I don’t have one specific focus in the projects I work on – sometimes thats pretty irritating, but most of the time its just great to be able to work with so many wonderful people.  Much of what I do is photography based, and can be found on the ‘photography’ page up top of t’blog…

some of my favourite projects in other areas are below, with brief explanations of who/what/why/how…

Pop-up for interview

Recently I had a graduate interview at an advertising agency in London which was epic and extreme fun – a bit like re-staging the passion of the christ with only wooden spoons and glitter.  Unfortunately I didn’t get on the scheme, but it made me realise that advertising is not an unrealistic target to aim for (I didn’t get it because I was erm – too creative apparently, which doesn’t bother me in the slightest – I was lucky to have the most amazingly positive feedback).

As part of our day we had to do a 5 minute presentation on something we feel passionate about… easier said than done – I decided to make the presentation about passion itself (other people picked sensible topics on proper things like sharks and archaeology)

Due to reasons of embarrassment I won’t be sharing the text of the presentation – a scintillating 900 word epic involving jesus, oscar wilde, macaron, container ships, apple macs and some dubious puns, but I would like to share with you the Pop-up accompaniment.

CSM Degree Show Catalogue

For our Degree Show I designed the degree show catalogue – presenting ideas and concepts to the 150 strong yeargroup.  To say this was a hard project would be a (total) understatement – but we ended up producing a really innovative piece of work.  The catalogue was hand assembled by us, each copy a hand numbered edition (1500 in all) and all the pages were diecut into an ergonomic and distinctive shape;

The original concept was to hang the shaped pages all over the building, allowing the visitor to collect pages as they went round the building, and showing them how to bind it together at the end – DIY publishing if you like.  That way each visitor would end up with a completely unique book, dependent on the route they took round the building, their preferences etc, alas this was a bit too revolutionary for the majority.  What we did end up with was a deeply cool, highly chunky and much commended product that was a big success.  The website (which I co-designed with the wonderful Alastair T. Willey) uses the pages – it gives a good overview of the design, you can find it at www.csmfineart2008.co.uk

Thesis

For our thesis project I decided to produce my text as an A1 poster – a homage to the subject, the artist Felix Gonzaléz-Torres, whom I idolise.  The piece was a combination of ‘experimental’ writing about his posthumous show in the Venice Biennale, photographs I took whilst there, and more conventional academic writing.  The poster itself referenced FGTs work with printed media, and also allowed the reader to experience a little of what I was trying to talk about while they read it (sounds more complex than it was)

A (quite large) PDF of it can be viewed here… obviously no pinching as its © Me (it may take a while to load…)

Temporary Tattoos

For my page in the afore mentioned catalogue I designed a temporary transfer tattoo piece – each edition of the catalogue (1500) had a tattoo stuck in.   The image above shows the tattoo with the words ‘what now’ written onto it, and the back – which has the name of the piece and the ingredients etc.  I was lucky enough to be sponsored by the tattoo printers, and the piece – which was basically a wearable piece of sculpture.  It was designed to prolong the visitors memories of the show as it faded over a few days – so as you were in bed or walking the dog you would look down, see this tattoo and remember the exhibition – it also functioned as a summing up of the feelings of many people finishing the degree (and indeed still today) ‘what now?’

Outrageous Website

Last year I was lucky enough to spend time working with the lovely people at Breakfast of Champions to redevelop the website for Outrageous Ltd. (my clever fathers corporate events company.)

It was great to work on a project like this – especially as i’ve worked alot within the same industry as my dad (and a couple of times for his company.)  The concept behind the site was to create a site as creative as its company – to make a dynamic, exciting and hopefully interactive site that you can explore.

The graphics idea came from looking at Grenville (my dads) notebooks – he is a prolific brainstormer, note maker and doodler, so when it came to the writing and doodles on the site we used his writing and elements of his squiggle style.

While I worked on the squiggles and the layout, Breakfast provided the creative backup and technical genius to convert it into the living breathing sketch it has become.  They also developed the most important part of the site, its functionality; because instead of it being just a rigid way for Outrageous to sell themselves, it also incorporates a platform for other freelancers within the industry to advertise themselves, a blog and links to twitter and facebook – allowing the site to be a tool as well as a billboard.

Platform 4 Alzheimers Project

The most recent project I have worked on is in collaboration with Platform 4 theatre – and a project they undertook with a group of Alzheimer’s sufferers and their carers – I provided graphics, produced visuals and took photographs of the event, which was magical.  I’ll put up the exhibition graphics which i’m working on at the moment when they are finished…

Wonderland Party

The largest scale piece of graphics I have ever worked on was for a party for a corporate client, with the theme ‘wonderland.’  For this we produced collages and illustrations which we digitised and merged, and had printed onto vast gauze banners – The printer went on to win a printing award for the banners, and hanging in the twilight of the event, with people all around them, they looked phenomenal.