Last week my late night erm motions were interrupted by the sound of all Hell breaking loose outside in the garden. Thinking we were being burgled, I immediately grabbed the trusty spade I keep next to the bed for situations such as these and went to dispense some justice (cower, waving spade furiously in random directions). Turns out that we have a family of foxes living under the decking and the 4 fox cubs were going mEnTaL over a pack of ready-cooked chicken from the nearby Sainsburys. They are dead cute - please see below:
Once upon a time I was really good at drawing. If drawing pencil cases stacked on top of bits of wood, or deckchair scenes or any of that GCSE art on a Wednesday afternoon stuff had actually got any legs in terms of being a viable career, rest assured - that's what I would have chosen to do.
Somewhere along the line though (when you realise that things cost money and that you want things) I had to make the conscious move (sell out) to a more lucrative application of my skill set and much like Dylan going electric - I had to go digital. Thus I became the graphic designer - but resting deep inside my brains is an inherent love and aptitude for drawing in the conventional sense.
CheeseAndRice though it must be buried deep, because today my lack of practice outside the digital realm was shot into stark reality upon the arrival of our Wacom Inkling. (See previous post for more details on this tool).
Last night, Darth Vader came down from planet Vulcan and told me that if I didn't write this blog post he'd melt my brain. That's about as funny as a screen door on a battleship, but what in the name of Sir Isaac H. Newton has happened here? Why don't we make like a tree and get out of here to find out?
It's nearly 2015 and whilst this may not interest you in any way, it certainly has interested the innovators at Nike who have Hill Valley, California, at 4:29 pm, on Wednesday, October 21st, 2015 very much in mind with their incredibly cool teaser announcement I spotted this week. It's trainers, you know - for roads n tha'. Readers, where we're going we won't need. Roads...
The first time I came across a 'light pen' was in infants school on Monday mornings each week when it became clear that the wine-based, debauched weekend antics of my teacher had caused a cataclysmic hangover fog rendering her completely unable to teach in any meaningful manner. The made to measure solution in those days came in two forms; 1. The BBC Micro 2. The TV trolley but because there only ever seemed to be one person in the school who knew anything about computers (including how to switch it on) more often than not my youthful associates and I were ushered onto 'The Carpet' where we were abandoned to be taught by a more talented team - the BBC. In the 80s they took this stuff seriously and I didn't mind my teacher leaving us to drink coffee and smoke her way through to morning-break because we got to watch the likes of Geordie Racer, Badger Girl and Dark Towers which at the tender age of 6 was like watching The Godfather for the first time.
I can still remember the words to Magic E and chuckle at the memory of mirth which reverberated around 'The Carpet' when we cleverly adjusted the wording to become 'shit becomes shite, with me!' at various points. Refresh your memory with the magic e song;
At 49th Floor we like to feel part of the creative community as a whole and therefore from time to time will give something back to our fellow graphic designers, artworkers, retouchers, photographers, illustrators and whatnot. We have compiled this flow-chart to demonstrate the path to inspiration - and whilst it's not an easy path to tread, I feel that it's one that at least in part will be familiar to many.
Fortunately in my experience anyway, the path of least resistance is not the route to the greatest success and a little bit of desperation can open your mind to it's creative potential. The PDF which is far more legible and high res enough to adorn any studio wall is avaiable freely below;
Procrastination leads to inspiration via desperation flow chart PDF download
I came across a fantastic resource for those who need to inject their personal or business web sites with a little pretention via Graham Creative on Twitter:
http://10k.aneventapart.com/Uploads/262/#
Congratulations to David James Ross who wrote the words with Design and development by Joke de Winter.
It's had me in stitches for ages.
UPDATE 7.7.11
There is now even more arty bollocks to be generated at the following location: http://www.artybollocks.com
Brilliant!
I've only just noticed that no posts have been made in the 'Inspiration' category yet. Let me make it plain, this isn't because we lack inspiration - but I'd like to make amends by trying to find some weird, wacky and just plain cool solutions to design problems from around the world and make regular updates. Hopefully this will get the creative juices flowing for all of us and we won't be the only ones who wish we'd done it first.
