beequiet and beehave

Who remembers Stoppit and Tidyup? I LOVED this when I was younger. Looking back, it obviously had a more profound affect on me than I realised!

from tougher substance i was made

I’ve also managed to discover a game that I desperately wish I had invented:

The aim of the game is to roll things into a ball. Like, everything. Animals and lampposts and food and bowling pins and bins and people and buildings and PLANETS. To the accompaniment of Japanese pop. WIN. You can see just why I’m in love with it from the introduction animation, which you can see here:

OMG.

It also seems to inspire cuteness in others, such as this little knitted Prince!

(via http://fecklesss.tumblr.com/)

Seriously, I really need to learn how to knit.

big infactuation

I’ve also been absorbing lots of bits and pieces from across the intertubes. These are a few particular favourites:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vegasandvenice/318307973/in/photostream/

http://www.booooooom.com/2008/12/29/needle-noodle/

(I really need to learn how to knit)

(both by Rob Hunter – http://www.rob-hunter.co.uk/)

http://www.boygirlparty.com/

love is a verb

I was also approached to do the logo for an early morning clubnight at a night club in Ibiza at a place called Tiffany’s. Think you can guess the name of it?

The text for ‘Tiffany’s’ is the club logo, so they wanted fairly script-y text to go with it… this kind of font’s not really my favourite, but I enjoyed the challenge anyway.

i will see you in far off places

I also had to convert my Rollerpalooza poster into a double-sided leaflet, which was more difficult than I expected it to be as there was a lot of information to include. Still, we got there in the end:

the more that i appear

Hmm, yes, been slacking on the ol’ blog recently. Sorry about that. But I have been working on lotsa stuff. For instance, I seem to have developed a habit of drawing sea creatures:

They’re SO MUCH FUN to draw! I was inspired mostly by this illustration by Ernest Haeckel:

I’ve since put the vectored jellyfish onto a t-shirt, which you can buy from MySoti: http://www.mysoti.com/mysoti/designer/jaffajam/product/259485

everyone’s so focused clearly on sunshine

I also had another idea while idly doodling.

Graham reckons it’s sitting in a weird space between “cute” and “horror” at the moment, however, and that I should either make it entirely cute or go the whole hog and have guts and blood about. I dunno though; I kind of like the fact it’s in a weird space like that. I’ll think about it.

everyone’s so intimately rearranged

3. Been trying to think up a few ideas to submit for the Northern Design competition, which has been oddly difficult – it’s an open brief, and without any prompting I’ve felt a little adrift. However, I drew this a while ago and thinking about submitting it:

I was just calling it “octopuses can fly eight kites at once”, but now it’s called “Tako Tako”, because as is my understanding (and correct me if I’m wrong) I’ve accidentally created a Japanese pun – it would seem that 蛸 (octopus) and 凧 (kite) are both read as ‘tako’. I had no idea about this when I was drawing it – it’s such a wonderful coincidence!

Incidentally I feel I should post the inspiration for this image: it comes from a lovely trip to Whitby last September with a friend and my dad, where we saw kites flying by the Abbey.

i wanna be in a band when i get to heaven

I was asked to do a poster for another Oxjam gig. I always have fun with these because I’m usually given free reign to do whatever I want, and after getting an idea of what the gig actually was (acoustic perfomances, with a small art exhibition as well) I played around and came up with a few ideas pretty quickly:

2)

We ended up going for the first design, which was the one I liked best too, with a few text tweaks.

I went over this design with Sophie, and we decided to get rid of the white band and move the text around a little; however, when it came to printing, it turned out the client needed to make it all one colour for economy’s sake, so I had to do a bit of a redesign anyway.

i’ve got a temper set for tender

Mmm yes, been slacking a little on the blog front recently. Been working on a few other bits and pieces since I last posted. I shall give each project its own post.

1) Florist stuff is almost done. I recently came up with a few quick designs for accompanying greetings cards, though I’m planning to tweak them next week. This is what they look like at the moment, though:

I think now they might look better with all the same neutral background though, so I think I might try that out. Actually just the designs would look really nice on creamy textured card. Hmmm.