Catalogue Graphic Design

This is by them two lads who recently graduated from Leeds College of Art, and gone on to set up their own studio.

I've looked at this and numerous other examples of work by second years, third years and graduates. To a certain extent, the work produced by these people, and undoubtedly myself and my classmates, will in some ways be of a ever so slightly similar style. I mean, it's all relative, one person will look at a second year's work and think, yeah that's cool, take that idea and make it their own. 

Etc.

And so you have it, a certain style slightly unique to LCA. I can't quite describe what I mean. It's clean-cut, it's precise, it breathes, it's professional, cool, etc. And I see it from a lot of LCA GD heads. 

What I mean is, I sorta feel like I could look at a whole wall full of posters and identify the one that was produced by someone who studied at LCA. This poster's perhaps one of them

Or maybe I'm talking total rubbish, after all, it is twenty five past three in the morning.

However..

Evidence for this?

This one's by Scott Marc Berry.

clean-cut, simple, effective, perfected, basic, breathable, form follows function etc. etc. 

I can see it as a LCA GD style. It's nice.

Roisin typeface

I had to check this one out, simply on the basis that I have a flatmate named Roisin. It's actually a very nice typeface, based on ITC Avant Garde...I love how I say that to pretend as if I really know such a huge amount on typefaces and their history. It's based on Victorian letterforms. I like how it holds such an air of creativity, whilst still being completely legible.

pow.

Cavin Spacey

Cavin Spacey typeface. Based on circles or squares. I didn't put up any images of the square one because, well, I hated it. Well i didn't hate it but I'm not so keen on square-based typefaces, they're not fun to look at,they're not as legible, they look like a child could have made them, etc. not for me basically. However the more I look at the circle-based one, the more I quite like it....

So many possibilities. It was made by a guy called Alex Schulz. He recommends that it should be combined with Futura Bold, which is a winner, I really like Futura. Top marks. 

world's rarest

I didn't really put this up because of it's design work. I'm just really enjoying the album.

Fabrizio Font

I'm starting to fall in love with these serif fonts that go completely overboard with the width of the stems and hairlines and stuff. Ridiculous. I love it. I rekon the reason I love this kind of thing so much is because at the beginning of the year, when I had NO idea about graphic design, I came up with a typeface that looked like this:

I'm very proud of it, and to this day it is hung on the pinboard in my horrible bedroom in halls that makes me feel like I'm sleeping in a hotel every night. Anyway. I had no idea about graphics that much so I just did what I think would have some kind of impact, and thinned out all the stuff on the left hand side of the letters and hoped for the best. It got some fairly good responses, and since then, I've always been quite fond of similar typefaces. 

And that's why I love Fabrizio. 

KOKONG magazine.

An un-foldable magazine containing illustrations and literature.

I can't say I'm really sure how this un-foldable thing works. Anyway, this is designed by the names listed here:

http://kokongmag.no/

erm, I can't really figure out how to use the website either, I click the triangle in the middle and wait, and nothing happens. argh. Anyway, it seems they go all out in putting together a magazine that can truly be appreciated as a piece of design. It's not in English but I'm still tempted to get hold of a copy, it comes with a limited edition silk-screen print as well. I had a wild guess at the price of the magazine and placed it at about £15, but it turned out to be a more than reasonable 9 euros. Lord knows what they might be talking about though. 

Brock Davis

Was just cruising through Behance Network, as you do. Anyway I found this guy who's made a little project out of producing something creative every day for a year. He's done very well. It's not strictly graphics or anything, more just like 365 ideas. I suppose it can't be that hard to think of something every day, but to actually do it, capture and record it is a feat in itself. Joker. Anyway I had to pick out a funny little set of photos involving M&M's......made me laugh ever so slightly, not a lot, in fact I didn't even laugh, I just smiled because no one was in the room and it's kinda strange laughing when no one's about. Sometimes I can't help laughing on my own if I'm watching something really funny, like Peep Show. Anyways here they are, I ripped the captions from the site aswell, I didn't make them up myself. That'd also be a strange thing to do.

The Simpsons

Burt and Ernie making out while cookie monster watches

the blue man group carving a pumpkin

kermit the frog about to walk across hot coals

papa smurf gets angry, turns into the Hulk.

you'd have to be a total square not to find this slightly entertaining. or maybe i've just got a crap sense of humour. 

Hydro74

My man Luis showed me some wicked prints by Hydro74 that'd he'd bought online. They were actually stunning, I mean like, they were really something special. They made me re-think my life, I mean it was one of them moments where you think, wow, I definitely need to get cracking if I ever want to be someone worth mentioning. 

So naturally, as any good designer would, I went on his website to look at more of his work, and no surprises, a large amount of it was incredibly good. To be honest, I'm not exactly sure where this kind of art/design work sits in society really. The skateboard designs are obviously for skateboards. I guess it's the sort of work that is more often than not simply visually amazing. Maybe it doesn't need a purpose. 

Luxembourg & Dayan

Haven't really looked into that much design of this sort of nature as of yet. I don't really know what style of design you might call it, but what I can tell about it is that it is expensive design, aiming to appeal to an expensive sort of clientele. Hey, you know what, I could try and explain this myself, but it could at any rate be  explained better by doing this:

"Recent exhibitions include historical surveys of important works of major figures in art. Watson & Company, which is branding the new partnership of Daniella Luxembourg and Amalia Dayan, two merger of widely successful art dealers. The solution is the result of combing both the partner’s previous logotypes and colors creating a restrained and classic new brand with a twist."

So yeah. It's classy, and also goes to show how alternative stocks go a long way to how the company may be perceived. It's not genius, but it has been well thought out and immaculately presented.

Get Some

wooooah. need i say more. Well a bit actually, I mean I'm only referring to the type at the top of this poster. I'm kind of a bit too lazy to open up Microsoft Paint and crop out the rest of it, and this way I guess you get to see it in context as well. Magic. 'Get Some' it says. Like, they are really outstanding, and suggest something a cut above the average. It would look ultra refreshing when stuck alongside the surrounding sea of crap posters that appear on advertising boards and stuff. I love it. In fact, I quite like the whole poster. Someone really took a bit of care when they designed it. It's lovely when people take care to do a good job. Lovely.

Hemlock Recordings

Not sure who actually designed this ( I seem to say this a lot) but yeah, another label pushing new UK sounds. Very different (but still relative in some ways) to Skull Disco, though you might hear the two sounds clash in the right place at the right time. though this is more London style of UK electronic music. One of many styles, sorry....like all this stuff is a bit more Garagey than the Bristol stuff. It's by no means as dark...

Anyway the reason I rate the design work is that, well, I love patterns, and the fact that it's black on grey, always a winner in my book....like it gives you the impression that what the sleeve contains is something of value. Hmmm. Maybe it's just because I like the label that I'm automatically biased towards the design. Sometimes I can't find a real reason why I like it so much, I mean, really, it doesn't need a reason. I like it and that's my opinion.

Zeke Clough, Skull Disco

http://www.zekeclough.com/page2.htm

Zeke Clough. There's a link to his blog just above. Like a lot of design work, I discovered this guy through the label that he contributed artwork to (Skull Disco in case you hadn't noticed). erm, yeah, I'm not actually sure how he goes about creating these artworks, like maybe he just goes about using a 0.1 fineliner and maybe he's just a bit tapped in the head to the point of making these images. Anyway yeah he made these for Skull Disco, I've a got a Shackleton (artist co-running the label) single back at home which really stands out amazingly compared to a lot of other designs. It suits the label quite well, surprisingly, I mean the label is made up of proper dark Bristol-style dubby techno kinda stuff, I mean the majority would listen and be like, what the hell are you making me listen to. Anyway this artwork is sort of like, the face of this tiny part of the UK scene. It's dark and ambient and can really mess with your head, and the artwork reflects this amazingly.

I can't do it myself. But I'd love to.

Give Up Art publishing layouts

A few layouts by Give Up Art that caught my eye. Quite often I always find myself referring back to this company, it kind of annoys me how they haven't really put up much work recently. Maybe they're taking a massive holiday or maybe they've just kinda shut down for a bit, who knows. But these layouts are nice anyway.

 

What I like most is the subtle elements of these layouts, they are simple and effective, plus the bright and positive illustrations are quite refreshing. 

Emil Kozak

spotted this guy in Computer Arts so I thought I best check him out, he seemed to have a couple of cool skateboard designs, so yeah.

 

He's done these quirky skateboards that have scissor lines around shapes and stuff...essentially once your board is worn out and no longer rideable you can saw out these shapes and build one of the vehicles. Cool, eh....crazy idea, quite adventurous and sorta funny. 

 

He also customised these phones to sell at an exhibition. I love stuff like this, just messing around with ordinary things to make it better. I don't really have much else to say.