Not long until the above book of 3D type (which will feature my Ice-letters) will be out. Both creators FL@33 and publishers Laurence King have developed little websites to promote the book with the latter showing off a few sneak preview spreads. There is a bit of blurb about the project below. My name seems to have been accidently missed off the list below - think I was supposed to be sitting between Milton Glazer and Alvin Lustig! Some of the names invovled are brill and looking forward to seeing what everyone came up with. Will post more images and news about the book when I get it. www.3d-type.com/

"This book is the most comprehensive showcase of three-dimensional letterforms ever written, featuring over 1,300 images of more than 300 projects by more than 160 emerging talents and established individuals and studios including Sagmeister Inc, Vaughan Oliver, Milton Glaser, Alvin Lustig, Louis Danziger, Roger Excoffon, Paul Elliman, Marian Bantjes, Geoff Kaplan, Clotilde Olyff, Italo Lupi, Marion Bataille, Antoine+Manuel, Frost*Design, Mervyn Kurlansky, Non-Format, Oded Ezer, Rowland Scherman, Post Typography, Rinzen, Underware’s Type Workshop, J. Kyle Daevel, Ji Lee, Pleaseletmedesign and Strange Attractors Design.

As well as pioneering milestones from as far back as the 1940s, this book focuses on recent and brand new typographic projects. 3D type specialist Andrew Byrom explains the context and motivation behind these innovative works in an insightful foreword.

FL@33 is a multi-disciplinary design studio for visual communication based in London. Founded in 2001, it is run by Agathe Jacquillat and Tomi Vollauschek. FL@33 work, profiles and interviews have been extensively featured online and worldwide in over 160 magazines, books and newspapers. The duo is also responsible for the popular online sound collection bzzzpeek.com and stereohype.com, a platform for designers and artists around the world. FL@33 also conceived, compiled, wrote and designed two other books: Postcard and Made & Sold, both also published by Laurence King."

Greetings

Here is the full range of greetings cards that I recently made. These were all made from images I already had. Now that I've started thinking about making greetings cards I've got tons of ideas, think they could be a lot of fun to draw.

They will be added to my folksy and etsy shops soon though will probably have to be in sets of 5 to make it worth peoples postage.

We all scream for ice-cream

Ann and I just got back from a weekend in Latvia for her birthday. Riga was really nice, lots of old buildings and cobbled streets, but in a slightly lived in, run down feeling which felt far more really than a lot of cities you go to now where its all been touristed up. Give it time though and it will soon catch up though.

As it was Ann's birthday my suitcase was pretty much just full of presents but there was one set of presents I couldn't bring. At Christmas Ann got me an Ice-cream recipe book. True to form as soon as I'd mastered the basics I started experimenting with my own concoctions. For Ann's birthday I made her drumstick lolly flavour and blueberry and blueberry ripple.

Being the pedantic graphic designer that I am, I also made some labels for the boxes as seen below.

snow fair

Yesterday we had a ton of snow so I built the above snowman. Sadly today there is no snow and the little snowman has gone.

Hole in my Pocket

Doodled up a wee logo for Hole in my Pocket that I'm going to use on the board game / book I'm planning on making about our trip around Scotland all those years ago with our old airhostess trolley. If only we'd owned digital cameras back then instead of getting everything on slides. Doh

Also going to be working up some more design for Spids theatre shows in London .

Top Christmas Pressie

http://www.flat33.com/postcard/ENG_02_info.html

POSTCARD
A celebration of recent postcard design, thisunique book showcases over 800 miniature worksof art, specially created for a postcard-sizedcanvas: a must-have for avid collectors as well asanyone with a passion for graphic design.Features over 100 artists, illustrators, photographers,designers and collectives from around the world,with new talents sitting alongside established artists.Separate sections are devoted to one-off designs,limited-edition sets and books, unusual and hightechpostcards and interactive projects.Includes a huge range of handmade artworks,cutting-edge illustrations, commercial promocards, and even edible and musical postcards.

And I'm one of the artists. My copy arrived yesterday and its super cool and would make an excellant gift for your loved ones this Christmas.

I'm off to Japan - see you in a few weeks. (Availible from all good book shops and the wonderful world of Amazon http://www.amazon.co.uk/Postcard-FL-33/dp/1856695697?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215963088&sr=8-1.)

Explorations

On Monday night we went to hear a talk by explorer extraordinaire Sir Ranolph Fiennes. He gave a rather excellent account of several of his amazing explorations around the world - the main one being his trip around the Earth on its axis. Starting in the UK heading south through Antarctica and the south pole, then back up the other side, though the north pole and back home to UK. The whole talk was illustrated with amazing photos of some of the places he had been and some rather disturbing images, explained in a Sir Ranpolph's very dry black sense of humor showing some of the disasters/ injuries and diseases that befell them on the three year journey. These injuries included the skin on the soles of the teams feet going gangrenous and falling off, blisters on hands freezing up to the size of tennis balls, loosing fingers by not being careful when going to the toilet and people cracking their heads and their eyes filling with blood. To give an idea of the tone of the talk Sir Ranolph finished this segment by saying that after the eye blood problem his team mate just wouldn't stop whinging.

After the talk we stayed around for the free wine and some of the best canopy treats ever . The little tiny raspberry cheese cake was one of the tastiest things I've eaten. All in all a very interesting night - even including bumping into the most boring man in the world during the networking. Not realising why you recognise him until its to late and you have engaged him in conversation. Lucky I ran out of cake and did a runner, leaving the others to entertain him.

Things I saw in London and Brighton

Brighton Pier

Nice Horsey

An old woman contemplates facing the wild river

A disco ball weather vane

Bad Horsey

A nice little tent - what wonders does it contain?

A lone man faces out to sea and meditates on the smallness of life - or maybe he is just having a pee

Tower Bridge. Doesn't Ann look like she's having a great time in London.


The exit from the secret bunker - somewhere near Epping Forest? This is where the Government would have gone in the event of nuclear war right up until 1993.

Three days in Manchester

Ann and I spent a grand three days down at our friend Lindsay new house in the cheerful little village of Chorlton in Manchester. We went to see "To Kill a Mocking Bird" at the Lowry which was very enjoyable if a little difficult to get to through the car-park waste ground maze of fences, ditches and canals.

The next day was more homely, with a bit of breakfast, B&Q and then digging, nailing, strimming and planting while we set about Lindsay garden.

On our last day we went to visit "Another Place" a sculpture by Antony Gormley which I was surprised to discover was ten years old? I thought it was fairly new. The work consists of 100 hundred iron casts or the artists own body located along 3km of beach near Liverpool, starting out towards the horizon. Well worth a visit and will be packing up and moving elsewhere in November.


One of the one hundred statues staring out to sea
Some drift wood - I took a lot of photos of drift wood. Lovely stuff.
The wee metal men were quite friendly looking if you got close enough
There were a lot of bricks, stones and other asorted building remenents which I also took a lot of photos of.

Time to leave - The best thing about the exhibition, is how the constantly changing coast and sky, completly alter ther mood of the work.