The Xtra Mile Recordings Tour of North America

After a little encouragement from my boyfriend and my mum – the latter a surprisingly big Xtra Mile fan – I decided to try and come up with something to enter into the recent Xtra Mile poster competition. I am a graphic designer afterall, plus I hadn’t done much music-related design work in a while.

‘Calling all artsy XMR fans! We want you to design the special, limited edition, screen printed lithograph for Skinny Lister, Beans On Toast and Will Varley’s North American tour. We are looking for an unique and original piece of art for this special #XMRtour, happening in March and April of 2016. Anyone can submit a design. You are allowed to create whatever you see fit for this poster…’

I had an idea fairly quickly (using the Skinny Lister flagon) but spent a good few hours moving things about and changing colours. Entries for the competition closed on Friday so I didn’t feel too reluctant to share my design here… and now I’ve just found out that I won! I’m so pleased.

Volkswagen II

I got my very first car in 2012 – a good 3 or 4 years after passing my driving test, mind you. It was a Volkswagen Fox, purchased in Cornwall during my graduation week (hence the Cornish flag sticker), and has been my trusty and beloved vehicle ever since. Well, since today at least. Because today I said farewell to my lovely blue Foxy and hello to a shiny new (well, 3 years old) red Volkswagen Up.

Photograph taken at work this afternoon before our last drive together.

…and the new car!

The Up is similar in size and, obviously, still a Volkswagen but being a more modern car it has electric windows, air conditioning and remote locking – plus 4 doors where my Fox had only 2 (and massive ones at that). So, you could say that this is quite the up-grade… pun intended.

Volkswagen has got me hooked – I barely even considered getting a new car from another car manufacturer. I think I’ve always subconsciously loved VW, even before I could drive or was thinking about driving. As many young hippy-come-alternative-type girls dream of a VW Campervan or Beetle of their own, I did too. I had plenty of Campervan money boxes anyway – at least 2 – an assortment of Campervan and Beetle ornaments and one t-shirt with ‘I [heart] [picture of a campervan]’ on it. Sadly I no longer have this t-shirt.

BUT, ultimately, as a graphic designer I love their classic advertisements. I posted a few of the ads in my first Volkswagen blog post when I was ‘new to the Volkswagen club’ but I’ve dug out a some more of my favourites to share now.

And in more recent design and automotive news, Volkswagen have changed their font:

The company claims the new font is “more contemporary, less geometric and features dynamic contrast,” and that it is “inspired by VW’s distinctive vehicle design.” Whether or not the typeface, created by outside agency MetaDesign, resonates with prospective customers and increases revenue remains to be seen, but there’s certainly no risk for lack of exposure. Not only will the new font be on display in VW stationery and brochures, but it will also adorn every new VW dashboard, center stack and infotainment system. – Paste Magazine

The previous typeface, apparently called Utopia, was a very clean and rounded Futura-style font – in fact, Futura itself has been used in past VW advertising. The roundness suited the classic VW logo and the classic shape of the Beetle as well – as you’ve seen in the ads above! Then why have Volkswagen gone away from this? I’m not sure…

Before and After.

As Erik Spiekermann (notable German typographic designer) said…

I like the new VW fonts, just not for this brand. #vw #typography

— erik spiekermann (@espiekermann) May 29, 2015

Love Japan Magazine: Issue #1

You may remember at the end of last year, during my Christmas break, I spent some time working on the branding for a new Japan-themed magazine – Love Japan Magazine. Well, Issue #1 is now out there and it’s awesome!

I didn’t have too much involvement in the actual layout of the magazine… But I designed the patterns that are in use for backgrounds and page borders, as well as suggesting font combinations when I did the branding work. Plus, one of my photos is in there – see if you can find it. I have also made some overall typographical and editorial design tweaks to the final magazine – as an editorial designer in my day job (2.5 years and a middleweight designer now, by the way!), I thought I could put my skills and expertise to good use.

Emily has done an amazing job pulling everything together – not to mention coming up with the idea for a well-researched, well-written and well-designed Japan-themed magazine in the first place – and there are some excellent articles, photos and illustrations that have been contributed to the magazine from a wide range of people, all over the world.

I’m excited to say that, although I didn’t work on the design for the layout of this issue, I will be having more involvement in Issue #2. I’m meeting Emily to discuss things [over some Japanese tea] in London next weekend. So stay tuned for more details on #2! And for now… here is Issue #1:

Pedal Down

I had the pleasure of seeing Chuck Ragan, one of my most favourite musicians, live in London last week for the fifth* time. Chuck and his band, The Camaraderie – comprising of bass guitar, pedal steel guitar, fiddle and drums (plus Chuck with the acoustic guitar and harmonica) – put on an outstanding show. Probably even better than when I saw them last May. This time I didn’t have my usual gig-buddy-boyfriend with me, but I did have both of my parents! And they loved it almost as much as me.

The support acts Tim Vantol and Skinny Lister are absolutely, 100% worth a mention too as both were excellent. The latter I had listened to prior and was excited to see. The former I had heard of but never properly listened to – he’s playing in Milton Keynes later this month so I’m going to go to that (with the ’rents again!). I would also highly recommend the Scala music venue. It’s fairly small, the sound is great and they played the best between-sets music I’ve ever heard at a gig – although, I am not sure if that was their doing directly or the people with the bands.

I picked up this beautiful screenprinted A2-sized Pedal Down Europe tour poster at the show. I’ve always wanted to buy a nice gig poster but there have never been any that really caught my eye until this one. At least not actually at the gigs I’ve been to – there’s loads online that I like the look of. I haven’t got a frame for it yet so had to masking tape it to the floor to take a decent photo!

I spent about 10 or 15 minutes, this evening, trawling around Google and Google images trying to find out the designer of the poster. I had no such luck finding out myself (I couldn’t even find the poster, let alone its creator), so I asked Chuck Ragan on Twitter instead. Which turned out to be a much better solution as he replied within minutes.

Devan Power is a ‘jack-of-all-trades’ designer and illustrator based in Toronto. He’s previously worked with Hot Water Music, Chuck Ragan’s long-standing hardcore punk band, and a number of other music-related clients. I’m now following him on Instagram. He posted this poster himself a few days ago – apparently they are from a limited run of 100 prints. All the more awesome.

* I paused writing this post to check my ‘seen live list’ and find out just how many times I have actually seen him.
I initially thought it was four, not five!

Love Japan magazine

I have been very much enjoying my almost-two-week-long Christmas break: relaxing, sleeping in, eating nice food, being at home with the parents and the cat, not driving around, not spending money and not working. Well, not my day job anyway. I have, however, been keeping creative both by making a start on the physical book version of my Japan (April, 2014) travel journal and with another Japan-themed project…

I have been working on the branding for Love Japan magazine, a new magazine for, you guessed it, fans of Japan.

I’ve been a bit magazine mad recently; writing for our college magazine, and researching fashion magazines for work I’ve been doing in and out of college, so I think this was the catalyst for Love Japan. I wanted this magazine to have the aesthetics of independent magazines that I’ve fallen in love with, whilst focusing on Japanese culture, travel, lifestyle, food and fashion. Issue #1 will be released in the Spring and I’ve got contributors from the UK, USA and Japan working on articles.

– via Emily, the brains behind Love Japan magazine (taken from her own blog post, here – which mentions me!)

The stand-alone logo graphic

A colour palette to be used throughout the magazine and website

Title typography for the front cover of the magazine

I also created a selection of patterns to be used within the magazine for backgrounds and/or borders, suggested how typography could be used and produced a sample design for the layout.

I can’t wait to see and read the first issue when it is released in the Spring!

The Menzingers & WTFest 6

On Thursday, last week, I left work and headed off to London to meet my boyfriend, Steve, and go to a gig. This is something we do a lot – ‘school night’ or not – but for once we actually had the day off afterwards! Though not simply to sleep in…

The gig was The Menzingers, pretty much my favourite band (not to mention the reason me and Steve met last year), at the Electric Ballroom in Camden and it was damn good. Electric Ballroom is not so small, 1000+ capacity, yet I wandered on over to the barrier at the front and decided that that was where we would stay all night. And stay we did. Throughout the excellent supports, The Holy Mess and The Smith Street Band – big fan of the latter already – and throughout The Menzingers too without getting pulled into any mosh pits.

Snapping a few Instagram-worthy photos:

The Smith Street Band

The Menzingers

I often leave a gig thinking ‘damn, I wish I could do that all over again’. Well, this time we did! The next day, we drove to Southampton for a little three-day (it was actually four, but the first day was Thursday!) punk rock festival called WTFest. I’d seen the poster a couple of months before and was very impressed by the line up – we don’t really get punk festivals in the UK, certainly not like The Fest in Florida! So, I persuaded Steve that we should go (not that it took much, he loves much of the same bands I do).

On Friday evening we saw: Milk Teeth, Bleach Blood, Creeper, Great Cynics, Moose Blood and Apologies, I Have None.

Great Cynics (The highlight. Apologies, I Have None were good too but no photo.)

On Saturday afternoon we saw: Doe, Pale Angels, Bangers and Harker.

Bangers (My favourite band from Cornwall, especially since Crowns broke up.)

On Saturday evening we saw: Dear Everyone, Muncie Girls, Onsind, Caves and Andrew Jackson Jihad.

Muncie Girls (Already a fan. Not a bad performance at all.)

Onsind (Definitely the surprise of the day. Excellent acoustic duo.)

Caves (Bloody awesome. Second time I’ve seen them and can’t wait to do so again.)

Andrew Jackson Jihad (Viewed from the back. Wasn’t a massive fan but pretty good live.)

And on Sunday afternoon, we took some time to explore Southampton (I’ve been a couple of times but not seen much), and then repeated Thursday night with The Holy Mess, The Smith Street Band and The Menzingers but in a much tinier venue. I claimed the same spot – left side of the stage, in front of guitarist/vocalist Greg – as in London but could literally touch the stage in Southampton.

The Holy Mess (Having barely listened prior to seeing them twice in a few days, now a fan.)

The Smith Street Band (It could have been their own show. Everyone loved them, us included.)

And the main event… The Menzingers (I didn’t think it was possible to beat London. They did.)

Steve asked Menzo’s tour manager, Scott, for one of the set lists for me at the end.

I’ve never had a set list from a show before and this is the first time that I have ever seen a band more than once on a single tour. The Menzingers deserve to be that band for me. Now. Sleep…

The 7 Wonders of Milton Keynes: booklet

You’ve read the blog series (1, 2, 3 & 4), now enjoy the [e-]booklet.

The Inherited Stamp Collection

I don’t know much about it, but my nan used to work for a ‘stamp company’, in London, in the 1950s. This meant that both she and my granddad were collectors of stamps. I have now inherited this stamp collection, although I know nothing about stamps really.

The first day covers – a postage stamp on a post card or stamped envelope franked on the first day the issue is authorized for use within the country or territory of the stamp-issuing authority – are particularly interesting and appeal to me as a designer. I also like how most of the addresses (not actually addressed to either of my grandparents – must find out who C.A. Marsters Esq. is or was) are clearly typed on a typewriter.

I realise a lot of these are pretty wonky – my poor scanning skills.

These pages of the world stamp album were very difficult to scan, so I only did a few.