UCF featured on Creative Review blog

I, alongside some other coursemates, have been featured on Creative Review's blog – Talent-spotters 2012: University College Falmouth. Amazing.

Snufkin makes an appearance on CR

A little Snufkin appears on Creative Review's January Music Issue. A little light reading for my train journey back to Falmouth tomorrow.

60s Sainsbury's packaging

This stuff is amazing. So much better than what they use now, at least regarding their basics own-brand ranges. (I worked in Sainsbury's for two years-ish, so I have seen a lot of their packaging!)

These feature in an article in September's Creative Review, I may just have to buy a copy. Read more on their blog here.

Don't be spineless

I read an interesting article on the Creative Review blog last night, regarding book spines. The spine is, more often than not, the part of the book that you see on a shelf. It has to grab you in some way to take the book in your hands and look at the cover and the blurb
on the back.

"The point is that while book design is largely celebrated in terms of what front covers and jackets look like, the spine can be an oft-neglected dead zone. And this is crazy, because in a bookshop it's what customers are presented with in their hundreds, aside from those copies fortunate enough to be displayed facing outwards, of course. Perhaps the rise of browsing online has removed the need to treat the spine as a significant part of the design? In any case, it's the reader who has to put up with any potential design horrors once it's up on the bookshelf."

Fixabook.com – more book cover analysis.

Headlands

"With the help of Google Earth, Jeffrey Tribe has discovered 12 human heads emerging from the British coastline, as presented in his project, Headlands."- Creative Review


This series on a whole is pretty interesting. Although some are more face-like than others. This one, however, has to be shared simply because it is in Falmouth.

Going to look on Google Earth for it now!

EDIT: Sadly, I still cannot find it on Google Earth. However, I have been reading up about the Morgawr sea monster, which I didn't know about before. And here's a cute painting of it:

www.cornishknockers.com

Check out the knockerpedia, much fun.

Music philosophy posters

This is the kind of thing I wish I could do. In fact, I'm sure I could do it if I picked out the right lyrics.

"Music Philosophy is a weekly project by designer Mico Toledo - who unites his love of music and typography, in the creation of illustrated song lyrics. Toledo takes lyrics from songs he enjoys listening to and produces an illustration that incorporates, as a general rule, a variety of typefaces. Here are a few examples of illustrations created for the project." - Creative Review


EDIT: I decided I'm not just going to post the same images CR did. I will pick my own faves.

Inflatable town

I want to play in this town. It looks like fun.
by FriendsWithYou, via Creative Review

The best job in the world

Two D&AD black pencils were awarded to Sapient Nitro in Brisbane for its Best Job in the World campaign for Tourism Queensland, which turned a classified ad into an elaborate and hugely successful PR campaign for the region. ~ via Creative Review.

Welcome to London

This seems quite appropriate as I'm using road signs and road sign
lettering for my Smile campaign.

London inspired artwork for an exhibition in a pop up store,

Creative Review. Anthony Burrill in this case (above).

And James Jarvis (below).

New design for Creative Review

I'm tempted to buy the latest edition of Creative Review as it has had a re-design. "with a new size, new paper, new typography and, yes, a new logo". Also, the cover illustration is by Anthony Burrill, whose work I like. Not certain I like the typography for the logo, but we'll see...

I don't buy the magazine, or any design magazines really, that often. Mainly because a) they're expensive b) I read the blogs and bits online, and c) we have them all in a journals room at university.  However, there's nothing like having your own copies of the magazines to flick through.

"We knew that we needed to make the printed magazine even more distinct from the website. It had to be more tactile, more of a joy to handle, better quality. But finding the resources to do that is not easy in the face of a recession that has affected advertising, and therefore paginations and revenues, so badly.

We discovered that changes to the Royal Mail’s pricing structure meant that, by reducing the size of the magazine slightly to 250mm square we could save money. Which is all fine but not worth doing if the smaller format doesn’t feel right. So we had some old copies of the magazine cut down to the new size and found that it really worked. It felt good in the hand.

Then, we thought, what if we took the money that we would save from the size reduction and put it (and more) into the paper stocks. So instead of 90 gsm, the text pages are now on 135 gsm with Crit on 115 gsm uncoated. Instead of 250gsm, the coverstoack is now 300gsm. The thickest, best paper CR has never been on. Despite the mail cost saving, we are now spending more money per month on the production of the magazine, but we believe that our readers will appreciate the result – the pictures here don't do it justice. You have to pick up a copy to really appreciate what a difference the new paper makes."

And so, I think I have been persuaded to go out and buy a copy.
http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2010/march/cr-april-redesign

Typographic Penguin covers

"Penguin has collaborated with AIDS awareness fund (RED) and a team of designers to produce new covers for eight Penguin Classics. Each cover replaces the usual black band with red, employing a quote from the text of the book as the visual hit."

 - Creative Review

BBC winter olympics advert II

I blogged about the new animated BBC winter olympic advert
before Creative Review.

http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2010/january/bbc-winter-olympics-film

The future of print

I've had a pretty busy last two days, working 9 hours days. Today I even managed to squeeze in Starbucks coffee with a college friend, on my lunch break, who I hadn't seen since the summer. She's doing a degree in Graphic Arts at Leeds  - very far from Falmouth! Plus went out to dinner with my parents, after work - now feeling well and truly stuffed.

Somewhere, over dinner, whilst talking about graphic design, master degrees, future work etc, dad asked "but, will books still be around in the future?" as I'm thinking I'll want to work in design for print/publishing. Of course I said yes, they're not going anywhere just because technology is growing. A topic we have discussed many times in HACCS (I can't remember what this stands for - history of graphic design basically).

I have now found this video and article on the Creative Review blog.

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

“London-based BERG demonstrate the potential of tablet devices to deliver a rich experience for magazine lovers. Magazine publishers are getting very excited about the potential of iPhone Apps, but far better experiences may be on the way with the imminent arrival of tablet devices. In this hugely impressive video, BERG walk us through their ideas for how magazines may work on such a device.”

- Creative Review blog.