Newtasty

Had to dig out some old character sketches for a client today. I few years ago I decided to go as digital and minimal as possible to suit my fleet footed way of life, seeing some of these makes me think about the thousands of sketches I threw away before I had even scanned them.
In a way, going being modern and going completely digital has made me more antiquated… remember how there was only ever 1 or 2 photographs of your grandparents when they were young? Save the very few things I managed to scan there is almost no record of my younger days. Piles of records, photographs, art, prints, books, ideas, all gone because I decided to just take hand luggage with me on my trip. I definitely don’t regret it, but seeing some of these makes me think there might have been some lost gems somewhere  in the bonfire.

Around 15 years ago I got my very first break doing artwork for Steve Gerrard’s various DJ events. He eventually partnered up with my pal Carlton, and together they built ‘Ramshackle’, which became the biggest indie party in the UK. Keeping me onboard to provide the visual identity, together we created several long running marketing campaigns (which seemed to strike a chord with the yooves), making various series’ of collectable flyers. This particular campaign was a cut-out and keep format, each flyer was a kind of designer toy version of someone related to Ramshackle in some way… we even utilized a full page ad in Fused Magazine as a kind of diorama in a good old cereal box style, and with my www partner Stef, created an interactive website based on the characters world (complete with realtime day and night!) It was great to dig these out and dust them off, made me appreciate all of the people involved in those days that helped me so I could keep doodling for a living. So, Nice one Steve G, Carlton, Stef, Dave and Kerry. Cheers!

don’t try

Mags! A magazine about independent magazine publishing by Monsa, features Fused Magazine‘s Juliet Lewis cover as illustrated by yours truly… look, there in the corner!

My band, Copter, had been planning to do a Warriors Revue for some time and this year it came to fruition.
Our good friend Mr. Radar made a 30 minute condensed version of the movie and we played along with the visuals creating a musical narrative, a kind of rock opera! For the event, I made subway tickets for entry, Warriors vests for the band (can’t take credit for the design there) and designed a poster with an old school Jack Kirby comic book feel, evoking imagery of the time in a way that hasn’t been used for the Warriors before (to my knowledge).
The whole thing was a fantastic success, with over 100 gang members turning up ,in colours, for Sirus’ big speech!

Typoshirt One is a book published by Index Books, the first book to focus exclusively on T-shirt typography. Spanning message and logo T-shirts to more abstract and arty models that transmit more cryptic messages, I contributed with the Black Mekon t-shirt design based on Larry Flynt’s infamous court attire, with a twist conceived by my pal (and stylist to the stars) Ian Witchell.
Thanks to Pris for making the shirt look so good, and thanks to Lee for the photos (my copy of the book got stolen by the postie!)

Many moons ago I decided to make a brand for my good friend Gary Wood’s film making endeavours, as a way of saying thank you for all his selfless hard work as part of the ColdRice family.
I wanted to make a retro style logo, the 1950′s kind of ‘friendly’ mascot that you would see on bottles of bleach or milkshakes, but with a spin that encompassed a bag of recognisable icons to really hit home that over-the-top Americana branding sensibility. I had too much coffee and went ridiculously over the top with 24 variants.
When I gave Gary the stylesheet with all of the logo variations, he was ecstatic, and 5 minutes later he called me, “Steve, I’ve got another 30 ideas, Beethoven, a Droog, Einstein…”

God bless Mr. Radar and his endless enthusiasm.

Been a while, going to try to get a bit more regular with posts this year. Worked on a nice project for Nokia just before Christmas, illustrating a poster for their short movie ‘The Commuter’ starring Dev Patel, Charles Dance and Pamela Anderson which was shot entirely on Nokia’s N8 handsets. Yeah, weird. Anyway, I thought that I would share some of the illustrations, a painted style for that action movie effect!

Poster for a ColdRice party, continuing the theme of comic book-esque soul singers

There’s a nice feature over at Graniph Labs, did a series of tees with them a couple of years back and hope to do some more soon.