New work: Climate Change Banner for ActionAid's Bollocks to Poverty Campaign

Last week I was working on this banner, which is to be displayed (hopefully, if approved) on ActionAid's website, for their 'Bollocks to Poverty' campaign.

Click for larger image.

The campaign is aimed at getting people motivated to actually do something to help end poverty; instead of just donating money and being a bit passive about the whole thing, it's encouraging people to get involved and get passionate about ending poverty, by putting on events and generally thinking outside the box. Here's a bit from the site:

You can do things a bit differently with Bollocks to Poverty. You don’t need to put on coffee mornings or cake sales, you can do what you love doing. Whatever you’re into you can support people fighting their way out of poverty. Shake a tin at your mates and they might chuck you a pound, but throw them a party and they’ll feel inspired to do much more.

Whether you put on a gig, jump out of a plane, pester your MP or volunteer at a festival, say Bollocks to Poverty and do it with ActionAid.

The site is well worth checking out, there's lots of things to do to get involved in the campaign, my favourite is this, "becoming a Bollocks to Poverty Tour Ambassador to come backstage at this summer's festivals, chat to some bands, write some blogs about it and then organise the mother of all Christmas parties for our amazing tour organisers". Noice.

The focus of the brief for this banner is their Climate Change campaign 'Food vs Dust'. It's basically highlighting the impact that climate change will have on the world's poorest - those who have actually contributed to climate change the least, but who will suffer most through floods, drought, cyclones, all of which will destroy homes and crops and leave to food shortages and ultimately starvation. So banners have been requested to highlight this and to act as a point of inspiration on the website to encourage people to find out more and hopefully get involved with trying to reduce climate change.

I mean, we all know about the damage that climate change is doing and people are beginning to do things to help these days (although my opinion is that its going to take more than a few canvas bags to save us), but people most often think about themselves, and the impact it will have on our children in the future - not about the damage that is happening NOW to people in poorer parts of the world. Just take a look at the photos that the Obama administration has revealed about how quickly polar ice caps are melting - even I didn't think it was happening this quickly.

I always try to get involved with issues to do with the environment, sustainability and living ethically within my work - they're things that I am passionate about and that I believe our industry (design as a whole) are capable of doing something about, even more so than the politicians. We're the ones who design the adverts and the packaging and everything to sell all the stuff - we are the ones who can change public thinking from mass consumerism/needing everything/more stuff right now to... whatever comes next. Post consumerism? Anti advertising? It's still a bit grey. 'Age of austerity' I think David Cameron called it. But it's the designer's who can influence people the most. Interesting really, that this recession has come around now... now that we're questioning what exactly we really need to be spending our money on, we can also start to question not just the impact it's having on our wallets but also on resources and the environment in general. I think most people are agreed that we haven't been living financially or environmentally sustainable for a very very long time. And now look what's happened.

So doing this banner was right up my street - the brief is open and people are encouraged to submit their own banners for the cause. I wanted to create something that had a positive overtone but still reflected the core issues - something to grab people in so they want to learn more, without being too overbearing/negative and more a call to get people motivated to change.

So hopefully it gets used on the site! I'll probably blog about it if it is does anyway.

I start my first day of my placement at The Open Consultancy tomorrow... wish me luck! Really looking forward to it. Early night though defo, had a rather mental birthday party last night so taking it easy today, so that I can be bright and breezy at 6am tomorrow. (Yeah, I have to get up at 6 every day, hello full time work... my student days really are over, aren't they :( can't really complain though, i'm so excited about this placement, i'll practically be leaping out of bed tomorrow).

Ciao for nowwww

BBC website Error 404

This is random, I know. I was just going onto radio 1's website and I typed it in wrong or something. Anyway the 404 message comes up (what exactly is a 404 message anyway, what happened to 403 and 405?) and look:


It's got the little clown with his chalkboard saying 404! Do you remember him? He used to be with the girl, when BBC stopped broadcasting at night or something went wrong, it was super old school and then seeing it like this made me laugh. They actually went to the trouble of doing that, instead of just saying '404 error'. I think that's really cute! Awesome.

I told you it was random.

Queen and Country - An exhibition by Steve McQueen

No, not that Steve McQueen.

I went to see this exhibition at Wolverhampton's Art Gallery on saturday. It's fairly unassuming but very powerful. Here's a little bit about the project:

Official war artist and Turner Prize winner Steve McQueen, in collaboration with 155 families whose loved ones have lost their lives in Iraq, has created a cabinet containing a series of facsimile postage sheets, each one dedicated to a deceased soldier. The Art Fund, the UK's leading art charity, presented this cabinet to the Imperial War Museum in November 2007 and is currently touring the work around the UK. But until real stamps are issued the work is incomplete.

It was quite sad looking through all the faces like that, especially when you come across ones that were 18 or 19 - I don't know why it's worse when people younger than you die, but it just feels like it is. Also, half the guys I live with are going in the army in the next few years after their Officer training, so it brings it home a bit. Kind of scares me when I think about it.

You can read more about the project here.

The interesting bit is that the artist is petitioning Royal Mail to get the stamps issued as Sepcial Editions, to commemorate the soldiers that have died. I think it's a great idea and I signed it the other day - you should too.

In an unrelated note, I'm using a uni computer right now and there's a dead ladybird in the keyboard. Bit strange.

Vegetable Book!

I made this book as a birthday present for my dad.

He (and mum) have a veggie patch where they like to grow (and sometimes fail to grow) all kinds of nice things. Home grown potatoes are soooo nice and mange tout is so crispy and sweet and just immense. Beats supermarket anyday.

So he wanted a notebook/journal thing to keep track of what he's growing and when he needs to planet more stuff and dig things out etc. I was going to buy him something but I can't resist making books!
All the pages inside are either reused or recycled paper, so there's lots of random stuff in there...
bit of graph paper and all sorts :)

There's also pockets and things at the back to keep seed packets and whatever else in there.

And little veggies:
Heehee ^.^

Placement at The Open Consultancy! And other exciting things...

I've been a bit quiet in the blogging front these days... this is because I've been soo busy these past few weeks! Ever since New Blood, I haven't really stopped, due to a number of various things:

I moved into a new house with some friends and there was much room swappage, it took me about 2 weeks to finally unpack and get my room into MY room because I was back and forth to London and such places so much. Anyway I've finally got my posters up and I bought a new clock so that's nice.

I started a new job the week before New Blood, it's a monday to friday admin thing and work really takes the hours out of your day! Amazing, really. Actual employment. So all internet/creativity/posting/stuff takes place after 4pm now.

When I got back from New Blood (literally the day after) I was invited for an interview at The Open Consultancy, in Worcester. I had applied for a 2 month placement there and was soo excited to get an interview! We were set 2 briefs to complete and present at the group interview, which was about 4 days later. Argh. So every day after work I trekked over to Uni (it's dead quiet there in the studios now) and stayed until they kicked me out until I got the work done. That's when real life hits you really, none of this 12 week deadline nonsense with uni work, in the real world you've got 4 day deadlines AND a proper job to go to. Lot of red bull and chocolate was consumed. It was fun though, I love a bit of pressure, me.

One of the briefs was to create a 'thunkstick', which basically are like physical 'what are you thinking' Twitter style mailings. And they're awesome. I like anything like this, they're basically stickers on grey board with awesome shiny bits (mmm shiny) with a really simple, striking ideas that get sent out to people in the creative industries, as a sort of 'bumper sticker for your desk'. This was mine:
It came from the feeling that I keep getting recently that I'm glued to technology... either at work staring at a screen or at uni on Photoshop or at home trawling the internet or facebook or twitter or blogs or anything... or listening to my ipod, or texting my friends, and I just want to unplug! Go for a walk, read a book, draw something random, all things that I love doing and don't do enough. Do you ever feel like that? Technology is immense and helps me in all sorts of places but sometimes I feel like I'm turning into binary.

It went through many incarnations, but one of my favourite things that I didn't use was this:

Loved doing this though, to have a brief which is so open in many ways; 'design a thought' but so constricted in terms of sizing is a real treat. It was so nice to be actually designing something again, I really really need to get some new illustrations done, haven't done anything significant since finishing uni and it's making me restless.

So the interview went great and this monday I was offered the placement!! Which made me do a silly chair bouncy dance lol. I was so happy! I didn't blog about any of this until now because I didn't want to jinx it lol, but now that I actually got offered it I thought it was time to talk about what I've been doing! I can't wait, I've got just over a week left at my current job and then I start at Open on the 27th July. It's going to be so exciting working there. I will definitely update on it all when I start!

The weather is horrible today, I think it's going to be worse tomorrow. Time for a cider and a film I think.

Oh that reminds me, I saw Public Enemies last night, great film! The way it's shot is really interesting, feels almost documentary style, I dunno, the quality was strange. In a good way. And very lacking in music. Also in a good way. And full of Depp and Bale. In a very good way.

La Roux & Dan Black @ Camden Roundhouse - iTunes Festival

Last night I went to see La Roux play at Camden Roundhouse, with Dan Black supporting, as part of iTunes free London festival going on all July. What an awesome night! Getting free tickets to a gig is nice enough, even better that I love La Roux, and once I'd found someone to come along with me, (cheers Kylie, saved the day!) we had ourselves a great little night out in London town :)

Fern Cotton and Dave Berry were there presenting for itv2, how special:

Me and Kylie getting a bit sweaty in the crowd, ah fun times:
So as I said, Dan Black was supporting, I hadn't really heard much of his stuff before, checked him out and like what little I heard, but he was immense! Really enjoyed his set, we were dancing and bobbing along, first time I've enjoyed a largely unknown support act for a long time. His music is what I'd describe as Electropop mainly, little bit of an indie feel (actually, I detect a slight early Radiohead feel, in a good way) and a slight leaning towards the melancholy in his lyrics, as well as entirely danceable, which means he gets a thumbs up from me! Loved it, I'm definitely going to get his album when I have some cash.



Nice set, very neon/brightly lit/crazy. Also, if Jesus was a rocking post-indie keyboard player who likes to go a bit mental, he would look like this:

So then La Roux came on, and I have to say I think I enjoyed Dan Black a bit more. He seemed to have much more energy... although I really like La Roux's style and songs, and she hit pretty much every note perfectly, I just didn't feel as invigorated as I thought I would. Having said that, when Going in For the Kill and Bulletproof came on, everyone rocked out a bit more and it felt really good to do some crazy dancing. She had an amazing jacket on though, not entirely sure if you can see it properly, but it was white and had no lapel, with massive plastic gems on. Sooo cool. She's a bit stylish, that girl.






A really great saturday night! Ace to be back in London (again woohoo), I'm making a pleasant habit of this.

Lastly, the road opposite the roundhouse is called Crogsland Road. Which I found hilarious and I don't know why. Crogsland. Heeheee.

Vintage Times - lipbalm and labels

I've just been catching up on my RSS subscriptions and generally surfing the mintynet and I've stumbled across some awesome vintage finds.

I know it's the latest thing to love everything vintage but I genuinely do; things that have a history, a feel of the old, like they've been places, are very exciting to me. It's also a great thing to keep old things and reuse them instead of always buying new - a great help to the environment and something we all need to start adjusting ourselves to doing, now that the recession is changing consumerism, and the way we see buying new commodities needs to change.

Anyway.

I came across Andrea Garland, who has an amazing range of handmade, organic and ethical lip balms, body balms, all kinds of things, that are all sold in old vintage one off tins and pill boxes! They are so cute and I desire one or many greatly.









Have a look at her online store, and gawp, stare and covet. They're on my birthday list.

I also came across this site as well, with lots of vintage sewn clothing tags.

There's something so pretty and delicate about these - you know they're all handmade and lovingly stitched onto clothing. I just love the old school italic type and 'made in..' you don't get that anymore. Unless it's made in oh holy topshop. And they look like they took time to design and actually make something of. Check out Kindra's Blog for more vintage yumminess and happy things.

D&AD New Blood 09 - Roundup part three - Advice Lectures, London loving and plans plans plans

I went back into London on the thursday to attend the D&AD Training and Advice sessions, which were organised to coincide with New Blood and the people who exhibited.

It was a really useful day, held at Notting Hill's Coronet Theatre (which is this cute indie old-stye cinema, pretty sweet) and I attended 4 of the talks that were held there.

The first one was called 'How did they do it?' and that was a good one, it was 2 students, Ross Taylor and Alex... someone(argh cant remember his last name) who had graduated last year and had managed to successfully get jobs, and basically what they did to end up where they are now. Some really useful tips, things like keeping in contact with your contacts, don't be afraid to move on, win as many awards as you can, things like that.

Then there was a talk on 'How to make your mark', making your portfolio as good as it can be, by Paul Brazier of AMV.BBDO, who is going to be the next President of D&AD. Lots of useful things to take away there. The next talk I went to was called 'How to be Successful' (which is amusing, surely it can't be as easy as that) and that was by Steve Henry, who used to be the Creative Director at TBWA but left to take time off from the industry - he spoke a lot about how advertising works and how a lot of it gets watered down so much through the creative process that very rarely do you get an amazing advert - basically telling us as 'new blood' what we can do to make an impact in this changing industry, especially as 'ant- consumerism' and the recession takes hold, advertising is changing as people are realising that buying stuff doesn't make them happy. Loads to think about, it's a subject that I'm really interested it - how can advertising survive if people are starting to not buy things all the time, can advertising actually encourage people to buy less but buy better? Quality over quantity, no more of 'you need this now, loads of it, buy this now!' to something with a bit more austerity. I don't really know the answer yet.

And the last talk was all about Setting up a new business/how to survive as a freelancer - some of these things I knew already but it was refreshing to hear it from actual freelancers, and interesting to hear that going freelance straight from uni isn't always the best idea - get into the industry and learn from real life, get some contacts first before you go out on your own. Makes sense.



It was another beautiful day in London so I took a wander over to the Southbank - here are some pics taken off the Embankment bridge. I just walked down from here on my own to the Tate Modern, not really with an aim in mind, just taking it all in and realising how much I miss London. I used to come here every 2 weeks or so back before Uni, going to gigs and galleries, and now I'm lucky if I go 2 or 3 times a year. So being back in London so much these past 2 weeks has been great, and even though the tube is still as packed and nightmarish as usual, I love it. I know that place so well and it's made me realise that I definitely want to live there. After not being accepted into either of the MA's that I wanted to do in London, I thought I'd leave it for a bit, but these past 4 days at New Blood has really made me rethink everything - I want to do placements in London, working at studios, working freelance, doing all these things, and I know it's a cliche but you really have to be in London for these things. I love that city, the energy, even the horrible impatient Londoners and the mentalist cyclists. I felt myself slipping back into the Londoner mentality so easily almost straight away - (stupid tourists, can't even work the tube, it's bloody colour coded for god's sake, it's not hard) I caught myself thinking. How bad is that? :P

But I'm a bit torn because I planned to live with my best friend in Wolves for a year, and I have a job in Wolves, and so many friends up there, and not so many in London and at home, and all this stuff. But maybe it's time to just do something for myself. I never do that.

So I think I need a Plan of Action. Start contacting studios etc, keep illustrating, keep applying for placements, don't rush anything or make any rash decisions and hopefully by Christmas I'll be well on my way to where I want to be. Wherever that is.

First off, I need a Mac. Badly. Where can I get a reconditioned one? I am poor.

Previous posts about New Blood 09.

D&AD New Blood 2009 - Roundup part two - Other stands and ShellsuitZombie

First up, I want to apologise because I went around snapping photos of stands/work i liked and completely forgot to write down where each one came from. What a silly. I'd love to know though so comment if you recognise any unis or people. This is another reason why I should get an iphone. You can write notes. Sigh.


I loved this one - using the brown paper to rip away and reveal the work underneath. It really struck me and made me remember them. Definitely showed our stand up - I wish we had input into how it looked and not just our tutors deciding how to exhibit our work, there were so many better ways and things we could have done. Oh well. Nothing we could have done.

Excellent quote, made me think.

I absolutely love book art like this - it's fascinating and must have taken hours. I love the little mini ones! :D


As I mentioned before, our stand was opposite ShellsuitZombie, who are a cool bunch helping new graduates, promoting hot new work, etc. Their stand was fun and random and cheered me up through the long hours standing around in the heat and aching legs.

Matt Dent, (who did the coins) popped over and set a graphic design brief for a few unis to take part in, that was pretty cool. I wanted to say hello to him but didn't have anything to say except 'I like coins innit you're quite pretty lalalala bye' so didn't. Haha.




On the last day of the show, weds 1st July, I was meant to go to 8x8 to see lots of designers talk and I was very much looking forward to it. But the tube trains succumbed to the heat and I got stuck in a zillion degrees in the circle line so missed it. I was not happy. At all.

On a better note, that day I also had my portfolio review with Chris Rain from Airside - that went reeeaally well, hopefully I can keep in touch for advice etc, he said lots of nice positive things about my work which gave me a real boost :)

I met a few other people who I got great advice from throughout the few days and generally solidified my career direction in my head a lot more - I'm going to focus on applying for placements and illustration commissions and just do a little bit everyday to make sure I get there :)

Previous post about New Blood 09.

D&AD New Blood 2009 - Roundup part one - Our stand

I got back from London last night, after 4 days of being at New Blood. It was really good, so bloody exhausting, getting up at 5.30 every day then getting home at around midnight really takes it out of you, especially when you are walking/standing up/navigating the heat trap that is the tube and surviving 32c degrees every day! I can't complain though, I love hot weather and it was a great few days. Being back in London was amazing, it felt like home, I miss it so much. I need to be there; sooner rather than later.







Our stand was #70, tucked right in the corner of the hall so not the greatest of spots, traffic-wise. These are all photos from the private view held on monday (29th june) night.



Guys hanging out at the Graphic Design stand next to ours.

The whole view of the hall; our stand was literally directly below this.

Our stand was opposite ShellsuitZombie, which was ace, they brought so much fun and games to the place! Bunch of really nice guys, they set briefs and competitions throughout the show and generally brightened things up no end :)

More on that in the next post...