Welcome to rachelsays... The blog of Rachel Lewis, containing my thoughts and musings on illustration, design, fashion, music, cakey-bakey goodness, culture and things that I generally find cool. There's also a good chance my own illustration work will pop up on here.
All work on this blog is copyright to me unless I state that it isn't. Obviously. Don't do stealing, kids.
So come on in, have a look around, and leave a comment if you like what you see.
And so, after just over 3 years, university, life dramas, and all manner of things, this blog comes to an end. Ahhh.
'Oh em gee!' I hear you cry. 'What will I do without it?'
Well don't worry. It's only moving :)
As I have mentioned a few times before, I have moved this blog over to my website, so my blog and portfolio can sit side by side like the good friends they are. If you're reading this in an RSS feed, that means you were nice enough to subscribe the first time round. And so I thank you, and hope you have enough energy in you to subscribe to my new blog address, simply by clicking here.
If you still like to hear about my illustration adventures, thoughts on advertising, design, fashion, culture, music and other bits, then please do subscribe again; I really love having you around. If you don't care anymore then... well. See you around.
Just spotted this via @ActionaidUK's twitter feed and I love the concept. Guerilla marketing/advertising + charity campaigning = thumbs up in my book. If you follow Actionaid's campaigns and efforts then you'll know they're waging a bit of a war on Asda at the moment because of their alleged pay level for their foreign workers who make their clothing for George. "If ASDA paid just an extra 2p on a £4 t-shirt, it could mean the difference between poverty and a decent standard of living for the people who make clothes for ASDA George in India."
Sounds pretty fair to me. The rise of cut price, bargain-tastic, too cheap to be true clothing in the last few years has summoned a kind of collective joy and simultaneous guilt in Britain. Think Primark, supermarket fashion - a dress for £9? Why the hell would you shop anywhere else? If you don't mind the quality and throw your clothes out every year, then it's amazing. But everyone who shops there (I hope anyway...) surely has that voice in the back of their head whispering 'cheap labour...' when they make their purchases. I certainly do. I use to shop ALL the time in George at Asda at uni, seeing as our halls were practically in the carpark and you couldn't beat it for student budget, but you do worry where exactly your money goes, or rather, how far it can stretch. That £4 t-shirt, after you've taken into account raw materials, distribution costs, any kind of profit, what are you left with for the people who actually make it? Not a lot it would seem, if 2p is the difference between poverty and stability. I wouldn't mind paying an extra 2p. Hell, I wouldn't mind paying an extra £2. I avoid Primark, George, etc etc whenever I can but I admit I still buy from there. If there was a guarantee the workers got paid enough to live on then I wouldn't feel so bad. Also when I get start getting paid more, i'll be able to afford to NOT shop in horrible, mass produced shops like that.
So ActionAid have summoned up this campaign and I wholeheartedly support it. Here's what they're doing to raise awareness:
"Campaigners from the charity ActionAid are slipping a secret message into thousands of items of clothing at ASDA stores around the country to highlight the company’s lamentable record on paying poverty wages to factory workers in developing countries.
The secret messages will be placed in clothes’ pockets and any customer who finds them will automatically receive an ActionAid t-shirt and entry into a prize draw to win fair trade food and clothing. They’ll also be invited to send a message to the head of ASDA to demand an improvement in workers' pay." Read more about ActionAid target Asda here.
Simple, brilliant. And I bet you it works. There's nothing better than putting on a jacket you haven't worn for months and finding a tenner in the pocket. This works on that ethos; consumers love finding stuff that seems like it's meant just for them, and also free. What's great is that they've thought this through; "The ActionAid secret messages are made from the same material as clothing labels, so they won’t run or damage clothes if the shopper doesn’t find the label and puts it through the wash." Aha. And I imagine they're not doing anything technically wrong that Asda could sue them for or whatever; so long as they don't ruin the garments, encourage theft, or spread lies about the brand (these seem pretty accurate to me) then I can't see any legal problems, really. I doubt Asda will be happy though! They'll probably get their minions/goblins* to ransack the pockets every morning. (*We used to call the Asda night shift workers such names as this as it always seemed a bit Harry-Potter esque when they'd quietly fill the shelves up at 3am, glaring at you. Usually because you were drunk and trying to figure out if cheesecake is a good idea after Oceana. Respect to the night shift workers. They must have hated us.) An example of the label you'll find in the clothing.
"The campaign, which started 16th July, will take place in ASDA shops in most major cities including London, Birmingham, Manchester and Edinburgh. Campaigners will keep on placing the secret messages at ASDA stores every month until the company agrees to pay more to garment workers."
I'm going to go to the North Acton branch of Asda tomorrow lunch and see if they've hit that one. They should do, it's huuuuge. Well, good luck to them. I'll be boycotting George until things change.
Wow. So, I’ve done it! Sort of. Things are in the mid-way between being terrible and being better. Remember I posted about wanting to switch my website and blog over to one place? Well here it is. It’s using a basic template at the moment; I will eventually make a custom one and it’ll be all spangly.
Things left to do are:
Try and reformat the fonts used; not loving these sans serif things. And also get rid of the black on the header! Ew.
Upload my entire portfolio. This will take a while. I’m trying to grapple with plugins etc to make it work.
Contact page, twitter plugins, all the rest. RSS feed. Automatic post to fb and twitter. Etc etc.
But I actually managed to make it work :D Yay me!
Until it's in its presentable state, I'll dual-post over here and over there. Eventually I'll let this blog die. Or do some kind of redirect thing. When I've figured out how to do RSS feeds for it over there I'll keep reminding you daily to resubscribe. But for the mean time, just sit back and watch it fail rise from the ashes.
So once it's presentable, I'll do a nice redesign, get my awesome tech friend to code it up, then I shall surely have a site worthy of awesome-ness.
Stay tuned! I need one of those 'men at work' signs. Hang on.
So far, so boring. I do like cars, me, but I've never really put Audi with excitement. Especially in my age group. Hence why they've come up with this idea. I'd imagine the conversation went like this:
"Hey, we really need to reach out to the arty, trendy, youth crowd, with our amazing and reasonably priced new A1 Audi"
"I've heard of art."
"I've heard of an artist. Let's get Damien Hirst to do a custom car. He is so underground."
"I concur."
And so they did just that. Audi have teamed up with Damien Hirst to produce a one-off painted car, which will be on display in "the heart of London’s bustling West End [sic] Leicester Square, and from the 14th to the 18th of July this iconic destination will have an iconic addition in its midsts – the new Audi A1."
Sounds interesting, they describe the process as "Using Hurst’s ‘spin painting’ technique each body panel was painstakingly removed from the car and placed on a spinning turntable where Hurst dripped brightly coloured paint from above. The body panels were then re-fitted to create a totally unique, road legal work of art."
Painstakingly removed? Don't they just have robots to do that? Hmmm.
My qualm isn't with the idea; it's fairly interesting to have an artist paint a car and have it on show in central London, even if it's been done before in various incarnations. Apparently it's recently been auctioned; one would assume/hope for charity but it doesn't mention which? I do however, think Audi have missed a trick here: Damien Hirst doesn't really need the publicity, it would have been so much nicer for an up and coming artist to have done this. That way it's a 2 way thing; Audi get their 'cool/trendy' publicity about their expensive car (I'm just jealous because I drive a Fiat 500) and the new artist gets lots of exposure. Damien Hirst is extremely obvious. Hey ho.
Having said this, the actual car looks good. Dripping paint is always a winner. The roof is where you can really see the spun paint - quite pretty really. And at least Audi are trying something new and engaging people in a way that isn't a well airbrushed tv advert - not many car companies step out into the ambient marketing area. And I shouldn't really pass judgement until I visit this strange 'AreA1' (which keeps reminding me of Area 51...heh...)
I guess I'm just cynical about big corporations trying to maximise publicity with crazy art/culture experiments. It's just too transparent to me.
AreA1 is on until sunday so if you want to check it out in person, why not? I probably won't make it down; can't afford to come into London this weekend. If you like Audis, and you like Damien Hirst, well then, that's pretty amazing. Go go go.
I haven't blogged in weeks - this is very bad. It's not for lack of content - I've got 8 draft posts that are half finished! The past few weeks have been so busy and I just have not had time. That's bad I know. Lots of good things have been happening though, as well as work being ridiculously busy at the moment, and swanning off to various places every weekend for various things. That doesn't help. But hey, I like to have weekends!
Anyway, I was talking recently about how I want to move this blog over to my own domain name, and I've pretty much decided that I will do this. Hopefully this weekend if I get time. So even though I didn't mean to not post, maybe it's a good idea not to... then just wait until I move over and start again. I don't really know.
How do you people with full time jobs manage to also blog a lot too?? It baffles me. I think it's my commute though- if I lived in London I'd be home by 6.30 and maybe then I'd have the energy to write. At the moment all I want to do is eat and sleep.
I've also been ill for about a week and a half now and it seems to be getting worse :S right now I have no voice! Very annoying. But I read this post today by Ben Terrett over at Noisy Decent Graphics about 'Being Busy' (have been following the blog for years... you should too) and it's timing is very well placed.
Read the full post but it's summed up in 5 points: 1. Work when you work best 2. Healthy body, healthy mind 3. Don't do everything on your to do list 4. Ask for help 5. Little and often
It's extremely good advice and I really recommend you go and read it. I need to take heed. We covered all this stuff, and more, in the CSM Immersion course I attended, but it's so easy to slip back into 'crazy mode'.
I think the answer is a good ol' break; even though right now that's impossible. This weekend I plan to do nothing social at all (except when it precedes the word media) and sort out my illustration life; that is, email people, so some actual work, sort out my website, you know. I will feel a lot better when that side of me is organised. I struggle with this constant feel of unease when that side of me (illustration) isn't as organised and clear as I would like - afterall, my goal is to be freelance, yet I'm putting most of my energy into my current job. Which is fine. I have a career to forge after all, and I quite enjoy graphic design/having a 9 to 5, but I wish I could have more time on the stuff that I'm really passionate about. Sigh. All in good time and such.
Anyway, the title of this post of course refers to Hotmail's New Busy campaign. I blame this 'new busy' way of thinking for pushing most of us creative types to some kind of melt down. We are made to feel that we should always be on to the next big thing, finding out new stuff, being here, being there, being awesome. I can be pretty good at that, but not all the damn time. Sometimes I need a sofa day watching Twilight (of course), without the nagging guilt of 'you should be blogging/drawing/updating portfolio/networking/running around in circles'.
Well, I'm trying new busy, and although I'm having a great time, I'm so tired. And I'm neglecting important things that need to be done. So I'm going anti new busy for a while. Hotmail? More like Hotfail. Pass the duvet.
This is awesomely exciting: I was contacted recently by the lovely people at Cleo Magazine, in Australia, who really like my recipe illustrations and wanted me to produce some more for a feature in the September issue! Amazing!
So I allowed them to reproduce two of my old ones, and did two new ones for them as well, which I want to post up here:
This recipe is one from my mum - she always makes this at BBQs and get-togethers etc and it's so amazing (as the title suggests), and pretty easy too. The feta and the capers make it stand out against shop-bought couscous, it's perfect for summer days!
I've made this a few times and it is easy - the ready made cake mix is a bit of a cheat so sometimes I do make it from scratch. Using the orange juice instead of water is genius and they taste amazing - especially the next day when the orange zest has had time to sink into the icing and give it flavour.
Nom nom nom.
So these illustrations will be in the September issue of Cleo, out in August. If (like me) you don't live in Australia then you won't be able to get your hands on a copy, but I have some friends in Oz who hopefully can send me it!
This is the first time my work has been published onto actual physical paper so I'm really happy. It's just on an exposure basis but who knows what could come from this? Good times! Thanks Australia, very random but cool!
This is going to a long-ish post so I apologise. It's one of my rare 'thoughts spilling out' posts but I'll try to keep it interesting. If you'd rather have pretty pictures then.... come back tomorrow.
I recently started subscribing to David Airey's brilliant blog and came across this article: Seven blog mistakes to avoid. I thoroughly recommend you go and read it (the whole blog, if you have hours to spare, or just that article) because it's great. And so useful if you write your own blog. It's started me thinking about this blog, and my website too, and now I have a big conundrum that I need your input on.
His first mistake in the article is 'not using a self-hosted blog.' Oops. I fail at the first hurdle. I've known for a while the benefits of hosting your own blog (you will actually own your content) and yet I still use blogger. Ol, faithful, annoying, uninspiring blogger. Why? Because it's safe. It works. And I'm terrified of moving! I wish I had started using wordpress, but I started this blog in 2007 and it was meant to just be a 'this is my work' blog. Obviously, it's a whole lot more now.
I own my own website - www.rachelsayshello.com and yet most of my hits come to this blog, not my website. Here are the pitiful stats: my website (which is basically just a static portfolio which gets updated say, once a month) gets about 6 hits a day, this blog gets about 40. Sometimes a lot more. Basically though, both are really bad. You do the maths! Surely it makes way more sense to host my blog on the same domain as my portfolio? My blog will do the work, being constantly updated with fresh content, and my portfolio will benefit from all the added exposure. At the moment, you have to click on a button over there ----> which takes you to my website; which at the moment is an external link. I've tried to link the two a bit more (the title of this blog is now rachelsays...) but this blog is still hosted at www.rachellewisillustration.blogspot.com, which is a mouthful and nothing to do with my website. And I'm paying for my spangly domain name. Why not use it as much as I can?
Mistake #4 from David Airey's post sums this up quite well: "When I launched my first website about two years ago, I wanted my portfolio to be its primary purpose, and the blog a secondary aspect. Then last year I discovered blogs. It didn’t take long to realise the number of clients I could attract first through my blog content, and then directing them to my portfolio. It’s generally the content I publish that attracts visitors, rather than the work in my graphic design portfolio."
Which is exactly what I should be doing. I write about good stuff. I'm pretty cool, people subscribe to what I say here, they're vaguely interested in my point of view. So I'm missing a huge opportunity in that my work is not easily accessible right from here. And that also, this is clearly a blogger template. E v e r y o n e uses this one because it's the least offensive. But it doesn't stand out! I'm a pretty unique girl, and this blog says 'hey, I use blogspot, cos I don't know nuffin about the mintynet' which isn't true.
So... the obvious answer here, is switch to wordpress (and I mean .org, not .com... download the template and install it in the root directory of my site). Move the whole shabang over to rachelsayshello.com, start again. Stop using indexhibit (it's great, but quite restrictive) and get a custom/nicer wordpress template over there. Make the blog content the primary landing page, and then all my portfolio work as a secondary, but still lovingly presented and relevant.
Sounds great! Except.....
1) I would lose all my SEO and links and everything. I would probably still keep this blog running but everything would die. I'd probably have to rebuild my subscribers again and I'd really miss you all if you didn't follow me over.
2) I know a teeny bit of html but no way could I deal with a custom wordpress thing, with code and all that. I could install it in my root directory, I'd get that far, then I'd have no idea.
3) This all sounds like it's going to take more than a sunday afternoon. I work full time. Help will be needed, help which I can't afford.
4) I'm scared of messing with things in case it all goes tits up.
So, I don't really know. I want to change things up, but I just really don't know where to start. There's a few peeps on my twittersphere who could probably give me advice but generally, I'd have to muddle my own way through. Argh. All I know is that the way things are is not really helping: I'm paying for a domain name which is getting less hits than my free blogspot page. And blogspot isn't really that cool.
Incidentally, my website is down right now and I have no idea why. Which is slightly worrying. I'm sure it's probably just godaddy being weird and it'll be back soon, but I don't like it. Make it come back!
What do you think, minions? Is it worth the hassle, to switch and be all spangly under one domain name, or just stick how I am and be all amateurish but safe. Your insights are very much welcomed, I am trés confused.
Last Tuesday I was invited to the private launch of the new Turning Leaf/Basso & Brooke collaboration of limited edition designed Wine Bottles and Interior Homeware. You might remember a little while ago I wrote about the collaboration here, and so I was really glad to have the opportunity to see the collection for myself. It really is amazing:
Basso & Brooke are well known for their amazing prints and fashion designs, and seeing their eye-poppingly colourful style (with the Turning Leaf logo/illustration and colour palette cleverly intertwined) on throws, cushions, tables, lamps... pretty stunning. I would kill to have any one of those items in my house - certainly a statement piece if ever I saw one! They are all available to buy apparently (huzzah!) but I overheard a woman saying that prices were around £9000.... so....yeah, that's more than half my yearly salary. I don't think so. In my dreams!
And so the evening was rather in that vein for me unfortunately; everything was in my dreams and out of my price range! The Shop at Bluebird is beautiful and full of amazing designer clothes (all in size 6 from what I could see...) but not one single thing in there could I afford. Boohoo. Except perhaps some of the art books lovingly displayed on the tables. While I wandered through the room with my (free, yay) glass of Turning Leaf Pinot Noir staring longingly at the goods on display, I realised slowly that I was in the world of Prada, but wearing Primark. To be fair though, the evening wasn't really centered around actually buying anything (thank god), just admiring the collaboration and chatting with cool people. It was a shame because my friend got food poisoning and had to pull out, so I'm sure I would have stayed a bit longer if I wasn't there on my own, but I just felt a bit strange amongst it all. We would probably have stood there pretending to be dotcom millionaires and loved being in that kind of atmosphere, soaking up all the designer-goodness aura. But alas. I just wanted to stare at the pretty Basso & Brooke collection all night and if I did that, I'd have looked weird.
The beautiful people. If you look closely you can see ether Basso or Brooke (I don't know which is which... that's terrible of me, I do apologise) admiring their handiwork.
And here they are with their lovely wine bottles. Suffice to say, I did not take this picture. I did see them milling around but was way too scared to actually say anything. I would probably just have said 'omg, you're like, so amazing, eeee' and ran away so it's probably a good thing I didn't.
It was really lovely to be invited (thanks Turning Leaf!) and was great seeing the collaboration firsthand. You just can't imagine the level of detail in the artwork... stunning.
Basso & Brooke and Turning Leaf Interiors Collection available from 15th June atThe Shop at Bluebirdfor June, July and August. They are running the Turning Leaf complimentary bar, every Thursday and Friday 5 - 7pm, from June 17th until 30th July (my birthday... maybe I'll go back!) at The Shop at Bluebird. Check it out if you're ever near Kings Road, it's worth a gander.
So what's sparked all this animal clutch-ness off then? Maybe it's that people are realising putting actual real dogs in your handbag is silly. And you get hairs all over your stuff. So a better option is to have your bag AS a dog. Excellent.
Or maybe it's this: These definitely wouldn't work as well if they had handles or straps. I think what makes these great is they could be mistaken for just holding a little stuffed animal. Which comes from the whole 'back to your childhood' trend going on right now. I am in favour of this.
The Domestic Sluts have just drawn my attention to this uh-mazing handbag:
Which, as they say in their Domestic Sluttery Bag Lust post, maybe only a child could pull off. Nay, I say to that, I would gladly pull this off and look crazy cool. If a little Gaga-esque. Which is never a bad thing in my books. Being a child has never looked so fun!
I'm having lots of exciting happenings recently. The lovely Laura aka JoiePR on twitter has just started the great Courtesy of the Apocalypse blog (sounds ominous... it's not! Just full of unsigned bands ~ music & reviews ~ independent businesses/shops ~ art & street art ~ alternative style ~ burlesque and other such awesomeness) and was kind enough to feature my work! :D
"Rachel Lewis’s illustration and graphic design work is so imaginative and playful, it is guaranteed to rock your ankle socks. The use of hand drawn image and text within her work is beautifully unique, and the lady herself says that she is inspired by “culture, fashion, new media, music and the future.” Bedfordshire-based Rachel is also available to do custom work via her websitehttp://www.rachelsayshello.com."
Well that's nice ^.^
I'm going to do a mammoth blog update/posting-stylee this weekend. I have SO many things to talk about and just NO time. How do other people with full time jobs manage to keep their blogs updated so frequently??
I guess they don't spend 4 hours on trains every day. Humph.
"The month of September; summer ends, classes begin. The coming of a new season is in the air as autumn approaches. A time of year when the natural world slips into a slumber, and Interpol releases it's fourth studio recording. The self titled, self produced, long-player will be available world wide in mid September."
You don't know how long I've been waiting to read that! Interpol are one of (if not actual... tough call with MCR though) my favourite bands and I've been scouring the interweb for news in the past 6 months or so. Note to Interpol: you're really hard to search for when you share the name of a world-wide police organisation. Or maybe you meant that. You clever weird bastards.
So you can download their new song, for free from www.interpolnyc.com - it's called Lights and it really doesn't disappoint. Insanely melodramatic and melancholy lyrics in Paul Banks' gloriously baritone voice, with a guitar line that builds throughout the song to finally break the tension. That's what's so good about Interpol, that amazing ability to create tension within the songs; sometimes it breaks, sometimes it doesn't. What draws me, unquestionably, are the lyrics though. Beautiful in their ambiguity yet so accurate in their empathy, I literally can never get bored of deciphering them and extracting new meaning and relevances in my life. Because let's face it, that's what makes great lyrics; finding the representation of yourself in there. Plus I'm a massive emo, inside. And a little bit outside too.
Rumours are that the Interpol LP (eponymous, always a sign of getting back to your roots) is a return to 2002's Turn on the Bright Lights; which most fans seem to be pleased with. I'm not too bothered really; I love all the albums, although I actually prefer Our Love to Admire; mainly because of the edge of darkness in the song's themes and lyrics; it felt like an album of anger, of betrayal, of utter resignation to how things are. But then Bright Lights has of course the epic NYC and The New, two of my favourite songs. Basically; I'm happy either way. Give me a smattering of lyrics like 'I've had seven faces, thought I knew which one to wear; I'm sick of spending these lonely nights, training myself not to care...' and I'm off in my melancholic glee.
They're touring the UK in Nov/Dec and I'm going to see them on 6th December at Brixton. That's 6 months away. Sigh. They're one of the only bands in my music collection that I haven't seen live and I'm trés excited. I think tickets are still available.
So we'll have to wait until September for new Interpol, until then, I don't think I'll grow tired of their back catalogue. So good.
Not quite sandals, not quite canvas pumps... these seem to be the strange twisted love child of both of them. Maybe they had an illicit affair and these were the result.
I love them. And at £20, I'm pretty sure my budget can stretch to that. Check them out on Topshop online here - they also do black but I much prefer white. I'd quite like to get the ol' markers out as well and do a bit of colouring in on them as well actually.
I imagine they're great as transitional shoes (which I'm needing today - massive rain storms then bright sunshine? An outfit's worst nightmare!) because I live in flip flops most of the summer but sometimes need something a bit more sturdy. Like yesterday, I slipped down a couple of stairs in my shiny flipflops. Never good.
I'm going into the West End on thursday after work I think, so I'll hunt them down then. I hope they don't sell out (they are rather cheap...) and size 5 is pretty much the most common size! Damn me for having mainstream feet. I'm sure they have lots though.
Sorry for the lack of insightful, thought-provoking and riveting posts recently; I've discovered continuous blogging and a full time job don't mix. Not like Sandals and converse, oh no.
On saturday I took the train back up to ye olde Midlands (as is customary for me) for a friend's birthday. It was at The Mailbox in Birmingham, which for those who have never been, is very nice. High end shops, with restaurants and bars. You are led there from New Street by abstract lines in the floor:
Which join from sporadically-placed lamposts. Honestly. It's pretty weird, but nice, you definititely don't get lost!
It's also very pretty, especially later on in the dark; this is the walkway up to The Mailbox. Pretty.
So when I came across the Harvey Nichols window, I loved it. They've got the safari theme going on, but to the extreme! I can't even begin to think about high their budget is; they look like bespoke mannequins to me. Behold:
Hundreds of small wooden blocks that make up the lunging panther-type thing. She doesn't look very worried.
The eye is made from coins! I think they're real. Nice touch. That crocodile is just breathtaking, a futuristic space-age safari.
I love the mannequin's silver hair and skin, and amazing eye makeup. The faces look so real.
They're just nonchalently hanging out with zebras, letting them eat strange paper rags, you know. As you do.
That elephant was insane. So huge, really nice. Strange cling-film-esque set up but it was kind of nice. A subtle nod to captivity? Perhaps.
Ok I don't love this campaign, but it's interesting and has made me think so I'll share. It's more 'Ads I love to think about' really. I'm not actually sure if I like it. I think it's clever... or is it just really annoying and arrogant?
You've probably seen the adverts, they're all over the place; in the tube, in the paper...
So the concept is 'The New Busy....' and then some slogan boasting about how they can do loads of stuff while still being ridiculously busy. And not stressing at all, and seeming to have an amazing cool life, while working 12 hours a day, and so on. Which clearly doesn't exist. Is it aspirational? I'm sure most of us wish we had a full diary while not having any kind of stress/pressure on us at all.
I'm not entirely sure why Hotmail are advertising, and why this applies to them. I've had a hotmail account since I was 13, and still do, and most people probably do too, but generally have a 'real address' as well. I don't give my hotmail out in a professional basis. Hotmail is not professional. It screams 13 year old girl. And probably always will. They can add all these 'useful' functions like calendars that synchronise with your cat and so forth; but I'm pretty sure 'The New Busy' has an iphone or a blackberry and does all their organising on there. Not on a free, web based, advertising plagued, email service. They just don't.
Plus, wasn't hotmail, MSN Hotmail, and then Windows Live Hotmail? What is it now? Just Hotmail again? It's like when they changed MSN messenger to Live Messenger. We kids still called it msn. You know, back in the day, before myspace or facebook. 'You going on msn after school?' 'Yeah! LOL!!!! :p (Y)' etc etc. Stop messing with the brand names. We don't care.
Some of the slogans are quite good. Some are just weird. Some are just a bit scary:
Crazy eyes? Shut up! It's not my fault I have to get up at 5.45am every day so am generally exhausted mon-fri! Jeez. Don't be mean. I work hard. I'm just not superhuman like this 'New Busy' seems to be. I'd love to be 'New Busy'! It sounds like have some kind of major career focus yet still do the student-stamp-on-the-hand-where-did-we-go-last-night thing:
I miss that! Waking up with stamps on your hands. And face. But I didn't zing out of bed, do some pilates, get the train to work and create something amazing before 11am. No. I texted my friends incoherent words, then found some kind of bacon-type substance. And I did not check my emails. Or schedule my day.
What I don't like about it, is it echoes this pressure in our modern lives to be awesome 2.0. It's crazy. And I'm not immune to it; I do play 'Fill the diary':
And I usually fail. I do 'see things others miss', generally. But that just comes from my general observation powers. And I do wish I had time to exercise, and time to illustrate as well as my full time graphic design job, and I wish I had time to go to cool bars every night, and travel whereever I want on a whim, and time to chill out and not feel guilty. But I don't. I try to do all these things - and I'm just tired.
So I hate The New Busy, with all their smugness and superhuman time keeping skills. I'm pretty sure they don't have hotmail to thank for it though. Actually, do they even exist?
This campaign just makes me feel bad. And guilty for not being The New Busy. And wishing that I was. And knowing that if I was, I would probably be awesome 2.0. But I'm not. I'm just tired.
The most interesting part of this campaign for me though is they managed to get an experiential element in there. OF COURSE. The New Busy is allll about the experiential. They practically demand it, from their skinny lattes to their brainstorming sessions:
'Blue Screen Lagoon' at various places, including Canary Wharf. Well of course, bankers are the The New Busy. Basically, you could go along and pretend you were doing crazy awesome things like tight-rope walking. 'All from the comfort of a blue (or even green) screen - oh, that's so New Busy.' What?? That doesn't even make sense!. I hate you, New Busy. It was happening yesterday (28th May) and guess what - I couldn't check it out. Why? Because I was busy. WORKING. Yeah, take that New Busy.
New Busy would probably tell me to shut up and get him a skinny latte.
'Frivolity Fields' - 'The New busy likes nothing more than extreme knitting, circus tricks, sideways guitar....' Ugh. It sounds sickeningly awesome and pointless. If I was New Busy I wouldn't have a 9-5.30 job. Nope. I'd be freelance and could saunter over and do some extreme knitting. See, New Busy just makes me feel bad.
If I was New Busy, I would've been one of the marketeers coming up with these crazy ideas. Extreme knitting sounds exactly the kind of thing my busy mouth would have said. But alas, new graduates really aren't New Busy. We're just trying to have some kind of career.
I nearly forgot this. My blog turned 3 years old (that's quite old in blog years, I feel proud) last monday, on the 16th. Hurrah for me!
It all started rather inconspicuously towards the end of my first year at uni, here, as a way for me to publish my university illustration work. I then started rabbiting on about stuff I liked and my life, and it all spiralled from there. 200 posts later (I was never that prolific, I write much more frequently now) and here I am.
Any suggestions about things you want to read on my blog? There are quite a few of you merry little minions subscribers now, so don't be afraid to chip in, I love comments like I love cake.
This is a fairly simple thing to covet - it's not out of my meager price range so will probably be in my happy hands in no time. I thought of waiting until then but I want to share it now - it looks so tasty. Computer Arts' Book of Inspiration:
Looks pretty sexual doesn't it. "The Book of Inspiration is a new luxury volume from the makers of Computer Arts magazine, featuring 192 pages of the world’s very best digital art, design and illustration."
It's £14.99, and has interviews and work from some really inspirational people - James Jean, Non-Format, Neville Brody, Airside, Hort, Vault49... It's also got a foil blocked and die cut cover, which is always a winner with design fetishists. Like moi.
I wouldn't say that it's particularly groundbreaking - I can't see any emerging artists there, just established ones with amazing work. Which is nice, but these people already have their work everywhere. Inspiration comes in many forms, and it is nice to have books like this to flick through.
I did this interview a couple of months back, and then my life went into overdrive with my new job that I completely forgot to actually talk about it! Which is crazy seeing as I was damn excited about it.
The really awesome Tom Rosinski, who is a writer and graphic designer at Crushable.com, contacted me saying he really liked my work and wanted to feature me! Click here for the full interview.
Crushable is a really great fashion/design/entertainment/culture online magazine, based in America, I suggest you save it as one of your bookmarks.
Wine. Everyone loves wine. Nice nice nice. I generally prefer the red variety, on a friday night to melt away the worries of the week. Or, as tonight, on a tuesday night because it was already open and I like to numb things. Wine labels are quite fascinating to me, as an illustrator/designer it's nice to look at the care (or not, in some cases) that are gone into their designs. Who hasn't bought a bottle of wine because the label was nice? (especially if it's half price, that's always good too.)
So imagine my glee when I discovered that Basso & Brooke, those crazy fashion designers best known for their fearless prints, have teamed up with little known wine company Turning Leaf (well I'd never heard of them) to design these amazing bottles. The first image is from this spanish(?) site, the larger images were kindly emailed to me from Turning Leaf themselves after they saw this original post. Aren't the designs amazing? Here is bit more about the collaboration from Turning Leaf themselves:
- As well as curating a blog for Turning Leaf, where Basso & Brooke will open up their little black book of secrets, the designers will also be developing a range of bespoke, limited edition products with Turning Leaf.
- Some limited edition products will be available to Turning Leaf customers and others via exclusive retail partners.
- The blog will reveal ‘what’s hot’ during the Spring/ Summer months and will be hosted on the Turning Leaf Wines website
- Over the next six months Basso & Brooke will also be launching a series of Turning Leaf events, including an exclusive retail partnership and a pop up shop in April.
- Basso & Brooke will be visiting the Turning Leaf vineyard in California's Sonoma Valley near San Francisco, following their London Fashion Week show on 23rd February
The pop up shop sounds amazing - more info from me on that soon....
Here is a good article from the FT about the collaboration - discussing their inspiration from Jeff Koon's collages, with this great bit - "Brooke presented Dennison with the flamboyant bottle and said, “It’s not particularly conservative.” Dennison inspected it. “And Turning Leaf has traditionally been a conservative brand,” he said.
“But you’ve got to be on people’s lips,” said Brooke. “You’ve got to think out of the box.” Dennison warmed to the idea. “This is going to catch their eyes,” he said. “Then catch their fantasy.”
I think that idea is great - Turning Leaf's motto is 'Taste the Colour' and you certainly get that feeling from the designs, which have snow leopards and volcanoes (how apt) intertwined, among other things. Wine is always seen as so serious - even when you drink it, you feel somehow more restrained, and sometimes wine is fun and you want something that isn't all Serif fonts and cream, heavy matte paper. You know?
As soon as I find more of the shots of the bottles, I'll post them. In the meantime, Basso & Brooke's website is here -beware, you can do nothing but click to open an email, but it's still pretty, and Turning Leaf's site. Here are some images of Basso & Brooke's amazing fashion design to get your juices flowing...
Just beautiful examples of what can be created with digital printing techniques and genius handling of colour. Oh, to wear something like this... and have the legs for it... ah.
All images credited to where I found them, etc etc.
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