AW | Thoughts of a Graphic Designer

Two letterpress jobs

2012-01-26T14:19:00.000Z

I deviated in the last two posts and started writing about food all of a sudden. I think it might have been for good though, as its probably the other big thing I'm passionate about apart from design. Unfortunately all good things don't come in three's as now I'm switching back to design for a moment. Food will feature again, but for now something about paper.

Still here? Good.

I'd placed two letterpress jobs at the marvelous Glasgow Press right at the end of 2011, so thought it a good time to talk a little about those jobs now they're both cold off the press.

My good friend Kirsty Anderson (aka A Wooden Tree) needed a hand getting her labels printed to go along the magnificent stuffed stags heads she creates. I almost don't know how to label Kirsty. Textiles artist, designer, creator (should be fun if we get onto business cards), but one thing is for sure is she's one of the nicest people I know, so I wanted to get her the best possible print for her luggage tags.

Having already selected a more unusual recycled brown stock known as Cairn Almond, Glasgow Press set about mixing a spot brown for a special deep impression into the board. Printing brown on brown is a little daunting, but their judgement based on my Pantone selection was excellent.

I can't take any credit for this design as it was all Kirsty, just the simple matter of redrawing the artwork in vector form and some minor adjustments to the kerning and this was good to go. The stags heads are beautiful works of art, and they deserve a suitable tag to go with them.

From a favour for a friend

Kirsty recommended me to photographer Claire Cox got in touch about working on a new identity. Claire shoots weddings, but also commercial jobs so needed something that wouldn't date, and suit both audiences. We went through a few initial ideas where this near finished design appeared. Moved away to a script based logo for a while then came full circle in favour of something set and customised in good old ITC Avant Garde.

The print is a little different in this case, as we wanted to work out one of the most economical ways of producing letterpress cards. Dan at Glasgow Press suggested the cards were printed 'two up' meaning a single block is used so cards are printed two at a time. This is fairly normal for cards on a single stock, but in this case the cards were printed onto duplexed card (GF Smith Colourplan White / Pale Grey) meaning we split the order and received half and half on each colour.

Sound confusing?

Basically, The logo side was printed half on white, half on grey. The contacts details the same. Obviously this approach doesn't work for all cards, but in this case a single colour ink and subtle colour change in cards meant we were able to produce twice as many cards for a significantly lower price.

Great clients, great printers, both ended in excellent pieces of work.

Best kept secrets: Carriers Quarters Toastie

2012-01-15T20:46:00.000Z

It must have been early 2008 when Espen,my new workmate at the time, first suggested a Friday lunchtime pint and toastie. In the passing years this had grown to be a tradition, albeit a irregular one that has seen many a coworker come and go over the years. The short walk to Henry Hall's Carriers Quarters in Leith isn't quite far enough now that I know whats it holds in store.

The Carriers Quarters Toastie (hence forth known as the CQT) is thing of dreams, the mythical beast of foods, pure ambrosia if you will. I don't think I've ever deviated from a CQT Chilli & Cheese in nearly four years, I just keep going back for more.

This sandwich is bursting with home made Chilli, and oozing with sharp cheese. The break is cut like doorstops, I dare say they get three of these from a loaf. Washed down with a pint, this behemoth of a sandwich only sets you back around £6.50 which is the most pleasant surprise of all. I challenge you to find a pub knocking out any toastie and an alcoholic beverage for under £10 in todays world.

The Carriers Quarters is a historic tiny bar dating back to 1785. The front room is almost all the bar itself, stacked with bottles wrapping wall to wall. The back room four stone walls decorated with barrels for tables with ample space for a big party. The lack day light and a clock (and daylight for that matter) remind me a little of casino tactics, you forget where you are once you've been there an hour. Ah, might as well stay for another. I've still yet to make it down for this, but apparently the self serve breakfasts over the weekend are a steal at £4.50.

Check out the honest and plentiful reviews on Google and BestPubs for more feedback.

Down in Leith

You're actually spoilt for choice when it comes to eating and drinking down in Leith. Within a couple of hundred yards there are two Michelin Star restaurants (might be a few years before I start taking about them), the award winning Chop Chop, even the independent burger bar Diner 7, and my personal favourite The Kings Wark. But there's a special place in my heart and my belly for the CQT. This is unfussy pub grub at its finest.

Head down for lunch, order a CQT, have a pint, have another pint, just don't expect to get much work done afterwards.

The Epic Trencher

2012-01-09T12:34:00.001Z

If like me you spent your first Wednesday evening of 2012 watching Channel 4's new food programme, The Fabulous Baker Brothers, then you'll be no stranger to 'The Epic Trencher'. This monster of a steak sandwich had me thinking the rest of Thursday and Friday how myself and Cait would make this monster on the weekend.

You'll actually think living in Edinburgh, it wouldn't be that hard to get basic items like horseradish, or even wild mushrooms for that matter. The numerous shops we had to visit aside, its always worth a trip to Valvona & Crolla on Elm Row. This has to be the best sourdough loaf out of San Fransisco, and proved to be the perfect base for our sandwich.

Thoughts on The Fabulous Baker Brothers

I imagine Tom and Henry Herbert will get a bit of stick from the critics. They obviously come from good stock, own a bakery and butchery next door to one another, constantly remind you "we're brothers", and one of them even has a bit of a trans-atlantic accent. But you know what, all these things don't bother me, they make me want to watch more.

What else have we got to compare it to at the moment? Lorraine Pascale? (I'm sorry that woman can not cook ). Creepy faced Nigel Slater throwing some apples in with the sausages, then eating on his own in the rain?

As a young man who was brought up on the first series of The Naked Chef its good to see two chefs cooking food you might actually want to try at home. Unpretentious food doesn't come more humble than a chip butty, that has to go down as a strange first for any programme. The staged sibling rivalry for TV aside, I'll be tuning in.

Photoshop letterpress tutorial

2012-01-01T16:28:00.006Z

I recently had to supply visuals to a client to show them what their design might look like when finally letterpressed. Its a tough thing to imagine, as usually the idea can be so simple, but its the right combination of paper and ink that creates the desired effect. Sending over what I call flat artwork/plain vectors just wasn't cutting it, so I started to build letterpress mockups in Photoshop.

There is a great video based tutorial here, but as a bit of an organisational junkie, I saw lots of unnecessary steps in this process. I've tried to strip it right down for less experienced users. If you are a dab hand in PS you can probably skim this tutorial and jump straight in.

What's letterpress?
Letterpress is a truly historic form of print. Its rumoured to date back to the second century in China. Books were handwritten until the first printing press was invented by Johannes Gutenberg in the mid 15th century, and some form of movable type was still the most common method of production right up until the last half of the 20th century, ultimately being replaced by the modern technique we know today as lithographical printing.

The process of setting type by hand by all means be a thing of the past, but small artisan presses and enthusiasts still offer the technique known as letterpress, as an alternative the full colour on gloss we've come to associate with being a good thing.

Its hard to fully understand the beauty of letterpress until you've held the crisp and heavy paper in your hands, and marvelled at tiny 5pt type, sharp as a tact and so much more detailed than any computer screen can offer. If you get the chance to print work this way I'd thoroughly recommend it, and also for the chance to work with some of the nicest people in the print world.

1) Start a new document

Just for simplicity I've started a 1000x500px document, this is purely for web, I'd normally work on an A3 300dpi document. You can always scale in down remember, but blowing it up just means you'll have to start again somewhere. Photoshop takes good care of sizes and resolutions now so pay close attention at the start to avoid problems later on.

2) Import/create artwork

Either import your final vector artwork from Illustrator, or create something quick directly in Photoshop. Whatever the artwork, its going to be deconstructed/broken apart, so I prefer to have an Illustrator file as my master version and just edit in Photoshop purely for effect. And chances to the artwork, and I'll go back to Illustrator.

The 'AW' is specifically for this tutorial so I just created it quickly in PS as I not precious about deconstructing it. Although letterpress prints very detailed in real life, it can be hard to show this on screen so I'm using overly bold shapes to exaggerate the effect. You can use whatever artwork you like, but may struggle with fine lines.

3) Background colour and texture

Double click on your Background layer in the layers palette to unlock it. Its locked by default in PS but we're going to edit this. Double click the layer again to bring up the 'Layer Style' options and click on 'Colour Overlay'.

You can now select a colour of your choice, in my case I went for #77b5ad. Now you'll have a coloured background on a black AW… lets add some texture.

There's plenty of good textures out there, especially from CGtextures, but I've found some of the best use for paper is, well, paper. I scanned Cairn Almond from a single recycled sheet, you can download this hi-res from my Flickr page.

Open the texture and simply drag this across into your document. Its probably a little too large for our 1000x500px document, so resize by pressing Ctrl/Cmd + T to fit the canvas size.

Double click the layer to bring up the Layer Style options again and set the layer style to 'Hard Light'. I should mention that Hard Light is correct for this colour/texture, you'll need to experiment to get the best results each time. 'Overlay' is a handy one to start with sometimes.

You'll notice the green colour has changed slightly and looks a little brown. This is due the texture already having a brown tint. If you used a greyscale document there wouldn't be colour change but I find it easier to adjust this colour using a 'Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer'. This can be found in Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation.

Adjust the sliders so they look like this.

So now you've got a textured background with subtle high/low lights, but the artwork is untouched. Lets dive into that.

4) Adding effects to artwork

The basic settings to make the letters pop are quite simple, the trick is just to not over do it, so its still looks realistic. You can apply these filters up to a certain point in Photoshop where the text is still editable (if you created your text in Photoshop), but you'll need to rasterise your type at some point so its no longer text, I do this at the start.

Double click the layer to bring up the Layer Style options again and check the boxes for the following four options, adjust the sliders so they match the following settings.

Drop Shadow - Normally used to give a raised appearance, but this time we want the artwork to be lower than the background, so we're using a white shadow where the light would be seen.

Inner Shadow - This complements the white drop shadow by adding a dark edge inside the letters. This acts as the most obvious effect really helping things to stand out.

Inner Glow - This one is really subtle (you'll notice size is set to 1px) as its there just to take the sharpest edge off the lines and make it slightly imperfect. Optional really.

Gradient Overlay - This adds a subtle top to bottom fade from dark to light, further adding the illusion of light being cast across the design. My gradient goes from #4d4d4d, to #3a3939, to #232323.

Please note - these values are proportional to the 1000x500px document size, if you were working on an A4 300dpi document you may have to increase the values to be able to see the effects. Like wise if you start on a large document and resize any unflattened layers the effects will probably be too strong. Always work on the biggest document you can, save copies and make smaller files later.

You should now have something that looks a little like this. There's lots of 'clean' effects on the artwork but we need to apply a texture to the fill too to make it match the background.

5) Adding texture to artwork

Hover over the AW layer with your cursor (right over the little AW preview thumbnail) and Ctrl/Cmd + click, this selects any artwork on this layer and brings up the 'Marching Ants'. You can do the same thing by using the Magic Wand (W), but I've always found the layer palette more accurate.

Still have your Cair Almond background texture open? Good, now you want to select that entire document (Ctrl/Cmd + A) and copy (Ctrl/Cmd + C) it.

Now back into you working document with the marching ants round the letters, you want to paste this background inside of the selection. Shift + Alt + Ctrl/Cmd + V, or the long way of Edit > Paste Special > Paste Into. You'll now have something that looks a little like this.

Now don't worry, you may wonder where all the layer effects have gone you just some time making. They're still there, this texture has just been pasted into a mask on top thats all. We just need to make a few adjustments to its own later effects and colour.

Double click on this new later to bring up the Layer Effects and set the vales to match mine. Hard Light 66% opacity, Fill Opacity 78%. Again these values are quite specific to these particular colours and textures, you may find Hard Light isn't working for you so try the other options. The last thing to do now is create another Hue/Saturation Adjustment layer to get rid of the brown tint still showing through. Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation, and slide the Saturation down to its resembles grey.

An important thing to consider when using Adjustment Layers is whether you want it to be applied to everything below this layer, or just that specific layer. In this case we only want to affect the textured fill, so be sure to check 'Use previous layer to create clipping mask'

6) Finishing touches

You could leave the design like it is now, but even the textures effects look a little uniform. If you were to letterpress such a large area like this the ink would start to break up and you'd have some beautiful imperfections. I add two layers to do this, one black, and one white for some irregularity.

Start two new layers at the top, and name these 'White' and 'Black'. I'm quite a stickler for keeping my layers organised in groups and naming things properly, so if you've been following correctly so far your layer palette might look something like this.

Lets start on the 'Black' layer. I've been building up a brushes collection over the years from other designers and some of my own, but if you've not got any 'dirty' brushes available then you can't go wrong with the eight starter packs from Eduardo Recife of Misprinted Type. Just click on 'Goodies' and download the .abr files. To load these in Photoshop, is really simple but Adobe do a great job of hiding the menu.

With the brushes palette open, click on the tiny arrow top right to bring a dropdown menu, and locate 'Load Brushes'. From there you can locate the files you've just downloaded and they'll appear in your palette.

Ctrl/Cmd + click on your AW layer again (Step 5) and then select the White layer. With a brush of your choice loaded and the colour swatch set to white paint over the top of the the AW. Because you have the marching ants up, you're only painting inside the selection and not onto the green area. This could also be done with a layer mask afterwards if you prefer not to have the marching ants up as a distraction.

You'll probably notice the brush marks are a little too strong, but thats OK, don't change it from white, just lower the layer opacity to around 35% and you'll get a much more subtle effect. Then continue the same process for the Black layer and experiment with the layer opacity to get just a few subtle dark lines.

This part of the tutorial is very much personal taste, you'll only get the hang of it once you have a go yourself.

7) Thats it

If you've made it this far you've learned to make a faux letterpress effect for your artwork. The same principles can be applied to multiple grouped layers for more elaborate artwork than my simple AW. I've added the 'after' badge back in there for good measure. Here's a quick animated gif of all the steps.

If any of the steps are unclear please leave a comment below and I'll answer them as best I can, good luck!

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My Dad the original hipster

2011-11-05T19:55:00.000Z

While I was down visiting my Dad recently before he went in for a hip replacement operation, my Uncle Neale turned up with some pictures that can only be described as a peach. The envelope was a little mixed up, so I'm not even sure what decade these are from. Given the clothes, and covering of hair on my Dad's head I'd guess these were '70s, at least 6-8 years before I was a glimmer in the eye.

Just look at my Dad, he's a regular Don Corleone. And we'll never know if this shirt was fancy dress, or just he every day clobber. Thats him below left with my Auntie Jean, and my Mam on the right with him too.

In the foreground is my Uncle Neale, in Majorca also late '70s. I've been told this was a time when the tiny Spanish island only had one telephone. Going on holiday was a much different experience back then, no roaming data option to keep you linked to the office here. Unfortunately I don't know who the other two gents in the photos are, I'll have to find out.

I'm a big fan of camera apps for Android, my new favourite a slightly lesser known PicPlz to the iPhones Instagram/Hipstamatic. It lets you apply filters to shots from your phone in a non-deconstructive way. So much like Adobe Lightroom, you can always go back to the original image, or apply a new filter.

PicPlz lets you do this online after uploading. Don't like that Russian Plastic Camera? Change it for a '70s effect. All along deep down though, you know it'll never compare to the ones in your parents have in the attic.

There's one more picture I didn't bother including in the post as it ruined the set, myself in 1992/3 taken at the school I was attending in Florida at the time. I wish I had that shirt now.

My Cambridge Satchel

2011-10-23T21:04:00.000+01:00

My Cambridge Satchel finally arrived this week. They did a lovely job of the personalised embossing, set in a typeface called 'Edinburgh' coincidentally.

Fancy tonic

2011-10-01T21:23:00.001+01:00

So here we are, a day into October and with an unexpected heatwave across the nation. Unfortunately it had to come to an end today for Scotland, but its set to push 30° down in London on Sunday. This is quite a roundabout post, other than the fact the warm weather made get out of the office for a few hours on Thursday to shoot some test images for our soon to be released sample issue magazine at White Light Media.

Unfortunately I can't really talk about it, embargo until the printed copies come back. But the topic is alcohol, gin specifically, so in this mini feature we're looking at some accompaniments in the form of tonic.

I love a Gin & Tonic, love it. So even the thought of our very professional (lol) tonic tasting session was enough to motivate me to try some photos out this week. Obviously these images probably have a thousand flaws noticeable by a decent photographer, but it wasn't exactly easy with such mismatching bottles. Some green, clear, plastic in there too for laughs, not exactly a matching set.

They probably just need some Photoshop work, but I'm quite into these being low-fi. The drinks industry (especially in Whisky Land) is obsessed with images so highly polished they might as well be digitally rendered, so I was keen to do exactly not that. I must admit, the work of David Loftus (think every Jamie Oliver book and Jamie Magazine) always inspires me. His food work looks so casually delicious, sometimes not even employing a food stylist. I'm not even sure he uses strobes, everything just look so naturally lit.

Check back soon for an update on Hot Rum Cow magazine.

At the time of posting we have made zero effort into social media, so god knows how those 13 followers even found us.

Being 28

2011-09-12T21:44:00.000+01:00

I turned 28 on Friday. I've still got two years before the big one, so didn't feel much cause for grand celebrations this year. Being the centre of attention is my worst nightmare anyway. We spent a pleasant four days milling about, eating, drinking, did I mention eating? The weather has been a washout over the weekend, so a trip to the zoo was cancelled, along with the Glasgow Transport Museum. They'll all have to wait for another day. Quality not quantity is how I wanted to spend a four day weekend, and did just that.

My work found the most awesome stationary from Present & Correct, with a custom embossed AW into the leather pencil case. They must know me too well, as I'm a sucker for personalisation of items. So much so, I decided to order a Cambridge Satchel with my initials embossed into it also. Have a wait a month to see how that works out though.

Caitie found me a wool blazer too, I've been looking for the right one forever so glad to finally have snug fitting one of my own to last through the winter months. Wool jackets, leather satchels, personalised stationary… bring on the next meeting!

~~Red,~~ ~~yellow~~ and ~~blue~~ aren't even the primary colours. Cyan, magenta, yellow and black for print. Not sure how that got past such a well executed set of stationary, but hey, can't all be perfect.

Wayward Daughter designs

2011-09-04T17:01:00.000+01:00

If you don't know already, my fiance Cait runs Wayward Daughter, a personal style blog and more recently online shop where she sells individually crafted dresses and collars. So this was an opportunity to work on a personal design project close to both our hearts, and move WD out of from screen and onto paper.

You'd think being so close to your 'client' would make the whole process easier. On the contrary. When you know each other too well and aren't afraid to let rip… it starts to get quite awkward. But countless lovers tifs (or artists disagreements as I'd like to think of them) later we had the basis of swing tags, stickers and labels, and produced for practically nothing each time. For the next batch perhaps I'll insist some professional print services, but like any startup knows, cashflow is tight, anything we could do ourselves is a bonus.

I redrew the heaviest letters of Bullion WF from Wild West Press, and ordered two rubber stamps from an online shop. The newly crafted clean letters were then ready to be naturally distressed again under the beautiful uncertainty of hand stamping. Cranes Crest 100% cotton from GF Smith is a subtle off white stock, and softer than paper made from trees. Meaning even at 600gsm cutting with a scalpel is like a hot knife through butter.

We looped with black ribbon and finished off with a special black safety pin sourced online. For the label inside the dresses, we simply re-used the stamp for the reverse of the swing tags (half masked out with tape), and a Dylon fabric marker. A hot iron and you've got a washable label. I'm working on a third stamp for the inside tag whilst writing this.

Lastly dresses were wrapped in tissue paper and sealed with a circular sticker from the very cheap and brilliant Moo.com. All in all a small but ultimately rewarding project.

You can see some of my favourite pictures we've taken in the last year over in my portfolio page.

Stwo Exhibition

2011-08-21T11:33:00.003+01:00

I spent most of last Sunday night and Monday morning up in Aberdeen, to see my friends work on display at Kilau Coffee. I've known Stu Ford since his days in Edinburgh, and posted a little while ago about his wedding in Las Vegas. Stu Allan a more recent friend, but his work no less mighty.

Their work couldn't be more different really, the first Stu an illustrator pulling inspirations from Japanese and Skateboard cultures (the works of Jeremy Fish spring to mind). All framed a little mismatched only adding to their charm. The second Stu works mainly oil on canvas (or skateboard), and creates somewhat eerie and moving paintings. The kind of pieces you wouldn't want to be left in a room with too long on your own.

The show was orchestrated by Wld Wlves (your new favourite blog) and sponsored by Brewdog, anCnoc whisky and Mearns&Gill. Its doesn't take a genius to figure out when you've got two drinks brands throwing alcohol at you, it can turn out to be a messy night. Cue after party images.

The show runs until Saturday 8th October, so if you're in Granite City, get yourself along there.

If you're ever in Exodus in Aberdeen, don't start taking pictures as its quite likely either a girl dipped in orange, or a very large bald man with gold studs for teeth will think you work there and want you to take their picture. There's that international gesture for 'take my picture' you can recognise no matter how wasted you might be. I had to oblige, even if I charged then for it. Now I've got a load of pictures of randoms (not pictured) I don't know what to do with.

National Museum of Scotland

2011-08-02T22:28:00.005+01:00

I think the main part of the Museum closed not too long after I moved to Edinburgh. So not really having any memories to go on, my trip to the museum was an endless array of possibilities. I've got to admit I'm a bit of a killjoy. I hate it when people w a l k s l o w l y i n f r o n t o f m e e v e r y w h e r e, overcrowded spaces, and bad coffee. But look past a few foibles and the Museum really is a fantastic day out for everyone. My favourite part was the taxidermies, and 'fake animals' mixed in there too. Why a scarab and a giant crab were sharing a display cabinet I'll never know.

I look forward to going back soon, this first run was more of a sweep. This is the bit where I shut up and let the pictures do the taking.

I was very happy to find a printing press

Notice the fonts from Wayward Daughter?

Charlotte Building- when print meets web

2011-07-28T21:46:00.002+01:00

This book has been sitting round my desk for over a year now, and I kept thinking someone would do better and there'd be no point in writing about it. But, in this ages of digital magazines apparently taking over (highly unlikely) I've still never seen a marketing solution come close to the execution for the Charlotte Building.

This is what they've done:

1. Beautifully designed and printed hard back book.
2. Accompanying flash website.

And thats it. The brochure has been designed by MadeThought, with strong most of the emphasis being placed on the photography and styling. The content is then translated to something between a website and magazine format. There's an intro you can't really skip, but those 10-15 seconds of paused photography and well thought out dialogue goes down well in this case. Once you're past that you can navigate in the typical fashion and continue to download documents for offline reading.

Whats interesting here is they've not gone for a middle of the road website with a simple PDF download of the brochure on there. I'm the first to admit I take in content via the web more than most, but its still limiting in terms of design. If you take HTML as a happy middle ground, then they've blown this apart by creating a lasting print product and one off website. No 'share with your friends on Facebook', or 'follow us on Twitter' here. And why would you want to? Its a building after all, not a cake shop.

For once I'll resist on going into how this has been printed, as I discovered this has been written about before by Justin of Fenner Papers on his blog.

Chinese Lanterns

2011-07-07T20:21:00.006+01:00

Myself and Caitlin were recently down at my folks house, as it was my niece's belated 18th birthday celebrations. There was a photographer at the party itself before the young ones hit the town (sadly not myself anymore), so I didn't take any pictures until much later on.

How any of these pictures even came out alright is a mystery with the amount of G&T's I'd sunk already. So with further risk to self combustion some Chinese Lanterns were set off from the back garden. I must have been shooting these at 2000 ISO with my eyes half shut on manual, full credit to the camera in this case.

Electric Jellyfish Tshirt Tutorial

2011-06-17T13:42:00.004+01:00

I've been meaning to write a tutorial for how I created Electric Jellyfish for Threadless since 2007. I've also received emails about it forever, I find it hard to believe anyone wants to know how to do this, as the technique is one of the first ever things I learned in Photoshop. But then again this is me, I need to ask where the spell check is in InDesign every day.

Unfortunately I've misplaced some of the working files for the design, but its fine, to make things easier I'll do the same thing with a slightly simpler graphic. You should be able to get the gist all the same.

First some history…
I actually made the artwork for the final design in Illustrator 8, Photoshop 6, and a copy of Adobe Streamline. For those of you not old enough to know, Streamline was a magical program that only ran OS9. So I had to boot up in Classic fro OSX to make this work. In short, all it did was convert bitmap to vector. You can now do this in Illustrator under the well abused 'Live Trace' feature, but a fundamental understanding of resolution (dpi) and threshold are what really still make the difference in my opinion. Basically, if you start with crap, it'll probably end of like crap, don't expect a 100px 72dpi JPEG to look good as a vector on an A3 poster.

1) Start in Illustrator with a simple shape

Create a new Illustrator Document of 1000 x 1000px and simply draw a circle edge to edge of the canvas so you've got a 1000 x 1000px circle also. You may find this easiest with Smart Guides turned on to ensure snapping to the grid.

Resize the circle to 50% of its original size so it sits in the middle of the canvas. You can just draw the circle to 500px in the first place if you like, so long as its centred.

Draw a box this time edge to edge of 1000px, and give it no fill or stroke so its just an invisible square. You should now have a black circle sitting inside of an invisible box.

2) Moving to Photoshop

Copy everything from your Illustrator document (including and empty square, we're just going to use this to set some space to work with) and when still in your clipboard, go 'File > New' in Photoshop.Now, Photoshop's default tendency is to bring this in as a 1000 x 1000px document at 72dpi. But we don't want that.

Change the resolution too 300dpi and simply click cancel. Then 'File > New' again and you'll be presented with the right 300dpi setup for print. You can work on smaller files, but with bitmap to vector to want to work on the largest possible file size as it'll save you having to do it twice when someone wants a bigger version.

Now you can finally paste into Photoshop's window.

3) Feathering a selection

Using the Magic Wand (quick key W), tap on the black circle. Create a new layer and turn off Layer 1 where your artwork is so you can just see the marching ants. Go 'Select > Modify > Feather' and enter 150px.

With the feathered selection now back in Photoshop, go 'Edit > Fill > Fill with black' and you'll end up with a horrible looking gradient pf black to white in a circle.

4) Masking your feather

This is probably the defining characteristic in what made Electric Jellyfish, where the dots fade from large to small. Go 'Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal All' so you get a layer mask showing in your layers palette.

Next select your Gradient Tool (quick key G), make sure your swatches are reset to black and white, and click on the Gradient Editor that displays a little gradient by default (found just below 'Photoshop' in the top menu). Then be sure to reset this to 'Foreground to Background'. Its important not to confuse this with 'Foreground to Transparent' or 'Black, White' as those won't give you an editable gradient you are about the draw out.

Drag you Gradient Tool over the circle until you have masked out about the half of it. Its takes a little while to get to grips with how this works, and you might have to drag beyond the canvas area to get the desired effect.

5) Converting to bitmap

Go to 'Image > Mode > Greyscale', then 'Image > Mode > Bitmap'. The input settings of your document just refer to the current dpi you have set, an the output settings refer to exactly that, the final output size. Rather than blowing up your vectors, it makes sense to have biggest possible file to import in the first place so you can scale this down later. So enter 600, and 'Halftone Screen', all will become clear.

The frequency is what controls how tight your dots are. Generally the smaller the number the less dots you will end up with. Angle doesn't really come into play when just doing elipses, but if you had chosen 'line' in the previous step then this would control the angle of the lines.

Hit OK and and your gradient will convert to a bitmap. It may look a little crushed so be sure to go 'Image > Mode > Greyscale' and make the Size Ratio 1. You'll have a faded heavy to light dot going from top to bottom now, but also radiating from the centre at the same time.

If you wanted to go back and adjust the gradient or bitmap frequency you'll either need to keep a working version of the file saved, cause one you've bitmaped and closed the file there's no going back. Finally save as a TIFF for importing into Illustrator.

6) Converting to vector

Head back to your original Illustrator file and create a new layer. Place your newly saved TIFF onto the canvas and align it centred so its covering the original circle. Don't worry if it looks awful, Illustrator always handles TIFFs like this, all the information is there it just previews poorly.

Go 'Object > Live Trace > Tracing Options', you may get a file warning as the file we've created is quite big. For this particular image I've just used the default settings but it does pay to experiment with the sliders.

Be sure to click 'Expand' in the menu bar along the top, and then you'll have black vectors, and white vectors. Using the White Arrow (subselect) click on one of the white fills, and go 'Select > Same > Fill & Stroke', and with all the white selected in the document delete this.

You're now left with a single selection of black as one vector which you can group for an easy selection. Don't worry if this looks a little jagged on screen, just zoom in and you'll see the circles have rendered very smoothly.

7) Adding Colour

All you have to do now is add a grey background colour, change the dots to blue, and create some artwork in white to sit on top of the whole thing. I've just brought in the line work from Electric Jellyfish to show it sitting in place.

On a final note, getting the right feeling for the dots on Electric Jellyfish took a long time to perfect. The right combination or Gradient, Bitmap Frequency, and Trace settings are specific to each project. You'll get very different results by just changing one of these settings, so they need to work in harmony to create a balanced feeling. This is a complicated process at first so feel free to ask any questions.

Happy ~~Streamlining~~ Live Tracing!

The New GF Smith Paper Selector

2011-06-10T13:49:00.002+01:00

This has been exploding on Twitter recently (amongst designers anyway), so I'm a little late, but my copy, well White Light Media's copy, only arrived a few days ago. So what better time to talk about it. The old GF Smith paper selector was presented in a rather large and complex folder of various fold outs an swatches. I sometimes used to sit there for hours just trying to get my head around the different stock they offered, so obviously something comprehensive was needed for designers and printers. From the creative minds of SEA Design, and over a year in the process comes the new Paper Selector.

The one piece clamshell box is lined on Colourplan Pale Grey (a personal favourite), and the inners in the new Factory Yellow. This matched to process yellow, mark my words its going to be huge this year. The full contents are broken down quite simply into three sections, and some subsequent sub sections.

Select Colour, Select Black + White, and four further books; 1 Colourplan, 2 Smooths, 3 Textures, 4 Specials.

One thing that really stands out in this design is the use of only PMS877 (silver) printed throughout. Not even a black. I'm sure collaborations with designs, photographers and artists will follow, but this body of work shoudl really remain timeless on whats already a cluttered shelf of paper samples. This is about as minimal as it gets, you've got to love swiss inspired design.

Papers now laid out by colour rather than range, with corresponding number system to take you to one of the four swatch books. For instance looking for a reflex blue? Navigate to the top left hand corner to see a short selection of colour on different boards, then a corresponding number sends you to one of the chip books for further analysis.

Subtle use of reportage from the main warehouse in Hull break up detailed technical specification. The only use of process colour in the pack.

New substrates make an appearance in the books too. Twist is what I can only describe as a very fibrous paper, frayed edged and heavily scored. You know when you have a well used chopping board… thats what this is like.

Gmund Bier, made from waste products in the beer manufacturing process.

Superclub at Urban Outfitters

2011-06-05T13:40:00.008+01:00

I went along last Thursday night to see some collaborative illustration and sculpture work by Ross Christie and Matthew Swan of Superclub. I can't even begin to describe their work, so I'll just let the pictures do the talking. Who knows what goes on in their minds late at night, I'd be scared to live with either of them I know that much.

Steptoe's Yard - the place for junk

2011-04-30T21:35:00.002+01:00

I think we're going to have to make a trip to Steptoe's Yard an annual event, as if my coincidence we stopped here last Sunday exactly a year after out first trip here. Again Stu and Shelly were with us, and this time Neil and Lucy too. Its out in St Cyrus too which is half way between Aberdeen and Dundee on Scotlands east coast, not exactly a hot spot of activity. You've got to go out of your way to get here even, but if you're ever on your way north (or south) I've advise this detour.

I was disappointed to see the fallen wardrobes as far as the eye can see removed, and some sort of basic organisation out the back. But apart from that, its still the place for water ruined electrics, bird shit covered books, and chinked tea pots.

Unfortunately I didn't have the tripod or wide lens so this'll have to do, but there a good days shoot here if anyone is up in St Cyrus anytime soon. You can see last years pictures on my Flickr here.

This has to be the biggest spanner I've ever seen

Whoops, how do that one get in there?

Linotype: The Film

2011-04-18T22:42:00.002+01:00

I often wonder what it'll be like when I hit 65, assuming you're allowed to retire then. I'm sure I'll buy a golf ball rack, start hanging out more in the garage than in the house like my Dad does, and inevitably start fixing things that aren't broken. But like every good designer, along with my myriad of paper, there must be something more. Let me introduce… The Linotype.

I'd die happy tomorrow if I had one of these to play with. I've still no idea if this actually had a theatrical release or not, but I'd hold out for the DVD for sure. Type geekery at its finest ladies and gentlemen.

Thats all for this update, I'm off the scour the pages of Gumtree to see if anyone has one of these for me to have a look at.

Antalis McNaughton – The Review 2010

2011-03-16T21:32:00.004Z

If you've read one or two posts here or seen my site, then you'll know I'm a big fan of design in print. Just about any printed material for that matter. I've a big folder of anything thats caught my eye for the last few years stuffed into a drawer in my desk, really I do! So anything that celebrates the medium of paper tends to draw me in like filings to a magnet.

The Review is a yearly and ongoing competition held by creative paper merchant (and mill) Antalis McNaughton. The winning finalists have all been posted on their Flickr page. I could wax lyrically about paper and ink all day, so for your sake, I'll just share a few favourites from this years well deserved inky winners.

And my non progressing entry
Unfortunately I only had one job on any Antalis stock this year, and that was Exova's Christmas Card, which didn't make the shortlist. For my two pence worth, it was printed on 350gsm Curious Metallic Ice Gold, with a metallic silver ink to both sides.

Cleaning up with six awards

2011-03-07T13:53:00.002Z

Friday night saw the whole White Light Media team out at the IoIC (Institute of Internal Communications) Scotland Awards. We were shortlisted for no less than seven awards this year, and I think its safe to say we pretty much cleaned up our categories. Thanks to my good friend David Anderson for letting us use his pictures from the night. You can see them all on the White Light Media Flickr page. Without too much self indulgent trumpet blowing, I'm glad to have been a part of these projects and picked up these awards with the full agency out for the night and on form.

Best Employee Magazine
The Exova Magazine

Best Use of Imagery
The Exova Magazine

Best Use of Interactive Media
Life Ezine

Best Ezine
Life Ezine

Best Redesign
Life Ezine

IoIC Gold Award
Life Ezine

Creative Cities for Channel 4 was also highly commended in the Best One-Off Publication category. You can see spreads from Creative Cities in my portfolio section. You can see my favourite pages from the last four issues of The Exova Magazine. Unfortunately Life is a rather large Flash magazine, so isn't ready for external viewing, but I'm working on it.

The one that got away

2011-02-22T12:20:00.000Z

We go through all kinds of pitches at work. This one was no different to the rest, other than the fact I was quite short on time when I came up with the concept. I short a generic 2010 annual review, images were few a far between, so it'll have to be something quick and clever. As it turns out this job is going no further which is why I'm posting it up here. A simple repetition of the number ten, twenty times was a creative solution using nothing more than twenty of my favourite fonts and a theoretical gold ink.

There are a combination of freeware and licensed fonts in here. I suppose this would have to have been reviewed for the actual print, but still a cost effective option. The design was then turned into a pattern and tilted 45° to be used as a repetitive tile for the inside pages to simulate tradition book binding.

Cover

Pattern

Johanna Basford Starbucks Campaign

2011-01-23T17:13:00.006Z

There was quite a buzz on Twitter on Friday, when Edinburgh based Illustrator Johanna Basford started a campaign for the Starbucks Christmas Cup 2011. Lots of retweets obvious made an instant impression on the intended recipient of the package, Starbucks UK MD Darcy Wilson-Rymer as it appears he was back in touch the same day.

I've just lifted the shots from Johanna's site (I hope she doesn't mind) as its been such a long time since I've seen a proper packaged up pitch going out. I seem to have become so obsessed with the optimum PDF settings and getting those digital files just right, I've lost touch with good old parcels. This does take me back to the college days when we were encouraged to send ridiculous creative packages to prospective employers in the hope getting their attention (thank god I didn't send anything to people I could think of now). This particular package has a certain something that would be hard to ignore.

Johanna's work is something I know I'll never be able to do, and quite happy in my reservations that I don't even want to try. Leave me with a pen and piece of paper and I'll write you a nice note (confident I do have lovely handwriting), but I could never freestyle this Starbucks cup with such precision.

You can read the original blog post on Johanna's Blog. Lets hope Starbucks pick up on this anyway, and I can go to Ocean Terminal in eleven months time and see one of these for real.

Trust your instincts

2011-01-15T09:17:00.016Z

Its not often really nice business cards come my way, so when one does I tend to make a song a dance about it. After all, all the nice business cards are with the competition, so how would I get hold of those?

One half of Trust Print Consultants is Allan who I met a few years ago now when he was working for a rather stunning print outfit in Leeds. Allan is from my part of the north east so there's always a connection there. Since then he and his business partner have started Trust.

These cards look stunning, are really make an impression when laid out on the desk in front of you. I've not got the official spec but I know this is a duplexed GF Smith Plike (black and white) with silver foil to both sides and and embossing to one side. The hand lettered 'trust' in the metallic foil really pops on the flat black stock. I've not got any reference to hand as I'm writing this on the train but if you've never seen Plike, get a sample. Its probably the closest thing to rubber you can print on thats still paper. I've had a dummy sitting in my desk for years and its almost wipe clean.

I'm not actually aware who designed these, or even who printed them. All I know is they were printed in Scotland, I could hesitate a guess as there are only a handful of places that do this kind of finishing. But some of the best things so stay secret in my opinion.

Power cut smiley face

2011-01-05T23:44:00.000Z

We had a power cut or two at work today, what else can you do but drink cuts of tea in the dark (we already had the kettle boiled) and draw faces with torches? I've really got to get out there and do some light painting.

Creme/Egg Part Two

2010-12-27T21:54:00.000Z

I've been waiting a while for the second part of Cream/Egg, first seen on Vimeo. Its good to see some original British Comedy thats a little rough around the edges. This 'short' might be a little long at around 20 minutes but its just about as funny as the BBC's recent offering on Come Fly With Me. And I'm sure that wasn't shot in a day. Perhaps Peter Kay isn't the only north-west comedy after all.

If you find this episode a little long though, start with Cream/Egg Part One.

Go Reborn ‘pop-in’ #GR4

2010-11-21T16:52:00.003Z

I went along on Friday night to the fourth installment of Go Reborn at the Such&Such Gallery. There was a fantastic range of illustration, photography and collaborations from talented Edinburgh folk on display. In fact, the exact wording from the newly launched Go Reborn website says it better than I ever could:

#GR4 is a promotional weekend to celebrate the rise of our new online activity at go-reborn.co.uk. Here you are able to enjoy and discuss the many projects we surround ourselves by as well as purchasing original products direct from super-talented artists and designers. ‘pop-in’ to our open studio to see the online magazine’s pages adorning the wall. Featuring collaborations with Godiva Boutique, ECA graduates, Noir!, Tommy Perman, Robbie Porter, Totty Rocks and many more…

David Anderson was at it again with another 'people-scape' after brilliant results the first time round back in August 2009. The finished result is whats displayed above, click on it to see it bigger. Come to think about it, this was a really terrible thing to not take my camera along too, must try harder next time. If some pictures become public I'll add to this post. The Go Reborn website is also brand new, a lovely clean modernist template which I'm sure will look great in years to come. Although saying that, its the content that'll be king.

Las Vegas and San Fransisco

2010-10-30T10:13:00.001+01:00

Back from our two week and few days holiday to Las Vegas and San Fransisco I've been a awake more than I've been asleep fighting off the jetlag, so its given me quite a bit of time to go through the 1202 pictures I took when I was there. Believe me there would have been more if it had stopped raining in San Fransisco for a few days so I suppose the edits I made will have to do. Here's a few of my favourite shots though. You can see full set of pictures here, or click on anything below to go to the Flickr set.

Fear and Leaving

2010-10-08T22:25:00.000+01:00

It's been one of the most stressful weeks of my life. So far these five days have thrown impossible deadlines, learning new technology, making friends with new agencies, playing out on a school night, design talks, new keys not working, and all of this when I should have been home packing or holidays. You should never leave this stuff to the last minute.

In about 24 hours time I'll be in Las Vegas, hopefully Caesar will be welcoming me much like in this picture I found. I can't actually wait. Who knows, I might even try and post an update from the Delta flight that has WIFI on board.

Is pop better than booze? This guy thinks so

2010-09-12T22:44:00.001+01:00

Obsessives: Soda Pop from CHOW.com on Vimeo.

I absolutely dare you to start to watch this film and not feel touched by this man. Its just about impossible to stop watching from the outset, maybe its something to do with the fact we all love pop (I can't bring myself to call it soda, although the derivative from soda-pop seems to make sense), or maybe its just John Nese's genuine passion and love for what he does. Who else gets to go to work and "play all day long" as he says. Even holding it together for this short film seemed too much as he leaps out of his seat mind sentence to see what the guys want to drink.

This is a beautiful film, and an opinionated and driven individual who obviously cares for his customers and enjoys sticking it to the man. The man in this case being Coke and Pepsi. I better come clean though and admit I am a Diet Coke drink (sorry John), but do enjoy an Irn-Bru any day of the week. I was glad to see my local Fentimans Traditonal Curiosity Cola was a favourite choice Cola according to The New York Times. The Northumberland brand is clearly making a world wide impression these days.

But what did I learn?
— Glass bottles are the best as plastic bottles breathe and let out the carbonation.
— Corn syrup sweetened drinks aren't good. Look for cane sugared drinks. I don't think this is such a common practice in the UK due to our lack of 'corn syrup' in stuff anyway.
— You can have different sized bubbles.
— Recycling really can't compare to reuse.

Great minds think 'The Like'

2010-09-08T13:52:00.006+01:00

"You'll enjoy them, they're all pretty hot". Those were the words of Caitie when she told me I was going to see The Like a few months ago. I am pretty bad at actually giving new bands a chance sometimes, but a quick look on their website had my attention early on. I've got to be honest, for an all girl band who've just put been in a string of UK festival dates, and working with the magical Mr.Ronson this was a fairly poor turn out, even for a Glasgow crowd. Everthing that man touches turns to gold, so how a feisty four piece for L.A. went largely unnoticed at King Tuts (my favourite venue) I'll never know. But after todays third Spotify advert featuring the band I'm sure the next tour will be more received.

Sorry to dwell on the lack of support, on with the show. The Like tore through their new album Release Me with the kind of experience and pace of someone much their elders, and even to my slightly heavier tastes I was thoroughly enthralled the whole gig. The lead singer and guitarist Elizabeth "Z" Berg screamed and pounded her way through songs, all along looking like butter wouldn't melt while (but you know she'd kick your ass if you stepped out of line).

But its not all music and stage presence. Their design for the cover of Release Me (out this week in the UK) is a refreshing change and contrast to typography I've talked about recently. I always dread to think about choosing a typeface I love and being made change it towards the end of a project (usually for Arial), so getting this right for dresses must have opened up a new world of challenges for the designer. I don't actually think these letters are based on a typeface but I like to think someone was consulted before the production went ahead.

Music, fashion and typography often meet, but rarely do they sound and look this good.

Good Ol' Invites

2010-08-30T22:21:00.000+01:00

I'm sure you get invited to things on Facebook more frequently than you care to attend. The format is great, its been a real time saver using this feature built into Facebook, and not to mention incredibly handy when the venue has changed at the last minute and I've received a message to let me know where to go.

But… the art of the invitation poster is dead as a result. Party flyers are not supposed to be fine works, you almost expect to see someones head cut out and grafted onto another body (and badly), trust me, I've been there other. The worse the better actually, so long as it makes you laugh, ans you know who's throwing it. Even if the day is wrong, that doesn't matter either. You can always find that out from someone else going anyway.

So in the spirit of good times, and ignoring my inner designer purist I've come up with a little something for my birthday bash in a few days. Good taste is out the window here. All fonts and stock are available from the fantastic Walden Font Co, in the Wild West Press selection for a nicely priced $49.95

Your Lucky Day

2010-08-15T10:12:00.000+01:00

Your Lucky Day from Dan on Vimeo.

I came across this short film on Vimeo the other day, although my cinematography credentials are slightly limited [non existent] I still enjoy a short film. If you've got 15 minutes over lunch, I can't recommend this enough. And, its always interesting when an actor you recognise from the past pops up. Good to see Rider Strong from Boy Meets World in there.

The Conemen cometh

2010-07-17T22:57:00.013+01:00

I've been a big fan of Laurence Winram's work since I first googled "Photographer Edinburgh" about three years ago. So I was very pleased to see some of his personal Coneman work up in the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh on Friday night. Laurence obviously spends a great deal of time in pre, and post production to get results like these.

Its seems now everyone has a copy of Photoshop and has figured out how to do a brightness/contrast on their favourite pictures, make a batch upload and call themselves a photographer. So this was refreshing to see traditional techniques of what Laurence said himself of 'making a photograph' rather than taking one to create these surreal and beautiful art directed images.

The work stays up until 29 August, so get yourself along and buy one of the editionalised prints. Watch this space to see work from the Dead of Night series.

Finally a good use for Akzidenz Grotesk

2010-07-01T12:18:00.000+01:00

Making of "Hello Brooklyn" Video from Gregory Solenström on Vimeo.

Just simply watch this, brilliant!

Street View inconsistencies

2010-06-18T15:12:00.000+01:00

View Larger Map

I was just trying to direct someone to a bus stop using Google Maps, or more specifically Street View. I love this service, I must have looked at every street of everyone I ever knew. Obviously the Google van had to go home for the day at some point, and there will be crossovers of photographs to build up this massive network, I've just never seen one until now.

Click on the bus stop sign in the frame above to watch it not only disappear but also be replaced by a load of roadworks.

A new kind of full page ad

2010-06-15T20:01:00.001+01:00

I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like this before, a full page tracing sheet ad wrapped around The Daily Telegraph today. Tracing sheets are nothing new, but this tends to be sheet fed print work or actual bound books, not mixed in with the 680,000+ editions of the the newspaper. I've not been able to find anything else out about this on The Telegraphs site, but if anyone knows anything about it I'd be keen to know how this came about.

The ad itself isn't particularly special, although it is a typically clean and simple message from HSBC. I'm quite excited to see more if this kind of thing, certainly looks nicer than how huge ads have now become prime space directly under historic mastheads.

Don't move during the World Cup, you'll just end up looking like me

2010-06-15T08:48:00.000+01:00

So picture the scene - you've driven all over town swapping cars for vans, moved furniture, boxes, rehoused the cat, cleaned the old flat - you're pretty knackered. All you want to do it watch the first England game at 7:30. You know there won't be any digital TV right away but you can always rely on the terrestrial arial. You plug it in, no signal. Disaster! Someone has cut the cable coming from the roof into the living room. But there's a TV port in the kitchen! A trip to Maplin gets you a 10 metre extension to run that across all the unpacked boxes to the waiting TV by the window. This giant lead plugged in… still no signal. Its 6:30 and this is starting to look bad.

Another option is to try and stream the match over the internet. But there's no internet (well, not until next Thursday anyway). Setting up the Mac by the window seems like the most sensible place to find a connection. At least 15 networks show up, non of them are open. There's always one good egg who has an unsecured connection, but not this time. Some frantic guessing of passwords as 'password' don't get you very far either.

Suddenly a brainwave that a booster arial like we all used to have in the bedroom might work. A series of phone calls, no-one sells these anymore. Sheer pot luck leads you to Asda where their selection of these is nothing short of vast. The time is 7:15 and you haven't even got the arial out of the packet. 10 minutes of scanning is slowly revealing new digital services one by one. You don't know what channels these are yet, you only find that our at the end.

"20 digital services found" hoora! BBC1, BBC2, Channel 4, Chann… what? Not STV. Yes, its actually possible you can tune in every digital service with a £16 arial from Asda with the exception of STV. At this point you're almost in tears. You can't find a bottle opener, the food hasn't arrived and your phone's dead.

There is one final option which is the tune the TV manually and balance the arial on the highest thing you can find in the house. A coffee table and upturned bookshelf will do. Do this, and you've got a blurry, ghosted, and sometimes black and white England match ready for viewing.

This is how I spent my Saturday, Caitlin took this picture of me about 5 minutes into the match, pizza on my knee, arial pointing out the window, watching two of everyone on the screen while I was probably the happiest I'd been all day.

Don't ever rely on technology just working, it never does.

Channel 4's Alternative Election Night

2010-05-04T23:24:00.000+01:00

Brace yourselves, there's less than 48 hours until the single most day of important day in our little country since I've been old enough to make a contribution. Strangely I'm not feeling too hyped up about the whole thing, but then again who is, we're British after all. I wouldn't at all be surprised if the whole thing was over by half ten and off to bed for an early night.

Channel 4's Alternative Election night has taken my eye though. Firstly I can't miss the giant billboard on my way to work, and the one after that! But I like how the slight adjustment of the hue to the Union Jack has really given this a subtle but genius twist which really says this isn't official! I'd expect nothing less from Channel 4 really, but it just goes to show you how important colour choice is. Had this had been the typical red and blue, it wouldn't have worked at all. Be sure to watch the campaign videos on the Channel 4 site too, they hit the spot.

Long Lunch Event 35 - Graphical House

2010-04-16T08:55:00.005+01:00

Fresh up this morning from the Graphical House talk put on by Long Lunch, at the Glasgow School of Arts. This was quite an inspiring little event. The partners of Graphical House and what was Skratch went through many slides of what got them where they are today.

From humble beginnings in a spare room and patio furniture, right through to advertising campaigns for Schuh and prospectuses for The University of West of Scotland, they've certainly had an interesting progression. I only wish now I'd taken some notes but that would have been like writing in the cinema.

I'm very much looking forward to the next event.

Emergency Glass

2010-04-07T19:34:00.001+01:00

I've been travelling for 11.5 hours today now, and been waiting all that
time to get a decent shot. After being stuck on a stationary train for
40mins it gave me enough thinking time to try capture the 'Emergency Exit'
sign in the low sunlight. A little video might follow this too.

Victorian Infographics

2010-03-24T22:46:00.001Z

I'm a little slow on the uptake, and shamelessly just reposting something from the Relentless Energy blog, but my god, these graphics need to be seen to be believed. Hand drawn, pre-computer infographics. I know how difficult it is getting vital information out of people in the 21st century, god only knows how many carrier pigeons went backwards and forwards to make sure the Missouri was actually 3,610 miles!

And to think I trained to do infographics, what a waste!

My only real modern day comparison is my good friend and endlessly talented designer Mark McCormick. His site TYPE INDICATION™ is very much worth a look to see how things have moved on.

But its not all just ripping off real blogs and name dropping, some original thoughts are coming soon, I promise.

Thrice gig poster on Glee?

2010-03-10T08:14:00.000Z

OK in order to actually highlight the fact I noticed a Dashboard Confessional / Thrice / The Get Up Kids poster on Glee last night would mean I actually have to admit I watch Glee. Damn you E4 for making everything so shiny and irresistible.

The funny thing I was actually in Florida at the time this tour was happening in 2004 and went to one of these shows. It was probably the worst gig I've ever been to. Horrible acoustics and some strange drinking laws on a Sunday evening meant I couldn't even have a drink by the time I was there.

A crazy little blast from the past, just a shame I have to fess on to Monday nights dirty little secret to make it work. On a really strange co-incidence I went to see Thrice last month in Glasgow the night after Glee first started on E4.

Spooky!

The ePad

2010-03-03T13:48:00.001Z

Probably the best spoof since the last one I posted about (see The Sun Newspaper parodies) comes the ePad, from E4. You've got to love this kind of thing. I might have even shamelessly caught this after watching Glee, but I'm not certain… maybe.

Howies Spring 2010 with a difference

2010-03-01T14:57:00.004Z

The Howies catalogues are nothing new, I must have been getting these for 4+ years. I've never got rid of one of them either. In fact they're all at arms length from where I'm sitting right now. But when the Spring 2010 arrived in this mornings post I was more than pleasantly surprised by the change in format.

Newspaper! Lovely lovely newspaper. Unusual at 310mm x 235mm format, but the colour reproduction is fairly spot on considering what this paper usually does to your images. I think the charm of this catalogue is the creative white space, and lets be honst there's not much room for white space in anything right now (the decline of advertising anyone?).

To see something using this space is not only refreshing but a solid bucking of recent trends, even in graphic design not ad based products.

The Winter 2009 edition saw some original poetry and short stories, and this one is no different. As usual the art direction is brilliant, and showcases new photography and illustration. Its nice that your not just getting products rammed down our neck, but more loosely placed alongside something more meaningful you'd actually read on is own merits.

Lets hope it keeps this format next time.

A.B. Book

2010-02-27T16:35:00.004Z

I couldn't resist the Anthony Burrell book in Analogue Books just now. It was a great talk/event held by Long Lunch the other week. Just making it to see the exhibition now though, I'm a bad art fan. This book is lovely though, and the spine is open covered in bookcloth so it lies flat. Ahhh, you beauty.

Again, this was posted 'on the go' whilst enjoying a pint in Bon Vivant.

Phone > Flickr > Blog

2010-02-25T12:45:00.003Z

If this looks a little crappy please excuse me, I'm trying something new.
Take picture on phone, email (while outside) to Flickr (kept private) with
description, post to blog automatically. I hope it works out.

BILLY turns 30

2010-02-18T15:17:00.008Z

I was stumbling round IKEA last night and found this rather lovely product. Its a commemorative book for the BILLY Bookself which is 30 years old. I don't actually own one of these, but have certainly had my fair share of IKEA solutions in the past. I realise I'm about 6 months behind the time with this find but hey, the book has never been out before.

I'm a complete sucker for any book covers that use board instead of papers, and this one shows great ingenuity with a die-cut name and bright red spine linen. The image where the name has been cutout is filled with a large photograph of the bookshelf in use.

Really simple idea and execution showing you don't need over artworked covers.

Further information about BILLY's designer Gillis Lundgren can be found here.

Screen printing is 'disky business'

2010-02-10T15:31:00.005Z

I went back to the Edinburgh Printmakers last week to get to grips before I attempt something big. I still don't know my arsehole from my elbow but it was good to experiment with the different papers (thanks to the office overflowing with samples).

I come to the conclusion I'm still terrible at mixing colours up, even after all these years. It was like having a flashback to year 7 double art on a Monday afternoon where I'd spent half the time mixing up paints just to throw out 2 hours later. Thank god for Pantone colour referencing systems.

Next time I'm going to go for something bigger though, A2 or A1 perhaps. If anyone wants one of these prints I've got a few, just ask I'll post one out.

Old Lost promotional ad

2010-02-04T12:42:00.014Z

Click to view bigger

Tuesday 2nd February 2010 sparked the start of season six of ABC's epic Lost. It made me think I've given five years of my life to this programme now. I started watching it at when I worked at The Scotsman where my colleagues and I were all fully obsessed with it pretty early on. When it left Channel 4 and I only had council telly I became a serious downloader.

Actually while I'm at it, anyone from ABC reading right now that would like to lift the ban on non US users who want to catch up on your shows on line rather than selling it the Sky who ruin everything? The irony is I actually have Sky and still download Lost.

Just thinking of those hours racked up on Lostpedia.com when I could have been doing something more useful makes me wonder, if it all going to be worth it in the end? Every January/February for the last few years I've been giddy with excitement knowing its all due to start over again, but this time I'm not so sure. Why, because its ending. I know this is the last time I'll ever be able to experience it for the first time. Is this what Harry Potter fans felt like?

Any box set owners of the first season will be well acquainted with the Dave La Chapelle trailers shot exclusively for Channel 4. I think I originally saw this during cinema trailers which was quite odd. But I'd never seen the press ad until the other day. I came across this on the 4 Creative site, which is brilliant by the way. Still a beautiful and surreal twist on the pilot episode.

If you've never got into Lost, you've got half a decade's worth of catching up to do.

Worst suggestion ever

2010-01-29T20:44:00.003Z

I saw this sign in Glasgow Central Station on Tuesday. Honestly, what the hell is this all about? Yes, I understand the idea of adding a sugar syrup into your coffee might be a novel idea to say, my Dad of 71 years, but an espresso? Espresso is the basis of nearly all coffee drinks Costa, Starbucks, Nero etc actually sell. This is like suggesting you put a shot of booze in your bitter.

Yes yes, there's filter coffee, but we're only at Costa because work doesn't have an espresso machine and we're hooked on frothy caffeine injections!

Come on Costa, get your fucking act together.

Frozen river, this just doesn't happen here

2010-01-22T00:26:00.002Z

I can hardly believe I'm sitting here now and its only 5° (according to the Weather Bug app). A few weeks ago we were all scared of the weather, nearly everyone I know had two Christmases due to the snow disrupting their festive cheer.

The first week back at work was brutal, especially the first Friday back, on the 8th of January. This is the day The Water of Leith was fully frozen over. I wish I'd had my actual camera with me so the mobile shots will have to do.

I'd almost completely forgotten I'd even taken these, so surreal.

Overdosing on 'The Road'

2010-01-12T21:38:00.007Z

This past week I've been a bit obsessed with The Road. The book, newspaper reviews, magazine themes, but not the film yet.

Anyone who knows me knows I get through about a book a year. What can I say, I read to go to sleep so only manage the same few pages most nights.

But Cait suggested I try reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy, author of the No Country for Old Men which was brilliantly adapted to film in 2007. It was probably one of the better films I've seen in the last 5 years I'd even stretch to say. Not soon after buying it I realised my one of my favourite magazines Little White Lies had made this bi-monthly issue around The Road and its context. And a bleak, harsh, grey, and downright grungy issue it is too. Not a far cry from the norm but the type treatment in ash was a particularly nice touch.

Creative Director and illustrator Paul Willoughby has made a cracker of the Viggo Mortensen cover too. I'd expect nothing less from The Church of London though, as this magazine picked up "Best Designed Magazine of the Year" in 2008. And rightly deserved too.

The contents of this issue feature around the ideas of a post-apocalyptic world, and ideas how it may all come about. My favourite feature a four parter with page headings Atomic Annilhilation / Deep Space Destruction / Trans Human Takeover / Biological Breakdown. A strong recommendation to buy this issue even if you don't buy another ever again.

I'm no book critic, but I can only judge how much I enjoyed it if I managed to read the thing in 3 days and around work. A new record for me indeed.

As for the film, well, I'm off to see that tomorrow night. I'll be the on crying into my buttered (never EVER sweet) popcorn at the end. The text was a tear jerker enough, I don't know how I'm going to hold up to the big screen. I just hope its not sold out and I haw to go see Avatar and get stuck in a conversation about "how good the special effects were" or some crap. Co-incidentally, I did hear a good one about how Avatar is the the best movie of its kind since The Smurfs!

The office Christmas card

2009-12-18T23:18:00.005Z

Doing Christmas cards for anyone is difficult I always find. There's just no limit to what you can do. But it's also quite frustrating having the limitless potential, then your client not wanting to actually spend any money or do anything different. Our Christmas card this year was hopefully a refreshing change. One thing I'd decided early on was to not to look for any inspiration on the usual sources (iStock, Photolibrary etc) as this would influence the idea on way or another.

I've got to be honest, the idea was conceived on a post-work beverage when I wasn't even there. When I was told the following Monday I was like "ok, thats stupid" but was quickly converted. Essentially a 50's theme (no good reason, just fun) would be adopted and we'd shoot a video and dub the classic "White Christmas" with our name in there somehow. Full credits to Fraser my boss who did 100% of the video. I was lost with that. But I did get to come up with the card idea and arrange the photography/design.

Photography
My good friend and favourite photographer David Anderson was listed to shoot us in The Kings Wark on a quiet morning. We pretty much cleared half the pub, removed everything from the walls and shot 100+ images in 10 minutes. It was during work hours and we left the place in the hands of a freelancer, so time was of the essence.

Design
The beautiful font by Jessica Hische Buttermilk was purchased. I did take a lot of inspiration from the preview graphic from the MyFonts site, but hey, its a Christmas card who cares right?

Print
Obviously you can't see this here, but we chose to get this printed digitally by the brilliant Cova Colour Print in Leith on Fedrigoni Speldorgel, a super fine uncoated stock. This added to the vintage theme while ensuring clarity and vibrancy.

The Sun newspaper parodies

2009-12-14T20:25:00.000Z

Although the Apple ads for iPhones, iPods and iMacs are still quite off kilter with the rest of the ad world, these ads from The Sun are just brilliant. I was particularly fond of the mention of the "26 inch, panoramic matte, CMYK, full colour display". Just those words alone show you how much technical waffle they put in ads trying to wow you, with something thats quite apparent. Very clever touch there.

I'm a fierce believer in print, I don't think it'll ever die. I'm not saying The Sun (or any newspaper for that matter) will last but the printed word is still much more powerful than whats online.

I only heard about this as today and though I'd just try and get it on my new phone. There were a few loading problems, and I had to wait to connect to a network before it fully loaded. Just goes to show you, even what they were taking the piss out of actually happened to me in the middle of a major city.

Hopefully there are more of these to come.

Grafik do Olympik

2009-11-22T21:33:00.003Z

International design journal Grafik recently collaborated with 39 of the UK's top designers at the London Design Festival (including Daniel Eatock who is one of the creators of Indexhibit which is how you're looking at my site now). Profits from the sales of the posters were being donated to the charity Right toPlay mad the GB Paralympic fund. I only wish I could have been to the actual event held last month, but I got my hands on one of the books given out at the event.

This is a very special book indeed. Designed by SEA, and printed by TEAM impressions, this falls nothing short of drop dead gorgeous. It's all printed on GF Smith Zen (probably my favourite paper) and the edges have been gold gilded. I've got a feeling we're going to be seeing more of this in the near future. The cover has just been debased and printed with a metallic gold throughout.

The whole thing just screams luxury, and the posters are quite a refreshing change too. The only downfall perhaps is the fact they don't all work on a small and you need to read up on all of them to make entire sense.

If you like posters, or the Olympics, you need to own this catalogue!

My two favourite posters were both type led.

Boxing by John Morgan

Rowing by North

I got social skills

2009-11-17T21:30:00.001Z

I'm honestly not one of these people who gets really excited about phones, but whenever I'm due one I start to get excited. With Orange now stocking the iPhone I was quite sure I'd go for one, but their tariffs were quite disappointing. Everyone seems to have jump to 24-month contracts now too, whats all that about?

After a brief flirt with a Blackberry, I decided to try out the Motorola Dext with Moto Blur. I've had this phone about 4 days now and I've got to say, if this isn't the biggest challenge the iPhone has then I don't know what is.

I've been syncing my contacts with Google for over 2 years now anyway so there was no need to even do any kind of sim card transfer. Simple turn the phone on, register a Moto Blur account, my Google account, other social networks and watch the magic happen. Seamlessly peoples info from all these sites flowed to the phone without me even knowing about it.

I was sceptical, thinking this would never work, but I've had no problems thus far. The Android App Market probably isn't quite as big as Apples, but who cares. Does your iPhone have a metal detector? I don't think so.

Great séance image

2009-10-31T21:44:00.001Z

I've been watching Most Haunted Live this week, and the séances (although the most unconvincing part of the show for me) got me thinking it might be nice to create some kind of design from one. I found this image on my mac I forgot I even had. I don't even know where I got it from, probably an old packed job from The Scotsman.

Its actually from 1922, Fritz Lang's film, 'Dr Mabuse, Der Spieler'.

Creepy!

111 years of graphic design

2009-10-29T17:25:00.000Z

On Monday night I went to a travelling exhibition put on by GF Smith, probably the finest paper supplier in the UK if not the world. Their own website does them not justice, there stocks, swatch books, and branding are all some of my favourite.

But this was about a collaborative effort, and showed how this 111 year old, privately owned paper merchant has kept graphic design alive and going strong. I actually missed the beginning of the lecture (damn ECA buildings) but the work on display was stunning. Anything there could have been printed tomorrow and still look like it was designed in the future.

I recognised swatch books from about the last four years, but it was interesting to see how these would looked to an ad guy in the 60's. I suppose then the client asked for red, and it was your job to pick one from the chart. None of this messing around to accommodate for badly setup screens.

After seeing such brilliant work from agencies like Pentagram, and Sea Design I can't help but think all the work on screen is slightly killing the trade. I've been brought up on it, but I probably would have learned a lot more 10 years earlier. It doesn't help they build software that lets you "design" your own things now into every PC or iMac, but nothing can replace whats built inside us I guess.

The understanding between designer, printer, and paper supplier was greatly demonstrated at this event. Look out for it at a town near you. I hear the Uni tour is coming up after this one.

27" iMac, you're kidding me!

2009-10-21T20:37:00.001+01:00

So there I was flicking through a few subscription emails today when something from Apple popped into my inbox. I knew it was coming, but not this soon. The new iMac is here. There's no point in me wobbling on about it, you can see for yourself in a video with the lovely Jonathan Ives.

Watched that? Good. There are some things I'm quite excited about immediately. Firstly is to actually see a massive 27" display in practise. I've got one of the 24" iMacs now, and its still huge! I really didn't think they needed to go up, 27" seems insane. I've always fancied a pair of 30" monitors pesonally, but that'll be for the 2011 release no doubt.

Something the both excites and dissapoints me is the keyboard

Yes this comes wireless as standard, but its still missing the whole right hand side of the keyboard. Why have they stopped giving us this for free? The numerical keypad is so vital to every day work, I don't even think I could use InDesign without this. I don't even know what the key is called (bottom right) but it forces a page break. How do I do that now Apple? Oh but don't worry, you can still buy one for £28.

Something that does thoroughly excite me is the new mouse

At a glance, it seems that gestures are finaly getting their full recognition here. If you're already an Opera 10 user like me then you'll be used to using the mouse in more than the point and click ways. I don't know if any of these gestures are going to translate to other browsers but I'd certainly hope Firefox and Opera get it working as this does look revolutionary. It'll also hopefully put an end to dead scroller balls in the Mighty Mouse!

So all we need now Apple is to have full sized wireless keyboard with the new Magic Mouse. Is that too much to ask?

National Rail hell!

2009-10-11T19:24:00.003+01:00

I'm on a train on my way back from London with a half day stop off in Newcastle to see the family. If i'd carried on from this mornings train at 10am, i would have been met with a 4 hour coach journey for this last leg. But by being awkward and stopping for a break and getting another train i've somehow magically boarded the only other train tonight.

Oh but this is coming with a price. I've got to go via carlisle.

I'm posting this via mobile so i can't do a map but its the equivalent of standing in the middle of the clock and wanting to get to 12, but i've got to walk to 9 first.

Whats worse is i'm on the quiet coach. The one coach where kids and phones ringing aren't allowed. And i've got two daft lads on their way back to blackburn (have a laugh on the map if you want to see where their journey goes) with a techno ringtone every 20 seconds.

They obviously know someone is going to text them, why listen to half the song every time? Is it really that good? I don't think so.

Cross back into the north of england and just be met with idiots and useless travel services. Updates might follow.

Nescafé - great ads, awful coffee

2009-10-06T21:11:00.005+01:00

I love coffee, like LOVE it. In fact I think I love it so much I could be called a coffee snob. Since buying a Francis Francis over a year ago I really got to grips with how espresso should be made. I clean the thing so well its almost a travesty to get it dirty again.

So you can imagine how I feel about instant coffee. Its just like hot brown, there's nothing there. It always reminds me when my uncle used to take me to St James Park and at half time get a hot drink. The tea, coffee and bovril almost blended into one… a 'hot brown' if you will.

The TV ad itself is beautiful, shot in Brazil, where instant coffee originated from. The general idea is that the coffee is some sort of glow worm which when "at its brightest" makes its way into the lovely plastic Nescafé jars. Its almost like something from the BFG in a way, in fact, I'd be sure someone at McCann Erickson was using that as inspiration for this design. The print ads are equally toned, and feature bespoke type made with a light and long exposure sporting the "We capture coffee at its brightest" slogan. Even the music for this ad is beautiful, with score by Martin Landquist.

So a trip to Brazil, and every kind of media covered this better be so good coffee right? Well it turns out there isn't even a new product. Its same old crap. There was no magical glow worm when I checked at work today, just brown grit that resembles cat litter. I did even make myself a cup to try get in the mood, and this stuff still tastes burned crap.

The agency has done a fantastic job of promoting what is essentially a second class stamp. Why not pay a little more and just go first class? Hell, treat yourself a freshly brewed cup at your local café. See this is why I liked the Twinings ads, everyone likes Stephen Fry.

Screen print weekend!

2009-09-29T10:34:00.013+01:00

I spent all weekend at the Edinburgh Printmakers on a screen printing induction. I had some brief introduction to screen printing back in college but between the other 30 students and distant call of the local Wetherspoons I didn't fully take it in.

Years later I'm behind a mac day and night and quite separated from the actual print process. Only recently I've insisted on getting press passes to actually see my work going through the works and coming out the other end. That made the whole thing sound so simple but its a hell of a job really.

With screen printing the idea is so purely simple I was up and going in a hour or so from getting there. Being used to making colour separations I can prepared on that front and wanted to take in as much technically as I could. The Printmakers have done a great job and kept the class size down to eight (more to do with the four beds really) so tuition is very personal. I can't remember exactly what to do when I go back, but I'll be able to check my factsheet the first few times.

I'm now an Associate Member but plan to upgrade to the full thing as soon as this expires. With sessions only costing £6 + a few expenses I'm amazed how they break even, and plan on giving the my money in return for some beautiful prints. Watch this space. Click on the image to see some shot from the weekend.

The John Deere scene

2009-09-22T10:44:00.005+01:00

Episode six of the current Mad Men series had a brilliantly gruesome scene involving a John Deere mower and a new COO Guy MacKendrick. A full review of the episode can be found here. The two split second frames before and after Don's secretary riding over Guy's toes with the mower are somewhat brilliant. Just look at Harry Crane's friendly face, and then after, oh the horror!

This blog goes live

2009-09-21T16:31:00.007+01:00

On this Monday, I've finally integrated a Blogger blog to keep track of my news, inspirations, loves and hates. I'm not sure if this is going to be a personal blog or more work related yet but I'll see what organically takes shape. Less an issue with the iFrame plugin and double scrolling bars its nearly as plain as I want it (why are Blogger templates so damn complicated anyway?)