Teelicious

Do you like t-shirts? Do you like delicious things? Well then you're in luck because here are some t-shirt designs I've produced that are on t-shirts and aren't delicious as such but they've definitely got the t-shirt thing going for them:

OWL be the judge of THAT,

I'm pretty good at puns. Well, I'm owlright... Anyway, I've decided to present to you a selection of my recent owl illustrations I've accumulated over the last few months. All of the following images where created in Illustrator and in some cases I've used Photoshop to add textures afterwords. This first Owlicious Illustration is my most recent and I like it so much that I've decided to feature it in my portfolio!








I wish owls were actually perfectly spherical.



This one I managed to use as a valentines card, result.


This illustration is about racism within the owl community and if you pretend that this is not an issue then you may as well be a racist yourself.

My Philosophy

I've had this little philosophy in my mind for a while now and I just wanted to get it down somewhere. It's what I believe to be the four key characteristics for a good designer. A bit pretentious I know but here goes anyway:

The ‘eye’- An abstract concept that is essentially the ability to differentiate good and bad design
The idea- The invaluable skill of creative thinking which separates the good design from the great
Motivation- The driving force for a designer
The skill- The ability to translate your ideas into the physical world

Well... I'm glad I've got that off my chest.
Of course, everyone has a certain quantity of all the characteristics I've listed and by no means do you have to excel on every single level to be successful, I suppose you just need a healthy mix. Luckily not only do I excel at every area of this list but I actually invented the list, that's how good I am. Man I'm good.

A New Chapter

I've decided to try and post a blog slightly more regularly than once a year. Mainly because it's an attractive asset to an employer and I've recently become unemployed. So between my freelance work and my job hunting I will try to update this blog at least once a month with some work or thoughts I want to share. The problem is, I've never quite understood the point of the a blog of a layman such as myself because I can't see why anyone in the world would care what my opinion is on any topic. I suppose I will use this as a little extra to my portfolio, perhaps it will give people a better idea as to who I am and what I'm like. If you haven't got the time to read any further then I'll just tell you straight off: I'm awesome.

Final Major Project

Just so you have something to look at if your visiting, here is a selection of work from my final major project. The brief was to design a set of book and DVD covers for the classic sci-fi novelist John Wyndham. First of all, here are the book covers, it was important to keep them fairly ambiguous as not to give much away about the story:


These are the DVD covers including the CD face and inner sleeve. The bandage on 'The Day of the Triffids' is a part of the packaging which slides off when you are opening the box. This is a great interactive touch to the design as well as immersing the user in the first scene of the film before they have even put the disc in:

Personal Branding

To start off I thought I'd share the new branding I have designed for myself. It's meant to be fun, welcoming and jolly. These are my new business cards:

The pencil is a huge part of what I'm about and is the single tool which led me into the art and design world so I wanted to include one in my logo. Didn't want to go with the cliche of having a letter with a pencil at the end though so that's why I ended up with this.

I had some trouble defining what it is exactly I specialize in, in the end I decided that I would be happy to work in practically any area of design and so used another feature to focus my branding upon - the head. I also liked the idea of all design coming initially from the head and expressed this with the little colourful figures which feature in my branding. Each one represents a branch of my skills which are combined to create the graphic designer that is - me.

Here is an alternative I very nearly went with:

Finally, here is the title to my portfolio and my upcoming website. The phrase fits in with the rest of the branding and the idea is that even this title is coming straight from the head. I have just purchase the url: www.designfromthehead.com so hopefully that will be up and running soon. I will have to of course change the title to 'design from the head' to keep everything coherent.