe they genuinely were struggling. Either way I hope they don't vanish forever.

tDR. K.I.A.

Baby Twitter.

2009-01-25T11:05:00.002Z

I know, terrible headline but its all I could think of this morning.

So I basically signed up to Twitter this morning to see what all the fuss was about. You set yourself up with an account and then use it to add short message updates relating to what you're doing at that moment, whether it be going somewhere amazing or taking it easy, a bit like your profile thing on Facebook. I'm gonna have a play and see how useful it is, hopefully get a few followers who I can direct to the blog. you can also add updates from your phone too, which mine doesn't seem to be allowed to do, I'll have to look into that.

Have a look, sign up and follow me if you like.

AWESOME fun packaging!!

2009-01-22T11:27:00.004Z

Spied this today on the Dieline one of the packaging design blogs I visit. This guy, Undoboy, a designer based in Portland has created this cool packaging for these little vinyl dudes. I'll not bite Dieline's write-up or all the pics but thought I'd nick a few to give you a taste. He's done some properly nice stuff which can be found on Undoboy's Behance site, which is another community I've just stumbled on.

I think this packaging is really, really cool. I know the notion of packaging that opens up and folds isn't groundbreaking but I don't think good design needs to be. It looks brilliant and the interactivity piece just adds enough to complete the product. That's one thing I love about this whole blogging nation, every time you find something cool it sends you down a totally new road.

Check both the sites out above and enjoy!

Childhood idol passes.

2009-01-20T15:13:00.005Z

I found out yesterday that one of my childhood idols, Tony Hart, passed away at the weekend aged 83. For those that don't know who he was, Tony Hart was a bit of a TV art god when I was a kid growing up in the 80's. Ok, he was a bit tame but when you're into your art and you're eating tea watching this guy who looks old enough to know everything about everything show you how to turn a few charcoal marks into pure gold, the only thing you can do is love the man. I did anyway and he kinda inspired me with my drawings, although I never had the nerve to send some art to be shown on his gallery that was shown at the end of every show. Looking back I wish I had.

Plus, who can forget the mighty Morph and Chaz, the two plasticine animated legends that turned tea-time into a a session of mad hysterics. Awesome stuff that pioneered so many characters. Found this amazing shot of Morph from a photographer named Chris Hepburn who has some lovely shots on his site (hope you don't mind me borrowing the shot for this piece).

Tony, you will be missed.

I heart GFSmith.

2009-01-16T14:58:00.004Z

Geek mode. That's what I slip into every time I get something in the post from GFSmith. Why is it that us designers fall apart at the sight of some nicely designed mailers or a coloured card with a massive typo screen print? I suppose that's the stuff that makes us good at what we do. I don't know any half decent designers that don't absorb like a massive sponge and feel a little tickle inside from pretty stuff.

Anyways, back to the point, GFSmith. I had a meeting with my local contacts yesterday who were great and gave me some really lovely eye candy and some touchy feely sugar, amongst which was a book with some extremely close up shots from Rankin to show off the amazing smooth finish some of their papers can achieve, plus large posters and a couple of limited edition designer special large format books. These are all cool things to have especially considering these large pieces were designed by the likes of Peter Saville and Wim Crouwel, although I gotta admit that the Saville one is a little disappointing due to a lack of graphical input (what's that? Blasphemy?) but the photography throughout is by his wife which is really nicely done.

One of the great things about GFSmith is that you can order small quantities of stock, such as custom envelopes, plain a4 sheets for printing on yourself, or whatever you need, which makes high quality stock very accessible.

I'll be using some of their products when I get round to finishing off all my stationery with some nice carbon neutral stocks and custom envelopes to complete the look.

Check out their ranges online here: GFSmith

football? Why Not.

2009-01-14T14:55:00.005Z

My current favourite design blog is Logo design Love (see worth a look) which is a great blog dedicated to the love of logo design. Obvious. I'm HUGELY into logo design, it's one of the parts of design that really switches me into geek mode and one of the recent posts was showing off a few of Why Not Associate's logo offerings. The designs shown (here) raised quite a few eyebrows and started a bit of a debate, which is good, that's how it should be after all if we all liked the same things then life would be very dull. This made me think about a book I got my hands on a while ago from Why Not Associates called In Soccer Wonderland, which is a compilation of football photography by the fantastic Julian Germain mixed in with some busy 90's graphic design. Now at first glance you kinda think that the photography/theme/design style don't seem to work but the more you look at it and start to realise that the slightly garish design in places actually fits in perfectly.

This book is out of print at the moment and quite pricey at £100 new but if you get your hands on one it's definitely worth a good look.

put the gun down...PUT THE GUN DOWN!!

2009-01-12T19:43:00.004Z

24 day 7 starts tonight in the UK, which is AWESOME!!

The writer's strike kinda took away our fix so we've had to wait a bit longer this time but now he's back. Jack Bauer is here again to save the entire world (America) from another insane terror attack. Although this time there will be an African situation going down.

Can't wait...I CAN'T WAIT!!

Although this means I have quite a bit of work to cram into the next hour or so, there's always time to blog post though.

CJ Photography update.

2009-01-09T14:27:00.007Z

Quick update on the CJ Photography logo I've been working on recently. The logo itself hasn't needed altering other than some single colour options which work really well on images as a standalone mark, we're also really pleased with how the full graphic with logotype version looks. We were aiming for a simple, modern and professional look and when you see it in situ, it does just that.

If you fancy a look at Chris from CJ Photography's work then you can check his Flickr account here >>>Flickr<<<

time to share some opinions.

2009-01-09T11:09:00.001Z

Ok, not right now but I've realized whilst hitting up some of my favourite blogs this morning that I can often make very good, valid points on certain subjects. So, It's about time I starting to bring these here, to my blog where it makes perfect sense to share my opinions, design or otherwise.

happy new year.

2009-01-08T17:16:00.000Z

2009, the year of progress and hard work. That's what it means to me anyway. I'll be making plenty room to have fun and do the things that me smile because that is what it's all about really, but, to enjoy life even more I intend to put a huge amount of effort into all my ideas this year.

2008 was a pretty huge year to be fair, my girl went back to Uni and qualified with a first class degree, which was amazing and I took the leap and started up on my own so we've got some work to do if we're gonna beat those for achievements.

The blog has changed its look again, I think I've actually managed to land on something I like now, the whole 'you can call me al' things has serious legs so watch this space for some pretty cool self promotion over the next few months. That is, if I can make room for it with all the work I have on at the moment...which is superb start to 09.

This, by the way, is not how I intend to promote myself, but I found it on Flickr and thought it was AWESOME!! Courtesy of a dude called Bloodfeast (cheers man).

Good luck to everyone this year!!

CJ Photography.

2008-12-17T09:23:00.001Z

This is my latest branding project for a brilliant up and coming photographer (Chris Walker) going by the name of CJ Photography. At the moment he's in his infancy regarding actual set-up so this project is literally only at the logo stage. He wanted a simple, clean and modern logo that he could easily use at all sizes especially as a mark on his images. We're working through some typeface choices at the moment which will only really come into life when applying the whole as business stationery so I'll post up the complete set when finalized. For now, here is the logo which I based on the timer icon on most cameras on the market. I wanted to do something that had a clear photography link rather than just some nice typography that in essence could mean anything but at the same time had enough thought in it to be clever. I redrew a version of the timer symbol then started to form the letters 'C' and 'J' from within but without losing the core image of the timer symbol.

I'm happy with it as it fulfills the brief and looks great, plus the client loves it because of how the CJ and the symbol both work.

More to follow on this one, maybe some more colour options that I'm trying to push with him.

gotta love old stuff.

2008-12-15T21:08:00.001Z

I'm a hoarder. Fact. What designer isn't though right? I bet five whole English pounds that there isn't one designer out there that hasn't kept those random objects they found, either because 'it might come in handy' or because 'it just looks cool though doesn't it?'. I'm terrible for it and used to spend money buying the things that people would normally throw out or find, just because it looked cool. For me though, the best things are those found or given and when we were sorting out the back room office at home I found this beauty. My girl's best friend's parents are super hoarders and their house is amazing. The last time I visited I spied this on the shelf and she let me have it (they had a few) which is a Belgian magnetic tape box, something to with photography which I know very little about, but it looks so damn cool don't it? I think it looks even better now it has faded and worn a little from being knocked about, why is that?

I'll be digging out more gems as I find them, no rubbish mind, just the good stuff, I may even show off my prize 1976 Stretch Armstrong in all his boxed glory!

Giant inspiration.

2008-12-11T20:42:00.000Z

One really cool thing about being self employed is the kind of inspiration boost you get and the extra time and effort you put into things. Although when employed I still followed my inspirations and kept up with art and design there just seems to be this huge spark like someone swapped the old bulb for a shiny new one. I'm starting to see something else in the things I've always loved, which is amazing. At the moment, well, for the past couple of years or so I've really been into this guy, Mike Giant. He's got a pretty cool style spawned from his early graffiti days then tattooing and now his art, which there's just something about it that pushes my buttons. I used to skate a lot and love old school muscle cars, hot rods, all that kind of stuff so this slams bang in the middle of everything I'm into, plus, it's all hand drawn which stuff which I love.

His book has a lovely gold foil crest on the cover and has some history of the man and a ton of graphics inside, nothing pretentious or arsey just as it comes, which is how I like it.

Well worth a look in my opinion, see what you think.

Check out his site Mike Giant and the clothing company that he contracts for Rebel8, some pretty sick gear.

Up the evolution!!

2008-12-09T20:33:00.000Z

Even before setting up I've thought about and scribbled ideas down for my own visual identity. I kinda knew how I wanted to portray myself and what attitude I wanted to convey. Then I changed my mind, then I changed my mind again...and again...and again. I'm a huge fan of logo design, brand identity and the whole visual packages you can create, problem being that when you try to put more of yourself into it you start to slide into the dark and dangerous world of the never ending identity. This stressed me out, I'll be honest. Spending the past 9 years specializing in brand identity I thought I'd nail it pretty easily but being a human sponge means your influences change daily and the place you want to end up becomes further and further away the more thought and effort you put in.

I've decided this doesn't matter anymore and I do have a good reason for this. It is extremely important for a brand identity to be identifiable. A successful brand image must be recognizable, it must successfully communicate the brand values and it must be flexible enough to work in a variety of different environments. I believe that as a designer or design company it isn't actually that important to end up with something that is intended to be timeless or even be all that identifiable, as in how a 'brand' should be. As designers we should exercise a certain flair, yes, create something that looks good and that we can be happy with having on our business card, but ultimately this is our opportunity to create something that we have the final say on. Whether or not we create it simply because we like it isn't really an issue. If we choose to change it after a month...a week or even a day, that shouldn't really matter now should it, if anything I think I'd rather see something that changes and grows with time as a reflection of that individual or company rather than the same old logo that you just know they aren't happy with.

Conclusion? I'm gonna have some fun with it, so don't be surprised if the look of things change on a regular basis.

Busy, busy, busy.

2008-11-21T10:29:00.000Z

Busy times here at the moment with multiple projects on the go. Time seems to be flying by at an insane rate at the moment which is beginning to scare me a little. I must be thankful though, that in the current climate I do have plenty of work to do, I know there are plenty of businesses out there that are struggling at the moment. The bad side is making time to put some promotional material together, this is such a typical case for young design businesses as you read in the industry publications a lot about how designers never really spend the time on personal marketing that they need to. I suppose this is the beauty of blogging, if you can't afford either the time or the money to create some lovely mailers, at least you can publish a little piece of yourself online for all to see, it transforms you and your business into a living, breathing being.

Workwise, the Manchester United Soccer Schools Guidelines are nearing completion so I'll take some snaps early next week and add a more in-depth insight into the process behind it, plus, the Manchester United Premier Cup (Nike's HUGE global under 15s football tournament) is just about starting to be put into the design calendar which is a fantastic project and one that I'll be happily sharing with you all very soon.

Krispy Kremes rock!

2008-11-15T16:19:00.000Z

Been meaning to do this for a while, eat some of the famed Krispy Kremes and yesterday we did just that...a box of 12 to be precise!! I've been a fan of the branding for a while, since a kid I've always loved American branding in particluar, I don't know what it is that I've always loved about it but I still do. Branding is a science, not just logo design but how that identity transforms into a personality beyond the product is where the real skill lies. This can sometimes be overdone and creates a kind of 'I'm sick of seeing that' effect when done badly but when the concept is nailed, a beautiful thing happens.

Here is a snap of the box with the logo in all its loveliness, although I would make it softer and more flowing if it were up to me...I might even do that as a personal project, thinking about it, and yes, I have been a logo whore, I took a hat, some napkins and the sugar sachets too.

MUSS campaign.

2008-11-13T12:41:00.000Z

Manchester United Soccer Schools (MUSS) is the world's best Club endorsed Soccer Schools, the creative for which was one of the many projects I had to manage when I worked at Nike. Due to increasing workloads and tightening timescales MUSS made the decision a couple of years ago to bring in some external agency help to see what they could come up with using a larger team and broader marketing skillsets. This is always a great thing to be involved with as being in-house you can often lose links with the outside world, working with the team and the external agency Poulters (RIP) in a more art directorial role was a good window into the world of large agencies.

This approach added more scope to our viual package so for 2008/09 we opted on a superb young creative outfit from Manchester called Creative Spark headed up my Neil Mara, who were headers and volleys (groan) above the rest with their light painting inspired creative. They had some fantastic ideas and the one that was finally chosen really takes the MUSS brand to a new level.

As part of my consultancy contract with Nike I am shared by the whole business, so one of my new responsibilities is to take the latest creative, break it all down into individual elements and create a Brand Guide for MUSS that can be communicated throughout the business' global offices. This will be used as a bible to create any advertising campaigns, internal communications and/or event specific materials. One of my main roles at Nike was to create and manage the Merchandise guidelines which I've been creating for the last 6 years or so, you could say Brand and Style guides are kinda my speciality.

Bit of a long post but watch this space for progress on the guidelines. For now, here are pics of the new creative that I tweaked for a couple of recent ads.

For more info on this creative check out Creative Spark.

Bit of hand-made love.

2008-11-11T00:07:00.000Z

Being into my hand-done stuff, whether it's type or illustrations I always like trying things out that I see and like. I recently got my hands on a cool wallet made from Tyvek, a super tough paper-like material that bends, twists, pulls and is water resistant. Now this is a pretty amazing material Dupont use to make their paper paint suits from and means you can have a cheap and cool wallet that is super thin to save you from having a huge weight in your pocket. Take what you need and go!

I've been making a template for a range of products to sell in the DubMissile range (see links) and this is my first attempt. Completely hand-made and only has two gluing points, the rest is folding techniques, the artwork is a montage of revered wheels in the VW scene that I drew on using my weapon of choice, the Sharpie.

Once I perfect it I'll be making a bunch of different designs.

Enjoy.

BBC finger pointing.

2008-11-07T10:53:00.000Z

Firstly, have the BBC gone mad? Are they cowards or just bad at managing?

Ok, not exactly a design related issue this one, but the reason for it relates to years of witnessing the very same thing in many, many boardroom meetings over the years.

The thing is, with the recent Brand, Ross and now Clarkson scandals everyone has been and still are calling for heads to roll for what they said. Now I kind of agree to some extent about what they did and said being a little on the naughty side, BUT, and it really is a huge but, this is why you have managers and directors right? The guys who know what's what. I kind of see these guys as being like designers in a big corporation, things work exactly the same way, you have a job to do, you do the job and you also try and push a few things through to test which way the wind blows. Safe option, scary and edgy option. Sometimes the edgy options are too edgy, which you know anyway but would love to see the boundaries pushed yet sometimes the edgy option has some mileage and is taken further. These are presented, passed or sent back to the drawing board. Many a great piece of design has been left on the boardroom table, never to be seen again for one reason or another. Which is what should have happened here I think.

Take responsibility for your decisions. These guys have a job to do and do it in their own way, whether we agree with their methods or not, so let them do it.

My 2p.

Eyes wide open.

2008-11-04T22:25:00.000Z

I love books. My girl will disagree because I tend not to read that many, yes I know that sounds moronic but I genuinely think books are great and when I do actually see some through to the end I feel better for it. I think I've always struggled keeping my concentration levels up if I'm honest.

It was my birthday recently and my younger brother bought me 'Whatever you think, think the opposite' by Paul Arden, which I finished tonight. No mean feat as the book is more a collection of ideas and bullet point theories focusing on the decisions we make in life and how bad decisions can often be the best things for us, rather than a 300 page epic yarn.

I loved it because he's been around a while, been there and done that to some extent, and a lot of what he says are the things I've always believed in and still do. This kind of stuff always gives you a huge boost. There never is a truly right way of doing things, other than the way you choose to.

Shame the guy passed earlier this year, but he's now got another fan.

Read it, you'll feel better for it.

MUML.

2008-10-30T17:54:00.000Z

No, it isn't a short way of saying mum will, but it is the merchandise arm for Manchester United Football Club and is owned and ran by Nike. This is the place I used to work at before setting up Woods Creative Media and I thought it would be good to put some updates on what I've been doing with them since my departure.

Part of the consultancy role is to spend time onsite with them to manage the creative requirements they have, whether that be advising them with their licensees or actually getting down and designing for them. This works out well for us both as there is a contract involved which, as mentioned earlier, is a huge help in the first steps to setting up.

So, the recent projects have been pretty straight forward but nice to be part of. Pardon all the shots of things posted on here, the blog is a snapshot of what's going on rather than a pure promotional tool, there'll be much prettier imagery on the main site when it's finished.

Project wise, firstly the Corporate Catalogue that MUML place on each of their vast number of corporate hospitality tables throughout the stadium. These are used up at an alarming rate and one of the main concerns was cost effectivity, so I thought it would make sense to have a consistent outer that never changed, well, not for a while anyway, with a band binding method that allowed the inner pages to be removed and replaced with ease. Not only does this give them the flexibility to have regular updates with the products but also reduces the production costs significantly. This was one of those projects that needn't be complicated and a simple approach to design was needed. Visually the focus had to be on the Club Crest, the use of the corporate colour palette and that the finished item sat comfortably in the environment without looking like an 'extra'.

The second juicy project was for the Commercial side of the MUML business. Being a licensing business it is important to be there to build partnerships with various potential licensees no matter how small and help them manage a great range of products. One of the ways they do this is via the annual Brand Licensing Show in London (at the Grand Hall Olympia if I remember). This is a huge event visited by a crazy number of mixed businesses, so a strong visual presence is necessary, but without being overly powerful. What makes this even more tricky is that Nike, managing a number of football clubs, uses this event to promote 3 clubs in particular, Manchester United, Juventus and FCBarcelona. This makes creating a consistent look more interesting, but throws up a few issues regarding the 3 different brands and how they are to be applied. I always find the best way to deal with this, isn't to deal with each individually then hope it all works out but to find common usages of each brand that can link together to create a simple and cohesive look that works as a whole. The stand fittings were pre-arranged so the design was based on what there was to work with rather than a custom build. Using the backdrop image of club specific jersey colours with a simple overlay of player cutouts was a good way to mix corporate colours but still convey that message of passion and football. The grass backdrop helps to break up the colours and worked as a graphic vehicle throughout the supporting printed materials and is an easy way to shout 'football' from a distance.

More work snippets coming soon, keep posted.

Welcome to the Amber Lounge.

2008-10-25T21:28:00.000+01:00

Ok, so a while since the last post but to be honest things have been super hectic around here. The awesome Amber Lounge project grew into a beast of a job, but all in a good way. We worked some very, very long hours to get this pressure cooker job done and we managed to produce something that we're very happy with and more importantly, the client is happy with.

So, some background. Amber Lounge is the baby of Sonia Irvine, sister of ex-Formula 1 driver Eddie Irvine and is possibly the most high profile after-party and hospitality set-up I've ever seen. There are different branches to the Amber Lounge business, the Amber Lounge itself (the VIP club nights), Amber Fashion (a charity fashion show held at Monaco which involves the drivers and various celebrities), Amber Fusion (a quality restaurant service), Amber Hospitality (a hospitality package service ranging from supplying business meeting venues to breaks at high class resorts) and Amber Marketing and Media, which speaks for itself. The whole weekend of events has added kudos when you consider the host of celebrities that are on the guest list, that's before you even include all the F1 drivers that are ever present. Famous DJs provide the tunes, well know brand names provide the liquor and Amber Lounge provide the experience.

Their existing site was really nice, but we found that the flow of the site didn't quite work, especially considering the new pieces to the business that needed adding, so, we came up with a cleaner structure to the site map which took the user on a logical journey without feeling like they had travelled a million miles away from the home page. All the information is a click away and each page has a good linked feel with all the other pages. Visually, because the site is for the 2009 season and they already had some printed promotional material that looked great, we decided it made sense from a brand cohesion perspective to tie certain elements into the new site, which helped create a simple but strong visual feel to hook the user. We also added an additional sub-site for press/media and agents to access secure content, which is a huge leap forward in how Amber Lounge handle their promotional activities. Add a cool ambient video loop on the home page and the Amber Lounge site now feel more complete and enjoyable for the user.

A big thanks to Amber Lounge for using us as their creatives and a special thanks to Juulia at Amber Lounge for her input during the management of the project. Teamwork really makes a difference especially when the client is in another country.

Check the stills here and the site link in the project links to the right. Or, just "click here"

Things are moving pretty faaaaaast.

2008-10-08T18:28:00.000+01:00

So, you get all these plans in your head of what you're gonna do when you leave to set up on your own. I'll do this, that, then that...etc but in reality things never really go according to plan. I've been blessed with some good fortune though during my set-up period, being offered a contract with Nike/MUML was a huge help, yes I know this wouldn't have happened if I wasn't good at my job but it could have easily gone the other way. My second stroke of luck was a recommendation I had from one of my work colleagues to do some tweaks on a website for someone she knew. I accepted and this quickly turned into a full blown site re-design. The company in question is called Amber Lounge who are an extremely high profile VIP after-party company dealing with the Formula 1 Grand Prix circuit, which is great seeing as I'm an avid F1 fan.

I'll post some images and links of the final site soon, plus a bit more insight into Amber Lounge and the result we achieved.

Busy times...but good times.

Nike rock!!

2008-10-06T19:35:00.000+01:00

Well it's gotta be said that working for some companies is ok, you do your job, you get paid, you go home...blah de blah, now this is ok if you're happy to plod along and the company you work for is happy to sit back and be content with what you do. Then there are the companies that constantly challenge you and push you to improve and be the best, no matter what job you do. Nike is one of these companies. Working for Nike was great, the usual ups and downs as you'd have with any company, but mainly ups, which is why I'm over the moon that they have offered a contract for at least a year to act as design consultant for the MUML (Manchester United Merchandising Limited) part of the UK football business. They knew that sooner or later I'd be filling our client book up and they didn't want to lose out on what I brought to the business. This is also insanely good news from a new business point of view, I mean how many creatives out there can say they landed such a large profile client as their first?

Do a good job and good things happen. Work based karma. Works for me.

Finally done it!

2008-10-02T16:48:00.000+01:00

Well it's been a long time rattling around in the old brain but the decision to jump ship and leave the security of a monthly pay cheque and the comfort of a good solid job behind, finally came about this year, September in fact was the month it all happened. So, why did I leave an awesome company like Nike to do this? Well, after nine and a half years you do start to wonder about all the other projects you could be working on and you start to really feel the need to put those personal projects into action and pour more of your own time and love into them. So that's what I did.

Now until I get the proper Woods Creative Media website up and running I thought it'd be nice to at least have a blog up here for some web presence, plus, it's always to good to let others know of your progress and offer a real window into our world behind the corporate side of things. I'll be adding all kinds of stuff up here, whether it's progress reports on projects we're working on, cool ideas for stuff that we'd like to share or just a nice soundboard for thoughts and opinions we might have at any particular time. Plus, some random bits and bobs will no doubt find their way on here.

Sit back, have a read and tag along for the ride.

Feel free to fire an email our way with any queries, work or otherwise."mail me"

Cheers.

Al.

I love my DubMissile.

2008-09-20T23:23:00.001+01:00

We all have our pet projects, whether it be art based, writing a book or whatever, but the problem is trying to find the time to make them work for you. DubMissile is something I've been working on for a while but just haven't had the time to really push forward. It started from one of my hobbies, I'm big into cars, all kinds of cars, muscle cars, dragsters, tractors pulling, hot rods...the list goes on and one of my main loves is VWs. Every hobby I've had there's always been some design/art related angle that hooks me in and the VW scene has been no different. The air cooled scene (beetles, camper vans...etc) has always been seen as cool, with heaps of merchandise available for everyone to show off their love, but the water cooled part of the VW scene has always been ignored. Now I love the old school dubs but i really love my big engines (hence the muscle car, hot rod thing) which tends to be more accessible in the water cooled crowd, be it a Golf Gti or VR6 or some crazy turbo charged track weapon, this is all pretty good for heating the blood up. This kinda started me off scribbling a few simple t-shirt designs that had more of a cool edge to them rather than plain clichéd tees that you sometimes see. I threw them out there into the dub forum scene and received a ton of positive feedback, so I did some more, which has now snowballed into a stand alone brand with DubMissile and led to a couple of magazine features.

I decided, being a lover of blog sites (like this one) that it wold work if I built a strong theme to the site but included t-shirt designs plus more personal things like any work I did on my car or any VW festivals we went to, which has created a nice DubMissile community almost.

Now that I can put time into this project I have some ideas on turning the idea into a full custom service, users can pick from a range of tee colours then choose a design they like and choose the colours they like for that. All tees are hand done using heat transfers which reduces the need for pre-printed stock but also allows the freedom to change things as and when I feel.

Many more related products to stem from this, once the Woods Creative Media business makes enough money to support it.

Check the link in the project links menu to the right, or "click here"