iPhone/iPad App Designers Ahoy

After a convo with a nice fellow at work about a few iPhone ideas he had, I started doodling on a pad, you know – the kinda scribbles that you do during a conceptual brief or client meeting, but it all felt a little lack-lustre as all the sketches had shitly drawn iPhone visuals. From here I decided to spend a little time and create a small PDF doc which can be used as a template either within your editing prog, be it Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks, etc or even as a printout.

If you fancy one of these then press here for a nifty little PDF to use at your leisure.

LEGO at the MOSI

It’s been an incredible week with an enormous amount of workload – mainly being the reason why I have only just been able to update my blog with my recent trip to MOSI to see the LEGO exhibition. I think my love for LEGO stems from when I was about 6 and my parents got me a washing machine sized box full of LEGO from the LOOT. What an awesome Christmas that was! Anywho, here’s a few pics from my LEGO jaunt…

Death From Above

Well, it’s been a bit of a crazy month. Work stacking up to my eyeballs including branding for a global Chocolate Company ( I do feel a little like Charlie indeed), a good few bits for a awesome football team and a hella lot of other niceties to long to mention! It’s an insane feeling but I cant help but relish the busyness at the moment, especially with how the economy and general world is continuing. Apart from the norm, I’ve also been doing a lot of work on a few charity projects including BosomBuddies2010, which surprisingly enough came from a 10 minute brief and a few post-it notes ( I love these kinds of projects!). It was only this morning that I heard the fella who is organising it all on the GMR radio station! ACE BLOKE! Here’s a lil link to the branding and a couple of press ad’s which is currently flooding the press. Whilst on the self-initiated front I recently did some graphics for the Dave Gorman show Genius. Well, not directly, but it was for a fella who was going on there and he needed his ideas mac’d up. Ideas which, at first may seem completely barmy, but after a bit of reasoning and creative love – form something wholly beautiful. I cant say much on this but I’ll try and pop it up on here soonish!

In terms of recent events, I went to my first Manchester Northern Digitals meet t’other night and I must say it were immense! Those taking part in the talks from BLAB was Manchester based photographer and digital artist Andrew Brooks and Joel and Pete of http://www.hellicarandlewis.com who are shit hot on the interactive installation scene! Turn of events included a few bevvies before hand which lead to everyone flooding upstairs to a very hot but intitmate space. Opening was Matt Booth (interactive genius) leading into Andrew Brooks and his explanation about his work, which from my point of view was immense. The depth and character to every piece of his work is out of this world, go have a look now! He was swfityl followed by Joel and Pete, awesome guys and not to mention f**king intelligent! Viewing some of their installations and reasons behind them made me excited and entirely jealous! To round the night off they gave us all a few quotes which they like including one which stuck in my mind “Start & Fail as quick as you can”!

Whislt on events, I was able to make it to the screening of the film ‘Typeface‘ held by the Independent Northern Creatives. If your into letterpressing then this is for you! Also, the new Creative Times site has been launched! have a look!

This is a work in progress post as so much has happened lately, I’ll be sure to pick this up a bit later…

Oh and by the way the above illy which is part of my new project is available as a beautiful Desktop wallpaper here. It’ll fit any display so go ahead! It’s off the god-damn-hook!

*QUICK&DIRTY* FREE DISTORT TOOL Tutorial

Hey all, ever wondered what the FREE DISTORT tool in Acobe’s Illustrator does?

After having a quick chat with a mate about the subject I thought I’d chuck together a quick and dirty guide to using the tool to create a realistic shadow effect. I’ll be using a landscape (seen above) I recently  illustrated for an animation as the basis for the tutorial.

To begin here’s a quick look at how the shadow is going to look in the finished project…

To begin select the Tree element as shown, copy and then paste-in-place

After pasting the tree in place, go into your EFFECTS menu and select DISTORT & TRANSFORM > FREE DISTORT… Then begin to manipulate the tree to gain the desired effect. Always keep in mind the direction of the light you wish to convey. It’d be bloody silly to have the sun on the left and the shadow heading in the same way! It’s all in the detail!

Next up, expand your distorted tree by selecting OBJECT > EXPAND APPEARANCE.

To put the finishing touches to your tree, select your expanded tree shadow and drop the opacity to around 30%, or a percentage to which seems right depending on the type of background it lies upon. And, voila, you have a tree with a believable shadow. This effect can be applied in a lot of different ways, experiment with other objects including type and images – have a bit of FUN with it!

If you’ve any questions about the above tutorial or any design related shenanigans then fire me an email on wave(at)james-oconnell.com

TOYOTAAAAAAAAARGH in The Drum!

If you’ve had the chance to get hold of the latest Drum mag then I’m sure you’ve come across the Chip Shop Awards section. In there you will find a few of the entries from the 3T’s section… Terry,Tiger and Toyota. The ads are a selection of entries that were all pointing in the same direction, thus bringing us to the point that our geographical status bears no impact on the stable-hold of ideas and their execution. Keep an eye out on page 27 for my ‘TOYOTAAAAAAAAARGH’ bilboard ad!

Also in the picture is the TEAM Impressions Business card (a beauty of a card!). Luckily I had the chance of meeting Steve Fisher from TEAM who is an ace bloke! And believe me – he KNOWS his print! if your looking for some awesome printed matter then TEAM are the guys to give a shout!

Flyer from concept to print tutorial

Whilst browsing the multitude of tutorials based on taking an idea from conception through to print, there seems to be a lack of emphasis in the ‘meat’ of the process. By ‘meat’ I mean the bare essentials which start by taking a brief, formulating an idea, mac’ing (visualising) the idea, then finally producing the idea which would be a piece of printed collateral.

Within this tutorial I will hopefully be trying to cover these sections in the same way a working creative in today’s world would. First off here’s a front and back shot of the finished flyer just to show you what’s going to be achieved…

1. First off will be the meeting with the client, this is where you have the chance to be able to visualise the problem first hand. By asking key questions you can ascertain what format, stock, colours and type they may have in mind for the project. This is where you play a huge part – your creative knowledge knows what works and what doesn’t work and can let the client know if their ideas are attainable.
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2. During the meeting it’s useful to scamp a few rough ideas to gain a starting point. These rough ideas will form the basis of your creative route.
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3. After choosing an idea this will then be mac’d up. In our case it takes the form of an A5 invite being printed onto 165 gsm stock paper. It’s always good to get an idea of the stock you’ll be using as this will most certainly influence your method of print. In our instance we will be going down the digital print route as this is the cheapest route that still guarantees quality.
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4. During my meeting with the client, I found out that the brief involved the flyer being double sided – a front and a back. The all to action was to be the RSVP on the back page and the colours to be used included black, blue and amber. Within illustrator we would set up the file to the correct dimensions and then begin work on the front of the flyer. After finishing the front we would then create a second layer to create the back of the flyer.
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5. Upon finishing the artwork for the front and back – we would then save the file. Delete the back layer and create a PDF of the front using the smallest file size option. After completion we would then press the undo button and do the same action for the back layer.
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6. After creating the two layers we would then close our window, no need to save as it is already saved, then open the front PDF in the Adobe PDF reader. Press COMMAND SHIFT I to insert another PDF, this is where you would select the back PDF. Then save the file with an appropriate name.
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7. This would then be sent to the client via email as a low-res proof PDF. After receiving a reply from the client, action any amends. If there are none, re-open your flyer file. This is where we will begin to get the flyer ready for artwork. To begin art-working we will delete all the colours from the colour palette, make sure all fonts are embedded on both layers and if any images have been used, embed them. A quick note on images… If you have used images – always make sure they are 300DPi, CMYK, and also set up to the correct size they are being used in Illustrator.
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8. After sorting these things, delete the back layer and then save the front layer as a Hi-Res Print ready version- it should be 300DPi with 3mm bleed all around with the registration marks and colour bars switched on. Press undo to get your back layer back and then delete the front layer and then do the same procedure as we did for the front.
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9. Now close your document and perform the same procedure to collate both the front and back into one PDF.
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10. Making sure all amends have been actioned and signed off by the client – send the art-worked files through to the printers. Shortly after, you / the client will receive the finished printed matter.

So, there you have it. A brief being taken from the client to scamp stage, to visualised stage through to finshed artwork and printed matter. There were a number of ways this project could have gone including special finishes i.e. die-cuts, pantones, special finishes (spot u.v,etc). The above project was based on the clients budget – which was almost non-existent and relied upon a few good contacts at the printers!

I hope this helps anyone who is a bit hazy on the relation between sending files to the client, taking briefs and sorting files for artwork. If you’d like me to expand on any of the points don’t hesitate to get in touch with me wave(at)james-oconnell.com

The Victorian Fixed Wheel

Fixed wheel bicycles have lately seen a meteoric rise in popularity, mainly dedicated to their discernible regional aesthetics ,finishes and design details. The rise began in in the mid 2000s not only with the bicycles but also spoke cards which are attributed to bicycle messengers. Their simplicity and low maintenance are the aspects that lead me to my line drawing. I wanted to portray the bicycle in its simplest form, a form which could have been in use within Victorian times. The sheer build of the wheel and stool along with the contentious fixed type all provide the viewer with the sense of the hand-built machine.

The illustration has been applied to A3 posters, cups and t-shirts, spoke cards are soon to follow.

If your a fixie lover and would like one of these vintage Victorian Spoke Cards then throw me an email to spoke(at)james-oconnell.com

Unconvention Factory Screenprint

A direct response to a brief set for a screenprinted poster that will be used to promote a ‘one-stop-shop album recording day’. The day is called the ‘Unconvention Factory’ and is a small part of a larger machine called ‘Unknown Pleasures’  which has been organised to celebrate the life of Ian Curtis on the 30th anniversary of his death. To have a closer look at what’s going on, pop on over to their blog and have a little gander. The poster is an illustrative response that uses the visual icons and colours from the hacienda. Detail of the poster is shown above.

Basic human needs

I was thinking the other day that there is great deal of us geeks that spend a huge amount of time pilfering around online. In a round about way this made me remember when I used to use the good old MS-DOS system on the old Windows PC’s. Such an incredulous amount of time was spent inputting codes and sequences which are deemed prehistoric in this day and age. Keeping this in mind, I decided to design a t-shirt aimed at geeks, like myself, that could help people who are suffering from poverty. I tried to give the t-shirt a desirable look and feel, as most charity style t-shirts tend to look like they’ve been thrown together in Microsoft Paint.

If you’d like to get involved and vote for the tee to be printed, I guarantee that a percentage of the proceeds will be given to a charity that deals with people stricken with poverty. To get involved, wonder on to Delete Poverty Tee and add your vote today! And if you could try and network this link to as many people as possible, it’d be greatly appreciated like!!

Chip Shop Entry – Toyotaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh

So as my design didn’t make it into the top flight stages, I thought I’d pop it on here for all to see. I can see why it probably wasn’t chosen as there must have been a huge amount of Toyota oriented spoofs floating around!

If you like it – retweet it!

P.S. you can now vote for this Chip Shop Entry here and here. Just scroll down until you see my ‘Toyotaaaaaaaaaaaaargh’ billboard and give it a rating! It’d be much appreciated!!