Seasons Greetings!

Click on the image and use your keyboard arrow keys to navigate through the album.

Just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas / Happy Holidays or whatever you celebrate this season, and what better way to do it than with some talented designers.

In order of appearance (left - right):-
1st row: Adrian Johnson’s ‘Six Geese A-laying’; Darling Clementine's 'Candy Cane';
Tom Gauld's '4 calling birds' & Rob Ryan's G2 Christmas card.

2nd row: Jotto Seibold's 'Olive the other Reindeer'; Craig Ward's 'Season's Greetings'; Alison Carmichael's 'Baubles' & Christoph Neimann 'Let it Dough'.

3rd row: Yulia Brodskaya's bookcover for the 2009 Neiman Marcus 'The Christmas Book'; Kate Sutton's 'Robin'; Jessica Hische's '6 Geese are Laying' from her personal project & Frode Skaren's 'Opposites' Christmas card.

Have a great one everyone!

Owls Have More Fun

I was recommended by a friend to go to the opening night of Owls Have more Fun, and as soon as I saw the show's title I couldn't agree more, I just had to go! Owls Have...is Lisa Grue's solo show in NYC, at gallery hanahou. The show runs from 25th February - Friday 26th March 2010.

For the show the Danish artist mixes bold neon colours with images of nature (and of course owls a plenty) to create beautiful designs for the home such as a very large rug; 80 one off hand-printed porcelain plates and an enormous custom made wallpaper mural allowing you to submerge into her fantasy world.

I adored the wallpaper and rug but I'd have to say that my favourite was the hand illustrated and printed plates. The contrast of owls, words, nature, neon pom poms with the black and white imagery is just fab. There is also something about seeing objects en masse that I just love.


"Lisa, known for her playful and sometimes shocking illustrations that mix girlishness with feminism, puts her spin on owl and nature motifs, surrounding viewers with a magical world via domestic objects...Lisa's powerful and fun illustrations remind viewers to never forget the magic in everyday life. In addition, they make a statement to girls and women that wisdom and beauty go hand in hand." - gallery hanahou

Lisa's works isn't all owl focused, she has designed many pieces for graphic design, illustration and fashion magazines and labels. However she chose owls as her subject for this show as she wants to encourage women and young girls to "take pride in being clever in general, instead of acting like stupid bunnies to get attention."

Lisa was recently honored as one of the new design talents of Denmark, with a grant from the National Art Foundation of Denmark. To see more of her work check out her website and her blog.

If You Could - Exhibition

If you are in London this weekend then go and check out the If You Could...Collaborate exhibition at the A Foundation Gallery, Rochelle School, London E2 from 15th — 23rd January 2010.

If you could is the brain child of art directors Will Hudson and Alex Bec and this is their 4th annual exhibition. There are some amazing and hugely talented designer/illustrator partnerships and I'm absolutely gutted to be missing it, especially as Craig's work is being exhibited. Here are some of the great collaborations (there are about 33 in total):
Craig Ward, Sean Freeman & Alison Carmichael / Oliver Jeffers & Aaron Ruff / Fontaine Anderson & Deanne Cheuk / Mario Hugo & Micah Lidberg / Anthony Burrill & John Griffiths / Marion Deuchars & Margaret Calvert / George Hardie & Leonardo Sonnoli & Sara Fanelli / Rob Ryan & Michael Marriott / Jim Stoten & Andy Rementer...to mention a few!

The exhibition is a chance for creatives from all four corners of the world to partner (with a person of their choosing, regardless of their discipline) and get out of their comfort zones. It has no doubt challenged the way the artists usually work. There was no brief for this project, except to design something a little unexpected. I can't wait to see photos but here are a few tasters of the Ward, Freeman & Carmichael collabration - a type triptych of laser cut wood...

Check out the If You Could website for more photos.

Jessica Hische

Daily drop capper and adopted Brooklynite, Jessica Hische, is an extremely talented typographer, designer, illustrator and winner of an ADC Young Gun 7 award - meaning that she is under 30!

She has a great eye for style and colour and her work exudes maturity whilst also showing hints of playfulness. Here are a few snippets of her work, but to see more please visit her sites - not sure which one is her main one, so check them both out here and here.

She also runs an ongoing project called The Daily Drop Cap for which she creates hand-crafted, vintagesque ornamental initials. She also kindly gives you the coding for these decorative caps to encourage you to use them to adorn your blog posts or sites. So lovely!

Words are Pictures

Tonight I'm going to my other half's AIGA NY talk, SMALL TALK NO. 4: CRAIG WARD. He has always been passionate about design but more specifically typography and as his pseudonym suggests, Words are Pictures, he likes to mix the two to create something unique and different. He is constantly exploring the notion of word as image.

I've always been proud of the work he has created and tonight, at his first US presentation, he gets to showcase his work. He will discuss his thought and idea processes as well as his journey from designer to typographer. He has another talk scheduled in France next July for OFFF Paris 2010 conference.

Here are some of my personal favourites...

Geneviève Gauckler

I first noticed the work of Geneviève Gauckler in Magma (yes that shop again!) and of course there were the adverts for the cosmetic brand, Bourjois, where you couldn't get away from her lovable characters!

For some reason I missed her when I did my French illustrators week (see postings from 6th July), but there are so many talented French artists that I couldn't have showcased everyone! I think her style is extremely likeable with her simple, colourful, somewhat innocent and playful pieces and translates well commercially as she has proven with her vinyls, mirrors, t-shirts and endless other merchandise. She is much in favour of the fantastical world and placing it into reality. Although I really like her work, I have to say that I'm not as keen with some of her photo montage pieces (I've shown the one I like the most), but she definitely does draw the child within from me.

New York, New York, so good they named it twice...

Firstly I have to apologise for lack of postings recently...my life has just taken a new turn and I can excitedly say that I'm moving to New York at the end of August, so I have a lot on my plate! I will try and post as regularly as I can, but for now I will leave you today with the work of Milton Glaser who designed the iconic and famous campaign for New York City, amongst other classic graphic design works of the 60s to present day.

Lizzie Finn - Sew good

Years ago I purchased a book called Area which showcased 100 designers and illustrators. In that book I noticed the unique illustration style of Lizzie Finn. Lizzie is unlike most illustrators as her tools of the trade are textiles and embroidery thread. She is best known for her embroidered images on the album cover Things To Make and Do for the British band, Moloko. For this she created handmade characters and also stitched the typography.

I believe that she doesn't shy away from using a computer, however I admire the fact that she prefers this more labour intensive route. She also makes us realise that there is more to design than just computer generated images.

Olivier Douzou

My penultimate illustrator from my 'French illustrators week' is Olivier Douzou. Olivier is an architect by trade but has added many strings to his bow as he is also a writer, illustrator and graphic designer. He is also responsible for starting up the publishing house, aimed for children, called Les Éditions du Rouergue in 1994 as the artistic director. It's targeted at the youth and develops innovative editorial.

His first picture book was back in 1993 called Jojo la Mache, a children's story about a cow (un vache). As it happens he also collaborated on a picture book with Emilie Chollat (see previous post) on the book entitled Le Défilé.

Olivier has a flexible style, that is to say that he doesn't appear to have a characteristic look. Some of his paintings - like the car one below - remind me of Johnny Hannah's style (see June's postings).