adidas special editions....

special edition adidas/dublin shoes and matching tracksuit for size? i think it was. not sure about the matching tracksuit but the shoes are absolutely fresh......it's all the smaller details that count here though.....probably why they only made 500 and now they're sold out. shame. these were the best ones to be honest, except for maybe glasgow:

generation press.

lucky strike zippos

classy stuff. SIMPLE AND EFFECTIVE and cool

Miha Artnak - a versatile artist of visual communications

terrorism never existed until somebody named it so

statistics

from the website:

http://aheartforjustice.com/blog/2010/08/23/some-human-trafficking-statistics-and-stop-child-trafficking-now/

some interesting child trafficking/labour/slavery statistics which are worth a read, I'd say I was surprised at some of them but there are a lot of terrible people about, and a lot of people in poverty, so in all honesty, I'm not surprised one bit at the extent of this problem.

• Child trafficking is one of the fastest growing crimes in the world.
• There are 2.5 million child sex slaves in the world today, some as young as 4 and 5.
• More than 1,000,000 children worldwide will become victims of child trafficking this year.
• Over 100,000 children in the U.S. are currently exploited through commercial sex, and 300,000 children in the U.S. are at risk every year for commercial sexual exploitation.
• Investigators and researchers estimate the average predator in the U.S. can make more than $200,000 a year off one young girl.
• The global market of child trafficking is over $12 billion a year.
• The total market value of illicit human trafficking is estimated to be over $32 billion a year.
• An estimated 14,500-17,500 foreign nationals are trafficked into the U.S. each year.
• Approximately 80% of human trafficking victims are women and girls and up to 50% are minors.
• 600,000-800,000 people are bought and sold across international borders each year; 50% are children, most are female.  The majority of these victims are forced into the sex trade.
• There are open sex slavery cases in all 50 states.
• U.S. citizen child victims are often runaway and homeless youth.
• Runaways, orphans and the poor are targets for sexual predators.
• Approximately 80% of trafficking involves sexual exploitation, and 19% involves labor exploitation.
• There are more slaves today than ever before in human history.

I will most probably work with one of these statistics when I produce my poster. Most probably this one :

'More than 1,000,000 children worldwide will become victims of child trafficking this year.'

This is a good statement: It is almost impossible to comprehend what a million looks like, but everyone uses a year as a measurement of time every day. so basically in an amount of time that takes very little to think about, an incomprehendible number of children will be bought and sold. 

The article I was studying was about James Caan, and his spur-of-the-moment offer made to buy a child for £700 or some figure close to that. Obviously the act of buying and selling children is Child Trafficking, so I started to do some research into this. As it happens, it is one of the world's fastest growing crimes, and there are more slaves in the world today than there has ever been before in human history. I would rather focus on this aspect, and maybe slightly disregard Caan's antics/very kind and loving gesture.

Anyway, as promised, here's some posters which are all in a very similar tone to what I am trying to achieve. They're the sort of thing which are seen everywhere: bus stops, billboards, tv adverts, flyers through the door, etc,etc, etc, attempting to attract the average man's attention because the government don't seem to be ever so bothered about these sort of issues. Well maybe they are, but I wouldn't know because I don't really watch any TV

Poster design

With the newest brief set it would only seem obvious to research some basic poster designs to get an idea of where to start, I found a few of these off Blanka.co.uk which is a decent online poster collection set up by the graphic designer Mark Blamire. Sites like this are useful to keep the subject of poster design alive, as more and more design becomes digital to keep up with the rest of the world.














some simple ways of mixing colour and type. I deliberately chose very basic (but none the less effective) designs to inspire me as this is how I want my own posters to be perceived. I do not have much experience of poster design, but I am quite excited to see what I can achieve and how much I can experiment, whist not straying from the constraints of the brief.

The overall message I get from effective poster design is that less is more. Fonts like Helvetica seem to be the top choice for legibility with posters, but I will have to look at more posters conveying a similar message to what I am hoping to convey in order to gain a better idea of how I should be doing this.

on the subject of james caan

this is the highest rated comment on the daily mail website. I feel that I'm getting better opinions from this source, becuase to be honest asking people in person means that they'll tailor their answer because they like you/dislike you and want you to hear what they think you want to hear/not hear. anonymity = 100% honesty.

"How foolish of anyone to feel "outrage" at a knee jerk reaction like this. Who, in Mr Caan's situation would not feel the same? Good grief, to criticize compassion and emotion when faced with the grimness of abject poverty is a naive position to take, because it is the wealthy and powerful who help raise the profile of charities, speak out about the cause publicly and increase the revenue the charities receive.

The only people who should be criticized are the corrupt and downright useless governments of these countries who do nothing for their own citizens, leaving it to overseas aid agencies to try and save lives.

I find it disgusting in this day and age that left to their own devices many nations leave their most vulnerable to perish. People whine like crazy in the UK at the merest suggestion that benefits might be cut, but they sure as hell would get a reality check if they went to Pakistan - they would realise that ANY help is a blessing!!"

- Karma, What goes around comes around, 22/10/2010 5:58

MASA again...

Im gona go out and buy a pad of graph paper tomorrow

x

MASA

MASA was born in Venezuela. So I had to look at this guy, as south America seems a lot more interesting than most other places on the planet. its too late at night for me to get all descriptive and creative with my words, so here's some pictures, all I can say is his style is fresh and I'm sure I'll be adopting (stealing) many elements of his work at some point in my life.


i like this


this is fresh also



this is quite nice



this is very pretty



mmmmmmmmmmm yes.

nuff said.

More..

Another Burial album cover. I got the LP of this back at home, I'm hoping at some point the price for it will skyrocket, we'll see though, they have to stop pressing them at some point.

Couple of nice bits of typography.

Si Scott

I'm not the biggest fan of proper swirly stuff but this bit of type is really nice. And I heard he went to the same uni as I did my foundation course at so fair play, he must be one of the best. haha.

Victor Moscoso

Victor Moscoso. An older student on my foundation course said he had a load of these old zap comics, I don't know how rare they are or whatever but I bet they're quite expensive now, I might check sometime. He also told me he would bring them in some time and show me them. He didn't, and I'm not doing foundation anymore, and so I haven't ever really seen them. All Ive got are these images and an article in a Grafik magazine. That's the only Grafik magazine I've ever bought because I'm not gona be paying 9 quid an issue just because it's printed on the most expensive paper in the land

Brie Light

I changed my mind about the typeface. Using this one now. I think it suits Matt more than the other one. And I could download it for free. That means I could manipulate it in Illustrator straight away as a font. Rather than the other one which I could only get hold of after ripping it out of a screen shot, meaning I would have to crop out every single letter before being able to use it in illustrator. otherwise I would have had to pay 200 quid to download it as a font. Not up for payin that.

Jigsaw typeface

A typeface by Johanna Bil'ak, who bases herself in Netherlands. 

For the next part of Alphabet Soup I have to make a typeface for my partner who is Matt tucker. It will hopefully represent his personality and character. The brief states that my letterforms must be based on manipulations of an existing typeface, and so it seemed logical to choose a typeface that I am guessing might already represent his personality in some way. 

From the interview I got the impression that he is pretty chilled out, relaxed, creative and has slightly alternative interests. I feel that this Jigsaw typeface holds those sort of characteristics - to me it gives off relaxed, informal vibes, and contains some interesting alternative designs.

Of course i'll actually have to ask him if he likes it first.

burial

artwork for Untrue by Burial. everything about it is perfect.

books

Couple of books I found in the library which I've been flicking through for some ideas:
TypeIdeaIndex - Jim Krause
Helvetica:Homage to a Typeface - Lars Muller

letterforms research.....

http://www.syntheticautomatic.com/#dimension


Synthetic Automatic aka Apirat Infahsaeng...

Obviously I have begun my first solo brief 'Alphabet Soup' I will be looking at various typefaces and letterforms. Not sure how I found this guy, typotheque.com maybe. My chosen letter is G, so I spotted this one a mile off...it seems that with bolder, louder typefaces it must be more difficult to produce more complicated letters such as G. However this one works so effectively due to its thin crossbar and terminal, causing it to be easily recognisable. I like these sort of bolder title letterforms, I feel they are useful to display the nature of magazine articles. 

Kate Moross.....

Im enjoying these designs by Kate Moross, who has an absolutely huge volume of professional work under her belt for a 24 year old. Shown here is artwork for record sleeves and labels for the artist Zomby, who produces unique and sometimes slightly disturbing beats made from old-skool 8-bit sounds mixed with unusual basslines. The artwork has some beautiful mathematical qualities to it(particularly regarding the last image), however what I find particularly interesting is how she makes use of triangles in such a fascinating way; with many designers it seems standard practise to make use of grid formats, circles and squares, it looks very fresh to have a designer work with a more complex and exciting shape.