A few weeks ago I visited another student final year art exhibition, it was in Sutton Coldfield College Design Centre, just 5 minutes round the corner from my office

Here are some images of my favorable/most interesting items. And of course my comments also.

This comic strip was very well drawn, there was also blood splattered at the bottom corner of the installation space to mirror the storyline:

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The second I walked into the Found! student art gallery space on Thursday last week (see my last blog) my retro obsessed eye spotted this vintage styled gallery booth in the distance and between that and the incredibly cool vintage inspired girls lingering around I could barely contain myself from trying to take sneak photos of them as they stood next to me during the speeches.

This installation belongs to student Emma Harrison and aims (and doing a fine job of it too) to promote
Vintage Sweethearts (vintage photography). Below are my fabulous photos from her gallery space, complete with girls!
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Last week I attended Found! An end of year student art gallery event, out which I should be able to milk not one, but THREE blogs! Yep, it was pretty interesting and I don’t want to ram all my waffling and images into one blog

I was invited to the private preview event (sniff, because I’m special I am) by my work experience student from last summer Sally and so in this blog I’m going to feature her wonderful gallery display and more. Sally’s was one of the best displays at the event, and hands down the most ‘commercial’ in terms of skills that can be translated in the real world into cold hard cash that we all need to you know, eat and stuff.

Anyway, less of my jibber jabber and on with the images:
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Last year I visited the Forbidden Planet comic/sci-fi shop in Bristol (awesome city by the way) and of course had a good rummage through the art books section.

Please note I am not a sci-fi geek, I was simply in the company of a geek. That’s right, I said geek.

I found (and bought) this stunning book below from Harper Collins Design called Gothic Lolita Punk and showcasing the work of talented illustrators and artists designing in this style. And yes, it’s taken me an entire year to get round to writing about it! Shocker.
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I was in Waterstones this morning buying my niece a giant annotated Brothers Grimm Fairytale book for her birthday tomorrow (because a childhood isn’t complete without Brothers Grimm), and spotted these …

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A couple of weeks ago, as designer of all the logos and marketing collateral, I was invited to the launch of a newly built Sure Start Children’s Centre on the grounds of Holland House Junior school.

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I saw some nice illustrations on product packaging in December before my eye infection nearly blinded me for two weeks

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In Spring this year Marks & Spencer’s chief Stuart Rose reported that sales on the High Street hadn’t got any worse, but that they hadn’t got any better either.

From the looks of what I saw on the High Street yesterday he couldn’t be more right and maybe since his reassurances things have indeed now got worse.
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Hey Graphic Designers, I saw a board game just for you today!

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I went North a bit a couple of weekends ago, for a visit to the Peak District. Amazingly I’ve never been there although it’s not that far away from the Midlands.

Whilst I was there I popped into a lovely shop and saw these amazing illustrations as part of a range of high end products for Nougat London. I’ve never seen these before and was rather taken by them.

Outside of ‘products aimed at the teen market’ it’s rare to see such extensive use of illustrations in beauty product branding, so I was really pleased to find them.

These are my photos from the shop:
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