Yesterday the world lost David Bowie. I've been listening to my Best of Bowie playlist pretty much constantly since then which has just bought home how great a musician he was, let alone a visual icon. He did more than anyone I can think of to influence the look and feel of music during my life - and I didn't know how much I'd miss him until he was gone...
Here's an old painting I did of him many years ago
One of my favourite recurring jobs is designing the graphics for the events organised by Commerce Futures, so I thought the New Year might be a good excuse to revisit some of last years and have a look at some of the upcoming ones for this year...
I hope 2015 has been a good year for you and that you have a wonderful Christmas break.
Marry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
I grew up up drawing the old fashioned way - pens, pencil and paper. Then the Mac came along and over the years less and less of my work involved 'real' illustration as everything has become digital. But still my desk is strewn with sheets of paper covered in notes, doodles and sketches. Every website design, every logo, everything, starts with a piece of paper and a pen.
In an effort to save the planet's trees and declutter my desk, I've tried just about every digital stylus available: Wacom, Adonit, Pencil by FiftyThree etc. You name it and I've wasted my money on it. But finally something has come along that might just change that...
Apple's imaginatively titled Pencil (thank God it wasn't the iPencil) combined with my iPad Pro has effectively replaced my real pad and pencil. I just create a page in the Notes app for each project and store all the relevant notes, sketches, links etc. there - much easier to manage than a pile of post-it notes and scraps of paper and it's available to me wherever I am.
To prove that Apple's Pencil is a capable replacement for a real pencil and paper (and that I'm a true geek at heart) here's a little something I prepared earlier - a quick drawing of Batman progressing from initial sketch to slightly more finished sketch. The pencil is responsive, the palm rejection is awesome and best of all, there's an undo command.
If you grew up reading American comicbooks like I did, then you'll remember all those exciting ads for products like X-Ray Spex, life-size monsters and course, the Polaris Nuclear Sub (big enough for 2 kids!).
Of course, I couldn't order any of this stuff from the UK (and my parents wouldn't have let me waste my pocket money anyway) but I was still desperate to see just how good these things were in real life.
So was Kirk Demaris, author of the book Mail-Order Mysteries which a friend kindly bought for me recently, for no good reason other than he knew I'd love it (thanks Paul B). Kirk saw all the same ads that I did when he was a child but was always restrained from buying any of this wonderful stuff too. But then he grew up and decided he was old enough to waste his money on whatever he damn well pleased, so commenced tracking down as much of it on eBay as he could.
He's then catalogued everything with reproductions of the original ads next to photos of the real items along with his acerbic comments e.g.
Polaris Nuclear Sub
We imagined: A fully functional submarine large enough or ourself and a friend.
They sent: A cardboard structure loosely resembling a submarine that would be irreparably damaged by any contact with water, including dewy grass.
Thoroughly recommended for those of us old enough to remember these wonderful products and wallow in some nostalgia
A colourful little website I designed with Mad Hen for recruitment consultants m-tech 360.
Here's another little app I designed with The App Lab - it's just a simple little photo app that let's you take photos (or import them from your library) and add stickers, then share them with your friends. I'm obviously not the target audience (check out the SugarScape website :) but it's free if you fancy having a go... Get it from the App Store here.
You might remember that I recently posted about Zen Clock, an app that I'd been involved in. Well if you liked the look of it, but were too stingy to buy it (that's OK - time's are hard), then I've got good news for you - there's now a version you can download and try out of FREE.
