Thoughts on Design
Vintage Rocks Hair Parlour
I do so love it when ‘vintage’ meets ‘business’ 
A while ago I happened upon Vintage Rocks Hair Parlour online, probably whilst leering at other vintage things one day.
I was really impressed by their unique brand image and how professionally this is presented and very importantly ‘adhered’ to in each and every way they market themselves. Read the rest of this entry »
David Airey Exposes Shutterstock Artist
I know there are a hell of a lot of cheeky ‘designers’ (word very loosely used in this scenario) out there, but this example is just amazing … check out how David Airey exposes how someone blithely sells the MGM lion in vector illustration format on Shutterstock for £29 a pop: Read the rest of this entry »
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 »
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 »
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 »
The Intellectual Property Office
How does the Intellectual Property Office relate to your business? Well, it can help you protect it – namely protect your business name and image from theft.
Copyright law is one thing, it’s ‘automatic’ with no need to register it, and offers you a certain measure of ownership to your company name and logo design/company identity, but it’s not quite as firm and definite as an official ‘trademark’, and this is what the Intellectual Property Office can offer you.
I’ll go into a bit more detail: Read the rest of this entry »
Spotted: Designer Plagiarism
I just spotted what appears to be a pretty clear case of design theft, I now have details and screen grabs.
I was just admiring the website (http://one-eared-dog.com/) of a designer that had introduced themselves on a Graphic Design Forum, and even went so far as to tell them how I admired their website, when I spotted this logo in their portfolio:
I thought to myself, hang on a moment, I saw this on Logo Pond the other day (logo inspiration website). I went to check and sure enough, there is was as plain as day:
Rebranding – for no good reason
When Find A Property first launched in 1997, I was hugely impressed by their company logo. It was unique, interesting, mememorable, clean and simple, and with a beautiful dash of retro charm that would enable it to stand the test of time. It was also just the right amount of ‘friendly’ whilst being professional at the same time. It was perfect I felt.
Today I visit their website to find this abomination: Read the rest of this entry »
Becoming An Illustrator
This week an illustration student embarking on a university degree in illustration got in touch to ask me for advice about working in the illustration industry.
I started to craft a reply based on my own little illustrative niche but then suddenly realised that actually there are lots of different types of ‘illustrator’ – who is to say that she wants to do what I do? This is to provide vector illustration services to businesses that need illustrations for marketing purposes.
So my response became a lot more detailed, sufficiently detailed for the resultant email response to contain enough content to turn into this blog! Read the rest of this entry »
