There is a lot of excellent work on Sara Nicely's site, but the packaging/brand design for The Flour Pot Bakery caught my eye, in particular.  I love the hand-drawn typography and informal illustrative style. 

Paper and Light

After spending a couple of days in bed with the flu, it can get rather boring.  Here is the result of a sick and bored Hannah, that got her hands on a Nikon D5000, some paper and a torch.  Some of the photos  remind me of the work of Man Ray and Alexander Rodchenko.

Big Bang Big Boom

A wonderful and explosive film by BLU.

Forrest Lucero

While brousing though flickr I came across the work of Forest Lucero.  He is a California based designer working in print, typography, media and apparel.  My favourite works are the series of minimal, and poetic posters. 

Anna Wolf

I really like the work of photographer Anna Wolf.  Her photographs provide a kind of hazy, dreamy light that echoes a folksy style.  She resides in New York and produces work for clients such as Urban Outfitters, MTV, Yves Saint Laurent.  

The Making of A

The making of A from Bianca Chang.

I found this video when I was researching for our group work.  I thought it was inspiring as it really brings back to home the effects and quality of hand rendered graphics.  The design of this Letter A could quite easily, and quickly have made using computer software with very little effort, however the designer has chosen to commit to the project and hand craft easy individual sheet of paper to achieve her desired design. You can really see the character of the type when the process is shown like this.  

Brooks Reynolds

I am loving the work of Brooks Reyolds these days! His work is so dynamic is through composition and his combination of lighting techniques. He has created a photo series called We Are Sleeping Giants which eludes the stories of youth, to which there is a certain mystery contained within the darkness and tension in his images. 

Nikki Farquharson - Mixed Media Girl

Nikki Farquharson is a London based graphic designer and illustrator.  Her project, Mixed Media Girls, gives the viewer a lot to look at. The collages appear innocent and sweet but at the same time exude sharp, pent-up energy that does not feel altogether safe. The title of the work is also wonderfully suggestive – or not, depending on how the reader wishes to understand it. Farquharson’s work extends from the one-dimensional world to book projects and 3D pieces in which she often ponders and twists the meaning of words and proverbs, spies on conversations, and questions established truths. In 2007, she started the website Random Got Beautiful that is open for anyone to submit images focused on a specific colour.

Friday Inspiration

Guillaume Nery base jumping at Dean's Blue Hole. World champion freediver Guillaume Nery special dive at Dean's Blue Hole, the deepest blue hole in the world filmed entirely on breath hold by the french champion Julie Gautier. 

A series: My Family

Our photography project this week was based on series and theme.  We had to produce a series of photographs that are compositionally similar.  I photographed family portraits, from ground level.  Here are the photos.

CMYK

In our Design class today, we discussed the process and uses of CMKY printing. One task that we completed was to choose one of our photographs, open it in Photoshop and change the mode to CMKY. After importing it into indesign, I saved it as a PDF and selected the printer settings, eg crop marks,  bleeds, colour bars etc.

The image I chose was one that I took in the park beside my house, and added a quote by Oscar Wilde in Helvetiva.    

Web Page Design

As part of the Business of Design module we were asked to create a 800x600 pixel mock web page design for a design company. For this project we were to use Helvetica text. Various weights were allowed. The name of the company is a colour of your choice, and the text should be this colour. Other  items that were to be included were six navigation items, and a paragraph about the company. This is my web page design. I wanted to keep it clean, and simple.  

Rebranding Translink

As part of my Business of Design module I was asked to create a new logo as part of the identity of Translink, a public corporation providing public transport in Northern Ireland.  With a time frame of a day and a half, here is one of my ideas.    

Tea for Two?

This image was taken for class to show power within an object.  Two delicate teacups are being overpowered by a large multi-coloured mug.

Method:

1. Set up subject

2. Select a large aperture in the camera (f1.4 etc)

3. Select motor drive/high speed shooting mode

4. Increase ISO as necessary (keep as low as possible)

5. Press and hold the shutter release button
6. Drop object from above (a de-shelled hard boiled egg, bouncy ball etc)
7. Enjoy the results :)

Belfast Pen

Due to the combined 25th Anniversary of the Equinox Belfast, and Acme Studio of the USA, they have invited the public to join a list of some of the world's most illustrious designers and architects in creating  a graphic/design suitable to adorn an Acme Studio Pen.  The task is to design a Belfast Pen that captures the traditions, culture and spirit of Belfast.  

From the submitted designs, ten finalists will be chosen for exhibition in Equinox prior to the choice of the overall winner, who will receive a £500 voucher for Equinox and their pen design made.  

My design captures the complexity of Belfast's historic layout and expresses it in a colourful and simplistic manner. The colour scheme was derived from Belfast Zoo (one of my favourite places in the city), can you work out what animal it is?

Let it Grow

A project by brazilian design firm let it grow. As a self-promotion item for their firm, they took 100 old wine bottles, painted them all white and then drew different drawings on each one. They then vacuumed sealed the bottles in a black bag along with a slip of paper explaining the project. So much cooler than a business card!

Hello World

Welcome to my design blog!