A Non-Permanent Unrequited Public Art Installation

Since I moved to Rickmansworth a few years ago, I have taken an almost-daily walk around the local park, the Aquadrome. I chuckle at all the waterbirds and see child after child fall off their micro-scooters on my travels, but it mostly serves to keep me fit. None of my jeans fit me any more, which is a nice problem to have.

A couple of months ago, I noticed these two frames erected by one of the entrances:

I figured they weren’t filled at the time so the concrete they were affixed with could set. So many weeks have now passed that the seasons have changed but the frames still haven’t been filled. The Rickmansworth Festival in the park came and went too, and I thought for sure they would be filled in time for that. Alas, they stayed empty.

Then the idea hit me – why not fill them myself?! I’m not down with vandalism, so I figured I could staple some canvas to them without causing any lasting damage, and I had a nice little project for the Bank Holiday.

I took a little bit of inspiration from Austin, Texas’ Hi How Are You? frog, which has become a bit of a landmark around there as they seem to appreciate the greeting. Perhaps my people will appreciate it too?

Something Creative Every April

It’s been a weird month of daily creativities this April, blogland. I’ve been feeling generally uninspired all month and I think it shows in my output here. I can’t believe I made that terribly wonky stretcher almost a month ago but still haven’t painted anything on it, for example. My letterpressings have been coming out nicely at least!

Oh well. Here’s hoping the next month is more inspiring. If it isn’t, I might have to take a holiday!

After the fold are all the old direct links, for posterity’s sake. Continue reading “Something Creative Every April”

Something Creative Every Day this March

Looking back on the past month of daily creativities, my favourite image by far is of the Chocolate Milk Horse. I don’t know why it appeals to me so much.

The other daily creativity business particularly worth noting is the Love Japan thing – a little logo I did for a fundraiser for the disaster in Japan. We’ve had the design printed onto T-shirts, which are now available from the Hospital Shop for £15. All the proceeds from these T-shirts will go to the Red Cross’s Japan earthquake appeal, so if you like the design, you can give to a good cause and get a T-shirt out of it too!

After the fold are all the old direct links, for posterity’s sake. Continue reading “Something Creative Every Day this March”

Three Little Websites

Hospital realised that WordPress isn’t the be-all and end-all of creating functional websites, which was great news for me as hacking up themes take a surprisingly long time! Instead, I’ve been getting to be a little more freeform with the websites I’ve been creating for them lately, resulting in these three little websites:

NuTone.org

The idea for this site was borne out of a conversation with Matt Riley, the man in charge of web promo at Hospital. He suggested that as our tracks end up on YouTube anyway and we had such a striking cover photo, that we could make the page a big version of the album cover made up of YouTube videos.

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Something Creative Every Day, February 2011

Happy March, internetters! As we are almost a week into this month, February is well and truly over and now it’s time for another SCED project roundup. I always feel a bit bad when there aren’t other posts between these roundups on the blog, but I was a little bit late with posting last month’s roundup.

So the biggest thing in the past month in my creative world was the revamp my website underwent, although that’s already posted about here. I hope you have been admiring that whether you are a new visitor or old, but I’ll leave that to you!

After the fold are all the old direct links, for posterity’s sake. Continue reading “Something Creative Every Day, February 2011”

The first daily creativities of 2011

And here are the (slightly late) first four weeks of daily creativities for 2011. This covers my last few days in Texas, a couple of days off while we travelled home, and what I got up to while getting back into the groove of work. A lot of food-related creativities, by the looks of things!

It’s been a robust month of creative nonsense though- my favourites are the Rider, camera case, and drawing of sour cream chicken enchiladas 🙂

After the fold are all the old direct links, for posterity’s sake. Continue reading “The first daily creativities of 2011”

That’s right, it’s time for the loosely triennial website redesign!

Hello Internet types, and welcome to the latest incarnation of my website/portfolio! I find myself doing this once every couple of years, which makes sense being a designer and all.

The old site was getting out of control!

The new site now has bigger images, a less sprawling portfolio and some nice slidey interfaces, which I am surprised I even got to work! There is also a new iPhone-friendly version of the site too, which to be honest needs a bit more work, and I shall hopefully do over the next couple of days.

This blog has seen a tiny slice of updatery too, but nothing too drastic- I have upped the size of the text by one point, as I thought it was a bit difficult to read before, and increased the grid it is designed to alongwith it. The new site also adheres to the same grid too, to try and finally give my site and blog a bit of coherence again. Hooray for grids!

On the packaging of cigarettes

I happened upon the Graphic Design outfit Build‘s blog this morning, where I discovered their post from earlier this month about de-branding cigarette packages. If you’re gonna read my post, it might be worth giving theirs a look first.

This is a government proposal I actually agree with, so I was a little disappointed to see the point in the proposal was a bit overlooked. I was going to suggest Build missed the point, but perhaps it was Icon magazine who missed it, as they set the brief; ‘could [cigarettes] still look good while warning smokers?’.

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FOOD; cooking and eating in and out of Austin

When one goes on holiday, they are prone to being asked what they got up to when they get back. It’s a fair enough question, but I like to go on holiday to relax, so doing nothing doesn’t make for interesting conversation. I realised, though, what we did do while away was a fair amount of cooking and eating- both in and out of home, and even in and out of Austin, and with that came some interesting visual stuff out of me.

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