Category: Projects

  • Blas-TT from the past

    TTfone Star TT300

    Recently I ordered an ‘easy to use’* phone from an online retailer…

    I didn’t really pay much attention to what I’d ordered beyond the features and the reviews. When the phone arrived I switched it on to be greeted by a logo that looked familiar.

    It seems I designed the logo for the company behind the phone that I’d just bought sometime around 2006/07. While the company has rebranded slightly, from TT Sims to TT fone, they kept kept the sim card design created as a part of their original website from way back then.

    TT Sims website circa 2007

    (I should add whoever converted is has squished it down and lost the slight bevel to card had, 3D was big in design back then you know! Call me biased but I’d say it looked a little better unsquished and beveled 🙂 )

    Not the most exciting post perhaps but when you do work for the web you find there isn’t much that stays around all that long, let alone ten years or more. Even though this isn’t perhaps my finest design moment, it was great to see… Though I now also feel old.

    *Not for myself I am now fully smartphone equipped, though admittedly it did take me quite a while to come around to them.

  • The Long Ryders dot com

    “Majestic four-disc anthology of studio recordings and rarities…”

    I have spent a good portion of the past month over at Hathway Creative working on creating a new website to support the release of the career spanning four CD box set for the band The Long Ryders, which was released last month to much fanfare by Cherry Red Records.

    Its been a hugely enjoyable and pretty wide encompassing project and my work has included the creation and launch of a new website, product photography of the box set, some work promoting the site and set on social media and also I’ve had a part in designing and editing some videos.

    Its been good fun too and its always interesting working on a project in a new area. In working on this I think I’ve mostly learned more than I would have liked on the convoluted and somewhat messy issues of music licensing and YouTube and Facebook.

    Take a look at the new website at thelongryders.com which will also tell you all you might need to know on the Final Wild Songs box set.

    And check out one of the videos here…

    The Long Ryders will be touring Europe and the USA later in the year.

  • Mengage – Illustrations and Website

    It was great to be asked to work with a previous client and now friend on on the set up of a brand new project.

    Mengage is a UK-based not-for-profit company working with males on health and social issues, providing resources, training, consultancy and practical research-based solutions from both national and international practice, backed by years of experience of practical work with men and boys.

    Mengage website illustration

    I contributed both the website, logo and some illustrations to the project. The illustrations were produced both to be used on the website itself and in a number of print publications.

    I’ve wanted to have the opportunity of placing some illustrations within a website layout for some time, stock images are fine but they can sometimes feel, and be, a little generic and forgettable. I think where the illustrations appear within the new website they do help to give the project and a little more depth and a more unique visual identity. The logo was also produced as a metal badge, cut to shape to help with promotion and identity, it came out really well.

    Anyway, click here to visit Mengage, If you are putting a project together, do consider illustration along side stock photography, I may well be biased but I think its an underused option.

    Mengage Website Screenshot

  • All Mod Cons

    Logo design is clearly an art in itself. I’ve seen the kind of work you get on those “$5’s for a logo with unlimited revisions” websites* and while its not always true you get what you pay for, I think its good to find someone with some talent in the design field.

    This is all just a long winded way to post the following.

    A friend of mine was launching a new forum as, while Facebook may be great for keeping in touch its groups and pages don’t work very well or give you many options to manage and organise information – Anything a few days old is pretty much lost in the either.

    The forum is named All Mod Cons and is aimed to be new a forum for enthusiasts of modified cars.

    All Mod Cons - Logo

    The logo needed to be multifunctional so it could both be used as an identity for the website and across social media as well as suitable for promotional items and stickers. As such there were two main designs…

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  • Papas Train CD Cover Artwork

    From the number of spam comments I’ve just had to delete I’ve clearly been letting things slide here so here is a quick catch up…

    heres a couple of CDs which arrived in the post last week which I was lucky enough to be asked to illustrate the cover artwork for.

    The illustrations been lurking in the portfolio for a while now but the CDs has only just been released. Lovely people to work for and please do go check out their website.

    Papas Train CD Artwork
    Papas Train CD Artwork

    The band is called Papas Train and you can now read and hear more (and buy the CD!) at papastrain.com