LUXE EYES

My very talented and beautiful girlfriend has just started her own business with include a variety of professional and high quality beauty treatments from eyelash extensions to hair threading and waxing.

When it comes to creative ideas and entrepreneurship we all love it and hate it at the same time (I know I do) and it can be hard to get it going, but Jade does not shy from giving it her all to do the best job she can.

From being a professional model she has these treatments done on the regular and knows all the ins and outs of what is and isn't a good job. After understanding how its done and fed up with mediocre quality that she's seen, she wanted to provide a better service herself to others. 

Coming up with a name is hard enough but we got that part sorted and on with the design work it came.

I do enjoy trying to incorporate the name into a pictorial logo as I think this looks more professional and can be used on multiple platforms, digital or printed. 

The first thing I thought of was the 'L' in calligraphic form and how the serifs are curled and folded over each other, this is where the eye and brow idea came from. I wanted to blend that idea with a brow and tail off lashes at the ends.

(I find the pencil sketch more striking than the black?)

Anyway.

The more I played around with the design against different backgrounds and inverting the logo worked alot better. Theres some elements of it I still don't like, I think it's the contrast of thicknesses in close proximity in the line work that throws it off. I think it needs to be smoother. 

(UNOFFICIAL RE DESIGN) below.

I still wanted the brow and lash element but the only thing I wanted it to do was to work with existing letters. For example the 'U' is the closed eye when you add the lashes and brow. I like both designs but both don't scream at me YES THATS IT! but its fun trying to get it right. 

MAD GOOSE!

A buddy of mine was asking for a logo design for a racing car, I was kept in the dark about much of the racing side of things and how it was to be used... all i know is it was to go on a car. The driver, Bert was called 'goose' for some cruel reason but none the less a 'mad goose' was to be the design.

At first prompts the design was to be a caricature of the guy as a goose, something head to toe (bill to flippers...)
Anyway the design entailed to me seemed to involved for something thats to go on a car. A racing car surely has plenty of decals that go unnoticed, so I wanted this to stand out. 

I suggested that he went for a more logo/simplistic approach, just a head or head & shoulders, without the knees and toes. (sorry for all these ridiculous puns, I can't help it) He liked the idea and I went with that.

I went for something in a similar style to decals you find on race cars but give it my own touch. With race car imagery I find lots are heavy on the bold line work and minimal colour and usually encapsulated by a shape to round them off to separate themselves from others. I wanted to go with the colours used in the car and drivers colours.

The final design was to be simple but captivating at any distance and speed, taking into account how it would be used and where. One of the requests from the original brief was to include the helmet on the goose, I thought wearing it would cover the entire head and not counter for anything else. So placing the image in front of it made it more subtle and tied it all together. 

Cheers Drew & Bert

What If? Comics. The 'in-situ' comic app.

This may sound complicated but it's really not. 'What If Comics' is a comic hunting app based on good and evil. The app consists of an ever growing database of mini comics created by us and the readers, but the cool thing about it is that its integrated to where you are.

The comics topic is relevant to your surroundings, hence 'in-situ'. For example if you find yourself browsing through the shops on the high street, you notice someone shoplifting or you find the eurge to do the same thing yourself each comic has a good and bad storyline depending where you are or which one you decide to choose to find. 

Each comic is located on the map function and at the location is a poster or sticker presenting a QR code for you to unlock the mini read. The whole feel of the comic hunt determines your moral choices, so its a lot deeper than entertainment, its telling you about yourself as a person too but in a light hearted way through the karma and stats section of the app.

The app has many cool features and functions to make it a fun app to grow into and be apart of a new creative concept.

app icon - loading screen - main screen (constantly updating)

comic library - A comic (scroll) - Maps

scan mode - photo library - stats and karma

comic illustration samples

First Impressions - Wygston's House

Wygston's House

Wygston's House is one of Leicester's most treasured buildings and a staple for it's history and heritage. This wonderful piece of architecture is to be transformed into a family bar and fine dining restaurant in the heart of the city centre. I was lucky enough to be asked to come up with an idea of what the interior may look like as bar and restaurant. The deadline was less than 3 days from when i was asked to take on the project, but i'm not one to shy away from a challenge.

Here are the illustrations for the Wygston project.

Bar Area

Georgian Area (upstairs Dining)

Medieval Dining

Braindead Tshirts!

The Pencil is Mightier than the Sword!

Official brain tee's available soon, this first print run of this little guy as a mini left side logo and the official logo on the back.

New designs to follow, available in small, medium, large and extra large. 

Brian and his pencil sword! 

What's a Squeal Deal??

YCN Orchard Pig's 'Squeal Deal' ! 


There's alot of stuff out there that promotes 'craft beer' an ALOT! of unnecessary merchandise that's shoved down the consumer's throats about how the craft revolution is the biggest thing to happen to the modern drinker, well its not all that.

Drink and food go hand in hand, the craft beer we see today is often paired with a type of dish or food that compliments one another, and I find it very complex and too fussy for what is at the end of the day.... beer.

Introducing Orchard Pig's more light hearted version, 'The Squeal Deal'. Equivalent to a convenient store's meal deal where you would buy a sandwich and drink for a set price, this will be more of high quality and distributed through cafes, bars and selected stores.

The idea and development has been a joy to create and keeping light hearted with the whole process just the way Orchard Pig intended it to.



Have a look!

Net Idea, Needed some tweaks

Concertina labels

I redesigned the existing labels they had on the bottles to fit my style and the style I was going for with the campaign. The corresponding cider label had a simple message in it that paired with the right sandwich. 

Poster Draft

Coming to the finalisation of the design, the design was printed on textured kraft card to give it that rustic feel and reduced design along the whole sandwich box to give its presence as a three dimensional object and 2d design the overall design. Also introducing the 3 flavours.

Final poster design

The design became a fun piece of packaging aesthetically and practical as it tears open from the middle and comes apart in 2 parts.   

Feelin' Hungry? 

FINALLY

We're in print!

We finally got some prototype books to check out! We're really happy with the outcome, the images look great! On with the next book! 

DON'T STOP BELIEVIN'

The final poster design

First colour way

Line work draft

This poster design was for a buddy of mine I used to work with, he was hosting a monthly rock ballads event that needed a kick-ass poster design to promote it (and of cause I couldn't resist) You remember all the anthems of the 80's all that hair/glam metal... yeah you got it. I wanted to incorporate the 'loudness' of a concert, the long hair and head banging and of course, the toilet paper streams, that was a nice touch if I do say so myself. Within the detail of the design you pick out cliche elements of a concert and the attributes of the lifestyle, which is key to the event, POWER ANTHEMS ARE CHEESY! and you know it. 

Im now over on behance! Its only just been made so theres only one project on there, but still theres more images of the yuck shop project thats not here so go check it out!

https://www.behance.net/gallery/35759061/The-Yuck-Shop

profile

More from these idiots!

Pan Macmillan children's book Entry

Fangs is excited!

Meet the gang!

This goofy idea for a children's book was birthed out of love for sweets and all things bad for your teeth. There is a moral to this rather than tooth decay, the fact that children today have lost contact with simple things (physical if you will) the wonders of toys and urge to discover and play! I find this is now limited to screens and what can be discovered on the internet. Anyways... sidetracking, I find sweets haven't changed and everyones attitude towards sugary treats is still child like, this friendly gang of characters can reconnect children with the wonders of wanting to be creative and imaginative with their entire surroundings. 

Harvey 'Two Face' Dent

Batman is always fun no matter how you use it, everything about the franchise gets people going and the graphic novels if you haven't got any, you better go grab some. The universe of batman is fun and exciting but also dark and sinister. A buddy of mine asked if I wanted to design a shirt for his band based on a drawing of harvey dent from the Arkham Asylum novel 'A serious house on serious earth'... I couldn't resist. 


The mark making is ace and the use of typography would get any designer riled up! I changed the type to reference the band and tried to make it my own without destroying the image too much. 

Original > sketch lines > completed draft.

I then took it to the shop and tightened up the lines.

Final

The original design had the top part of the head cut off in the book, I wanted the piece to have a complete composition without it being half an image on a shirt so i filled out the hair with some manic curls and filled out the gradient to black as it went up. 

Check out the band, they absolutely rock! 

https://www.facebook.com/internalconflict/ 

FIRST PHOTO SHOOT - "This wall would look better with someone's brains on it"

It felt odd, being told to move parts of my body I had no idea I could move independently JUST for photo composition but I guess it makes sense as a whole. As my better half called the shots as she had more experience than me behind a lens I let her run the show.

We crawled the city for the best places to shoot, I feel quite at home in the city... it's pungent smell of takeaway food, pollution and the "Oh i'll just go for a pee round this corner" really sparks my creativity. If you don't understand my sarcasm you will... eventually. 

This snap (below) is one of many favourites, I like the stance.

"This wall would look better with someone's brains on it"

Branding isn't easy

Our company logo, it's still in progress. We like it! 

What do you think?

*BRAND NEW* We are BRAINDEAD.

Working hard on multiple projects at the moment, some exciting things happening and for a first post it seems fitting to show you where the magic happens! 

"we are all brain dead"

my eyes are so sore

I keep thinking I'm going to write BRIAN, WHOS BRIAN!

Not a Brian in sight... I think.