The annual picnic was legendary

[Might need to click on image to see it bigger. ]

Pleasent day so far - tended to the plants on the roof and watched some squirrels chasing each other in the park. Need to fly to London this afternoon but I think I'd like to get working on some new ice cream flavours and my ideas for the book design project.

Ah well, should find out on Monday if my badges have made it through to the next round - fingers crossed.

Southside Festival

The Southside festival is coming up again soon and Ann is again on the steering group helping orginise it. She is a very busy bee and has just finished making the festival a brand spanking new website. - www.southsidefestival.co.uk.

I have also tried to help out a bit by mocking up a couple of posters for two of the mini local events taking place during the festival - a silent film night and a tea dance taking place at the local church hall. My two posters are above - I am pretty please with them but they might require a redesign due to image rights.

but its a giant horse???

I've avoided posting anything about this so far - because I kept expecting someone to admit it was just a big joke. But apprently its not, they really are building a giant horse in the South of England - you could not make that up if you tried.

I'm not really sure what the point of it is, or what message it is trying to convey. They are going for a super realistic style which would suggest that it is meant as slightly Po-faced but all the infor I've read about it suggests that they are completly genunine about it and the giant horse is irony free. I enjoy that the media has dubbed it the angel of the south! I maybe wrong - but it is quite clearly a horse not an angel - unless they are going to stick wings on it and make it into Pegusus. Maybe there is a greek connection and the whole thing will be full of soldiers?

I think they should just accept that the whole notion is absurd and if they do decide to build it then they should stick an even more giant jockey on its back.

Or stick on hundreds of normal size jockeys - cause lets face it - jockeys are quite funny.

Badge of dis-honour

I decided to enter my "Keep calm and Spend more" design into the Sterohype's - button badge competition. Currently they are sitting in amongst 344 other entries awaiting the review of the judges. Fingers crossed they get on well and we get some good news next week.

Found art - notice 01

I was digging through some old sketch books the other day and came upon my collection of found objects, notices, playing cards, shopping lists and discarded photos. I realise that I've not really shown this rather nice collection before so have decided to put that right. Above is a notice found in a city centre lift - it is beautiful in its own simple way.

Somewhere I have another wonderful notice which I found stuck in the middle of an empty notice board in a pub. It read "Notice: Please do not remove this notice, there is a copy behind the bar."

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.

Too-wit, too-woo

Following on from my plunge into the good sea facebook - I have also joined the twittering world too. I am even less sure what you are supposed to do with it. With all these web pages online to be updated its a wonder that anyone gets anywork done. I know I've just spent most of the night trying to synch up the twitter with this blog and choosing pretty logos instead of getting on with a poster I should be doing.

Twitter does seem like nonsense fun though so I look forward to tweeting you all.

www.twitter.com/himp

ps - does anyone know how to get the text in my side bar to not tab inwards on the second line of my twittering. Tis annoying when it is not aligned correctly.

tes images 2

test images

Its alive

The Himp website news section has had a wee update with some of the things we have been up to over the last few months. Just so you know we are still all in one piece.

Keep calm and spend more

Taking inspiration from the classic WWII posters instructing the populace to "Keep calm and carry on" in the face of possible Nazi invasion these new badges imagine the motivational propaganda today's governments might issue to get us through the credit crunch. Sprouting the seemingly illogical message that we can "spend" our way out of a recession, the design has been updated for the naughties - the crown is replaced with the bowler hat as a symbol of the banking elite who have run the country into the ground and available in Dollar Green, Sterling red, Yen blue and Euro yellow.

ECHO

A wee flyer I designed for the SPID Theatre Company for their new show in London - details above, sounds like it will be really good so worth a visit.

fresh and hot

Wee colour sketch idea for a poster for an heating company who get their heat from the earth. Trying to capture the same kind of style/ language that is currently popular for fruit drink / healthy food adverts.

Saul Stienberg

A couple of my drawings got into the Saul Steinberg competition at the Dulwich Gallery and you can see them at the below link - for some reason the quality is terrible though.
http://pix.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk/gallery23.aspx

Ok I'm not really sure what it is for but below is a link to a Hole in my Pocket facebook group.

I think the fact that the facebook world confuses me might be the first sign that I am getting old am no longer down with the kids - to combat this I might have to go buy a skate board, knock a police man off his bike and begin using the texting venacular. Nt sre dat wud b dat g8 tho - I thnk kidz mite b stupd.

Link to facebook group

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 .

I should never have joined the army - Climbing Kong

Why I should never have joined the army

happy new year

Everyone happy to be back at work?

4Talent - Eilidh's Daily Ukuele Ceildh

Sadly I have just heard that 4Talent (Channel 4's creative industries wing) has ceased to exist - another victim to the credit crunch. They were a good bunch of people there and will no doubt will be heading off to do more of their interesting stuff else where.

I guess that means I can safely put the above short film I made online. It was made for 4T earlier this year but never quite managed to get uploaded - and now I guess never will so here it is celebrating Eilidh's Daily Ukuele Ceildh in all her wonder.

Merry Christmas to all.

Cheers

Alburt

Couple of sketch idea options I mocked up for SPID theatre for their upcoming play in London

New exhibition

I popped through to Edinburgh at the weekend to drop off some paintings for this show. Looks like it will be good fun. Its taking place in a very nice town house in Edinburgh two doors down from the American Consulate and its rather posh.

Its also for a really good cause so please try and pop along and see if anything takes your fancy.

Japanaroma

We are havign a grand time in japan - everything is so nicely designed we keep wanting to buy things we see. Off to the sumo wrestling tomorrow - not really sure of the rules but it looks exciting.

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.)