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Control film poster design

On Sunday 13th of May, Jim Stephenson’s always excellent miniclick photography talk joins forces with Hungry Eye Magazine to present Anton Corbijn’s Ian Curtis biopic, “Control”. The film will be screened at The Duke of York’s Picturehouse as part of the Brighton Fringe and will be followed by a discussion on the aesthetics of that era with Stephen Mallinder from the band Cabaret Voltaire.

To commemorate the screening, Jim asked four Brighton based artists to design one-off special edition posters. Graphic design is represented by myself and Chris Harrison of Harrison & Co with illustrators Billy Mather and Ryan Gillett making up the quartet.

For me, the film offers a bittersweet insight into Ian Curtis’ world. While he and the band are finding fame and adulation, Curtis is depressed and going through a failing marriage. He is also diagnosed with epilepsy and is suffering from the side effects of the drugs prescribed to help him. A line in the film stood out for me: “It’s a matter of trial and error until the right drug or combination of drugs are found”. This illustrates how far medicine had yet to develop on managing epilepsy, and brought home to me the confusion, despair and disappointment that Curtis must have felt after diagnosis. According to the Epilepsy Society, seizures may induce, among other things, visual disturbances such as flashing lights, hallucinations and the feeling of a ‘wave’ going through the head. With the poster, I wanted to visually depict the sensations that Curtis may have experienced as an epilepsy sufferer, giving the viewer the same sort of unease. The poster is also intended to represent the tunnel-like dark loneliness that sufferers of depression report.

I wanted to build layers of meaning into the image. So for example, the image is made of 23 concentric rings, each representing a year of Curtis’ life; almost like the rings of a tree. There are also 80 segments to the circle as the film ends with Curtis’ death in 1980. I hope the poster does justice to this beautiful and moving film.

The posters have been limited to 30 prints of each design and are printed on heavyweight A3 recycled stock. The set of four posters is available to buy for the bargain price of just £20 (plus £5 p&p in the UK). Please email: jim@clickclickjim.com for more information. For information on the screening and details on where to get tickets, click here.

Posted in Art, Illustration, Minimalism, Print on Thursday, April 26th, 2012

A very merry Christmas

Here’s to a well deserved Christmas break. I hope you enjoy Christmas and new year, and that you return feeling refreshed. This year’s Christmas cards were foiled onto candy pink GFSmith Colorplan stock and are now in the post, so if you’re a client, colleague, collaborator, comrade or crony you should hopefully receive yours soon. If not sorry, I blame Royal Mail!

With thoughts for those not as fortunate as ourselves, Very Own Studio has made a donation to Crisis: The national charity for single homeless people — who are very busy at this time of year.

See you on the other side.

Posted in Illustration, Print, The grid on Monday, December 19th, 2011

Design Assembly 3 book

Last week I had the opportunity to attend the launch of DA3, a book celebrating the end of three years of the design discourse website Design Assembly.

The book (there are actually three of them bound together) is so much more than just a beautiful example of what can achieved in print. Divided into several sections including Design Discourse, Inspiration, Showcase and Good Design, the book acts as an archive of the articles presented on the Design Assembly website from the past three years and also includes readers’ comments.

If this wasn’t enough to whet your bibliophilic* appetite, all proceeds from the sale of the book go to an excellent cause, fighting cancer (Cancer Research UK, LIVESTRONG and WCRF International). Well done to everyone involved. Buy one here.

*There’s a word I don’t use every day!

Posted in Paper, Print, Writing on design on Friday, December 16th, 2011

Let us play

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was recently invited to take part in the Celebration of September poster exhibition. Each exhibitor was asked to create an A1 poster for one day in September.

I was given the 25th of September, which was a Sunday. My poster takes the day as its theme, presenting a traditional stained glass window with the message ‘let us play’; a tongue-in-cheek reference to the church call to prayer. Does the poster express a commentary on changes in our society — a decline in moral or spiritual values as we hedonistically seek to fulfil individual needs? Maybe for some, but to me it’s a call to arms, encouraging people to bring the playful back to their weekends, and do something creative. I wanted to make a point about the spiritual value of play.

The brief stipulated that all posters should be handmade. My poster was created using paper-cut collage — each shape cut out by hand using a scalpel. This was time consuming but it was great to have the opportunity to work in a way I don’t normally as part of my everyday work.

On Thursday I visited the busy private view and managed to take some photos of the event. It was good to meet the other creatives involved and to see their posters, which had been created using a range of methods, including screen printing, embroidery, hand drawing and laser cutting. Special thanks to Mortar&Pestle Studio for organising the event.

Posted in Art, Colour, Illustration, Maximalism, Minimalism, Paper, Print, Typography on Monday, October 31st, 2011

A Celebration of September

I have been invited to take part in a poster exhibition organised by Mortar&Pestle Studio and Adrem. The exhibition, which takes place between 24th October and 1st November 2011 will showcase thirty creatives, each exhibiting an A1 poster at the Dreamspace Gallery.

Each exhibitor has been assigned a day within September, in order to create a collaboratively designed calendar for the month. I was given Sunday the 25th, and asked to design a poster specifically for that date. In a fast paced world, individual days are often overlooked for their significance and this exhibition aims to explore each day’s relevance within our own lives.

In a design industry heavily dependent on digital printing, each exhibitor has been asked to use more traditional printing or production methods. The exhibitors have chosen to craft their posters using letterpress, screen-printing, wood blocking, hand drawing, cyanotypes, embroidery, paper-cut collage and light sensitive emulsions. The exhibition will showcase a variety of creative disciplines and mediums forming a wide range of personalised styles and approaches.

I’m really looking forward to the opening night, seeing all the posters and meeting the other exhibitors. I will post my poster design on here once the exhibition has started.

Posted in Art, Colour, Paper, Print, Typography on Tuesday, October 11th, 2011

Creative Times Design Top 5

Creative Times recently asked me to put together a Design Top 5, made up of recent examples of contemporary design that I think are worthy of praise. The top 5 list is changed on a weekly basis with a different designer’s choice. The idea is that selections provide both a snapshot of contemporary design and an idea of where the particular contributor is creatively at the time of writing.

I thought I’d share my choices on here. As you can see, I’ve taken the term design quite loosely.

1. Photography by Dan Tobin-Smith
I love the work of still life photographer Dan Tobin-Smith. You can only marvel at the effort that goes to in setting up his images, and that’s before you even consider the actual photographic craftsmanship of his work. His compositions have an elegant graphic quality, they are rich with texture, often being littered with objects, while at the same time maintaining a beautiful simplicity.

2. Manifesto Project
This website, which accompanies a travelling exhibition and book, collects the manifestos of a selection of leading international designers including the likes of Sagmeister, Gill, Rams, Glaser and Vignelli. The project offers a one-stop insight into the different processes and constraints that these practitioners have applied to their work.

3. The Incident at Tower 37
I’m a big fan of animated CGI films, and I’ve enjoyed watching the industry develop over the last 15 years or so. This 10 minute animated film, written and directed by Chris Perry (formally of Pixar) and produced by students at Hampshire College, was released on World Water Day at the end of March. It highlights issues about water consumption and the effect it has on the planet.

4. Wim Crouwel: A Grephic Odyssey at the Design Museum (Until 3rd of July)
I recently visited the Crouwel Show, and was lucky enough to see the prolific Dutch designer talk about his career. I’m sure most designers will be familiar with Crouwel’s work, but there’s a magic to seeing his posters, catalogues and stamps up close. And being able to admire his precision and craft but also spot the slight imperfections in his typographic and grid based work. Definitely worth a visit.

5. Last Minutes with Oden
This emotional short film documents the final hours of Jason and his dog Oden’s life together. Technically this film is excellent, beautifully shot on a Canon 7D with fitting music. But it’s the human story that really makes this piece great. It’s a bit of a tear-jerker and a worthy winner of the Vimeo Awards.

View the article on the Creative Times website.

Posted in Art, Photography, Print, Typography on Monday, April 18th, 2011

Wish you a very merry Christmas

There’s only a few days until the festive period. So I’d just like to say, I hope you enjoy Christmas and new year, and that you return to work feeling refreshed and not too bloated by all the seasonal food and drink!

Just like getting a gift under the tree from Santa, I always enjoy getting a job back from the printer or finisher, the anticipation of opening the box to find what’s inside, the smell of the board or ink, the feel of the stock. You can’t beat it.

The 2010 Very Own Studio Christmas cards were dispatched last week – if you got one, I hope you like it, if not I’m sorry, I’m sure I forgot a few people! The card is a study of snowflakes, 24 to be precise, the final space on the grid is taken up by the VOS roundel graphic. The idea being that each shape represents a day of December, the 25th being Christmas day.

Snowflakes have an obvious beauty, but although they are formed through natural conditions, they remain consistent in a few ways. Snowflakes are generally six sided shapes, they are often symmetrical and the likelihood of two flakes taking the same formation is extremely low.

When researching the design for the Christmas card, a major influence was the photographic work of Wilson A. Bentley, otherwise known as Snowflake Bentley.

According to the website set up to preserve the memory of Bentley and what he achieved “Bentley attracted world attention with his pioneering work in the area of photomicrography. By adapting a microscope to a bellows camera, and through years of trial and error, in 1885 he became the first person to photograph a single snow crystal. He would go on to capture more than 5000 snowflakes during his lifetime, not finding any two alike. In 1931 his book ‘Snow Crystals’, containing more than 2400 images, was published.”

Below are some of the images that Bentley captured.

Beautiful, I’m sure you’ll agree – although they look better close up than they do when you’re sitting in a traffic jam trying to get from A to B. On that note, have a safe Christmas. See you on the other side.

Posted in Illustration, Print, The grid on Tuesday, December 21st, 2010

Rick Schofield Business Cards

The business cards pictured above, part of a recent identity overhaul that Very Own Studio completed for photographer Rick Schofield, were delivered to Rick last week. The cards have been foil blocked in gloss silver on 540gsm smoke grey Colorplan card (most business cards are printed on around 300gsm stock – so these cards feel thick and sturdy). The foil blocking was completed by Ian at IST Printing Services, who as always has done an excellent job. Rick seems very happy with the results too.

Posted in Minimalism, Photography, Print, Stationery, Work in progress on Thursday, August 5th, 2010

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