Tag Archive for: Design
New site, new stuff, no style.
Enjoying the new site so far. Having the blog section a little bit off to the site means I can write a bit more and not be worried that it’s the first thing people will read on the site! Still enjoying making work in my free time and decided not to try and find “a style”. I spent a great deal of time earlier this year trying to perfect a very simple way of drawing faces.
It started with drawing Walter and the dude for a Big Lebowski challenge, then I moved on to Star Wars characters, Doctor Who’s and finally on to the Dwarves from the Hobbit film. The last one was something I was really pleased with as they were very simple, but there was something of the original characters in there. Sadly, someone pointed out that someone else had done something similar and it had been printed on tee shirt. I can’t help wondering if they’d seen the works in progress on my Facebook page.
This thwarted my progress, but also made me realise that having a style wasn’t something I wanted. It’s a great and enviable thing if you have a style, but if your style is not having a style, that’s fine too! Working commercially as a designer means that you have to follow a set of guidelines, and whilst that’s okay in my professional life, my personal work is more like playtime. Who wants a playtime where you can only play with one toy or imagine one thing. I used to love playing with my star wars figures, as well as action man coming in like Swift’s Gulliver.
Instead of getting bogged down with a style I’m carrying on doing anything I want to, including the rather random Trio of Trumpeting Tarsiers you can see in the gallery.
Until next time…
Breakfast in Wonderland
Threadless recently ran a challenge to design a shirt for Dunkin Donuts. I was thinking that their primary two products are cake and coffee, which eventually led onto the train of thought of Alice in Wonderland and the things she eats and drinks to make her shrink and grow.
I primarily work in vectors, so I’ve tried to give this a more organic natural feel. I take ages to draw stuff, and this came out better than I expected.
Diamond Argyle
A silly idea I had when playing cards. We’re getting to the time of year when jumpers have to be worn at all times 🙂
Dr Who Who
A design I did a few years ago that I started reworking recently. On of those just for fun jobs I did just because of the pending 50th anniversary of the show.
Breaking Bad
When Threadless announced a science challenge it was in the midst of the Breaking Bad closing season. I doodled this idea and thought I’d submit it for fun, and for other fans to have a giggle at. In my entire time at Threadless I think this print surprised me the most, just because it was a pretty disposable idea.
It’s proven to be a bit of a Marmite design, and has sadly been slated by a few people, loved by others, to the point of being ripped off on another tee shirt site.
It started off as a simple doodle, then I went on to make some custom type a very simple spherical flask thingumajig. Pleased to say it’s printed, sad to say that you can’t please all the people all the time. For sale here.
LICHTVENNSTEIN
I designed this for a challenge themed around minimalism, more simplistic I guess, but this design scored pretty well, much better than I expected. It stemmed from a life long love of the work of Roy Lichtenstein, who’s work I’ve seen this year at the Tate Modern.
The Simp-sons
Virtually all of my work output is Threadless based – I’d love to break out in to gig posters one days, but when an opportunity comes along to design a shirt for one of the best ever animated comedies it’s really hard to pass up. I made four designs in total, and this was the one which scored the best. This is one of my classic moments in Simpsons history because it was so surreal. Vector based with custom type, I think this would be one of the only times I’d wear pink!
The Sound of Silence
Really proud to say that this one printed! It was for a design challenge to create a shirt based on an Oxymoron. There were a few I came up with, mostly music based. As well as being printed it also was the winner of the challenge. So pleased at the response I had with this.
Hipster Pirate
One of the great things about Threadless is the community (at least most of it) sometimes community challenges are organised on the forums, and this was part of that. Basically you chose someone’s design, they chose one of your and you remake it. “Remake Swapsies”. This was a design from a talented guy called Ryder Doty, and he kindly let me rework his witty take on a modern pirate’s eyewear.
Fun with Classics
This was for a Black and White design challenge. I thought long and hard about things which we’re used to seeing in colour. At the time I was reading a lot about pop artists, which led me down a different path, the Mondrian. I started thinking about halftones, patterns to represent the bright, vivid colours in his artworks.
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah
Threadless ran a challenge to design a shirt for The Flaming Lips. Ironic really because the first post I made on this site of mine was about their covers album of Dark Side of the Moon. Anyway, I took the opportunity to make a fair few designs, all in different styles. Whilst I didn’t win, I really enjoyed it and there was some phenomenal work produced. A favourite was from a friend of mine. Stacy – see it here.
