Design Inspiration
Christmas Marketing Tips
And so the Christmas marketing season begins in earnest. I’ve just created the December advert for local women’s only gym ‘Gym & Slim’, as part of their year long local newspaper advertisement marketing plan. Gym & Slim capitalise on events such as Christmas, New Year, Easter and more throughout the year to market their business to new customers. Read the rest of this entry »
Jamie Oliver Designers
I’ve got to say, though Jamie Oliver is a mildly irritating little smug face (sorry), he always seems to have the most incredible designers involved in his projects.
Case and point below. Read the rest of this entry »
Creating A Pattern Swatch in Illustrator
Many years ago I noticed that Adobe Illustrator offers a very handy tool which allows you to easily create a pattern ‘swatch’ from a section of repeating pattern that you have created.
Pattern design is a huge field in the design industry and an example of a sucessful surface pattern designer is Rachel Taylor, whose blog I have followed for some time now. Check out her website, which in it self is rather impressive. Read the rest of this entry »
Matryoshka Dolls in Commercial Art
Maybe it’s because of the influx of Eastern Europeans to the UK of recent years, or maybe for no particular reason at all, but Matryoshka dolls have become very popular for use in commercial art of recent years.
I was browsing through The Dieline blog earlier and spotted this cute idea for vintage styled Russian Dolls … Read the rest of this entry »
Love, Trust, Bondage.
I went out with a group of friends the other week and met some new people, one of them was a very lovely man with a set of stunning tattoos.
I have no tattoos of my own but I am quite fascinated by the artwork in high quality tattoos and particularly love vintage/sailor type tatttoos. One of his tattoos was bondage themed, and set me off drawing this tattoo inspired illustration today 
Read the rest of this entry »
Pigeon Illustration
Whilst looking for interesting ‘Illustrators groups’ on Facebook yesterday evening I came across Gloucester university student Abi Ponton.
Abi has a lovely illustrative style and I’ve showcased some of her work below. Much of it has quite a ‘folksy‘ feel, which is currently a popular style.
You can view more at her illustration blog; Pigeon Illustration. Read the rest of this entry »
Illustrator Showcase – Caroline Phillips
I just spotted these amazing haircare packaging designs for Percy & Reed on the best packaging design blog in the entire world (The Dieline).
Thankfully (and they don’t always) the Dieline not only advised us who the agency behind the work was (Smith & Milton), but the actual illustrator herself also ; which is the incredibly talented Caroline Phillips. Read the rest of this entry »
Truly Ace, in a real book!
As described in my next blog today, I went to the Ikon Gallery, and whilst having a mooch around their very nice shop/bookstore my eyes landed on this!
I thought to myself “Wow, it’s that book published some time ago that my artwork is ‘apparently’ in according to the editors”.
So I checked and indeed Truly Ace IS in the book! A REAL book, that you can get an a proper real world shop and all 
Read the rest of this entry »
Baa Baa Australia; A Design Story
We talked, we laughed, we cried, oh how we cried. Ok, this story isn’t QUITE that exciting, but I’ve found it rather a nice ride that’s for sure
I want to tell you (and show you) all about Baa Baa Australia who approached me in May about offering them a front end web design service for their new business selling their own brand of Ugg boots for children.
They advised me that they already had a logo design created to be used within the design and immediately I cringed in fear. That’s the crying bit. Read the rest of this entry »
