Just came across the great fun theory concept based competition that ran last year. The idea is that creating something fun will help encourage individuals to do something good. I love the thought of more “fun theory” based design incorporated into our daily environment. Can you imagine having cartoon sound effect bins in your neighborhood? How great would that be!

The final winner came up with the great idea for encouraging less speeding drivers. By entering the non-speeders into a lottery to win the fines paid by the speeding ones.  A lovely way to encourage the good over the usual shock style ads we are used to here in NZ.

Check out all the entries over at the fun theory website.

Starting next week I’m pleased to annouce I’ll be taking part in the 12 Week Challenge! Set up, organised, strategized and instigated by Jonathan Woodward who runs the blog Zero 2 Illo, it invites illustrators from all around the world to step up to the challenge of building their illustration practice and business to new and allmighty levels! Or at least start setting the building blocks to a solid foundation of awesomeness

Beginning  April 5th me and nearly 60 other talented and diverse illustrators will be taking part in ‘The zero2illo 12 Week Challenge’. With our combined efforts and a community to assist each other on the way, here’s hoping it will help us all towards achieving our goals and ambitions. I will of course keep you updated on how things are going in the challenge, so be sure to keep checking back .

In the mean time head on over to check out the list of great illustrators taking part

Here’s a few images showing some of the process behind the creation of the Cubes I made for the recent Splore festival 2010 (see previous post). The brief and concept was all about creating something for festival goers to enjoy, interact, have fun and tie in with the theme of Midsummer Nights Dream 2050. An added essential was that it had to be able to survive 3 days with 7,000 people…

The concept I came up with was to build sixteen 40cm squared cubes with letters on several sides, patterns on another and one side that when fitted together correctly, formed a complete image.

See and…>

Sketchy: As with 99.9% of my work it all begins in the sketchbook (or any handy piece of scrap paper that is closest to hand). Running through various ideas in quick doodle form to get them out of the mind and make space for new ideas. The above shows the image side of the cubes coming close to the final result. I often scribble notes and a few keywords or explanations around the place as extra reminders. Collecting reference materials is often the next step.

Fontacular: The process of selecting the type and font styles went through quite a few changes – from the initial idea of using one type throughout to the final result of selecting a wide diverse range of styles. The reason for this? My inital mock ups with one or two font styles felt just to subtle, too restricted and didn’t quite fit with the theme. Midsummer nights has a story that tells of losing indivuality and I loved the idea of really going with this and showing seperation in a physical sense  – individual lettering, on individual sides, on individual cubes. There was also the puzzle deciding which letters and how many where going to be needed to really let people write what they wanted. Yeh I spent way too long thinking about what people might want to write and making sure it was possible!

Type was selected from existing fonts and also various book samples and type workings, scanning into the computer and vectoring in Illustrator:

Here’s the final image mocked up in Illustrator:

Building time: Once I’d got the lettering, patterns (oops sorry forgot to take shots of those!) and image finalised it was time to get busy making it a 3D reality. Initially the plan was to construct the cubes myself, but due to being the not so proud owner of a broken ankle this was pretty unrealistic. Luckily for me Lars is down the road and he helped me out massively by getting to work making the canvas of 16 plywood (12mm CD untreated) cubes.

Printing: To get the images onto the cubes I was going to laminate them on. But first I had to print onto a suitable material – the most economical way to do this was using basic tissue paper (rice paper is the slightly better alternative). I prepped all the files to tile in 20 cm wide strips and 40 cm long so I could run them through my standard A4 desktop printer. So after experimenting by cutting up endless amounts of tissue paper for hours, losing quite a few sheets to the printer, getting aforementioned paper out of the inside of the printer, running out of ink, customizing printer feed with a couple of old paint brushes as supports…I found a way of tacking the edges of the tissue paper to regular A4 so it would run through cleanly, Phew!

Laminating: Time to get toxic…with safety mask in hand (face?) and a scribbled layout plan, the carefully stacked tissue pages were placed onto their respective cubes in preparation for laminating.

I was using a solar/UV reactive polyurethane resin for this as it allowed me to lay everything up in shaded room and then expose it to the sun to harden extremely quickly. This let me keep goin with the process instead of waiting the usual few hours for hardening usually needed. Spent nearly 3 days in a darkened smelly room doing this…

Tidy up: Once a set of sides was complete I’d expose it the rays of light (aaaaahh fresh air!) let it harden, then clean up the edges in prep for the next sides. Here’s me getting busy in the garden…

Result! So after a few obstacles, extra things to work out on the way and much hopping around on one foot later, it was great to sit back and see the cubes become a reailty.

Well almost: Ok so now I realise I’ve missed out documenting the entire final stage of the process…masking off the patterns, spraying colours and spraying a final protective clear coat over all sides to help seal and protect from the elements…but if you’ve made it this far your probably quite glad there isn’t more! If you have any questions about the process just ask.

In action: Check out some photos of my cubes in action at the Splore festival 2010 over on my Flickr!

Happy to say the New Zealand based web host I used is doing a bit towards going green.

Open Host has become part of the United Nations Environment Program and partnered with MokuGift for this project.

The Plant for the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign is a worldwide tree planting initiative facilitated by the United Nations Environment Programme. Mokugift enables consumers and organizations to plant trees with a simple click of a mouse for $1/tree. Plant one for yourself or a friend

Just had to share the latest interview up over at Grain Edit at the moment. The site itself is one of my regular haunts, it features a lot of really great work from super amazing illustrators & designers around the world with a 50′s-70′s slant.

So this week they have posted up an interview with S. Britt, an illustrator that (may or may not?) resides in Pickleton USA. His work has that classic style,  but he definately stamps his own uniqueness to it all and wields his skills in a masterful manner. Personally I found the interview entertaining, enlightening and above all his responses where a refreshing change to the usual 1+1=2 interviews you normally read…head on over and check it out, make sure you have  few minutes to sit back and enjoy and be sure to stick around for the guaranteed succesfull recipe to  creative process!

Check out the interview here!

More of S.Britt’s work on his website.

And be sure to keep enjoying the ever enjoyable Grain Edit site!

That is when I wasn’t being distracted by the awesome Stylophone (as heard in David Bowie, Kraftwerks, White Stripes and Manic street Preachers songs) pressie given to me by my bro. Of course those around you generally aren’t so sure about it’s utter awesomeness… but it sure is fun!. There’s even a Raconteurs version available too as it’s used in a song or 2 of theirs. If you haven’t seen or heard a Stylophone before then here’s a handy video to learn all about it!

So far my ‘skills’ have been able to get to grips with these MUST KNOW stylophone tunes:

Who know’s one day after endless hours of practice you too may be a Stylophone master, just check out the blistering stylus rockin that is possible:

Check out these awesome prints I just received from Scott Saw over in the USofA. The guys got some great talent and puts out some seriously fine printwork! Beaut details on these prints, can’t wait to get them up on my studio wall.

If getting these grand prints wasn’t enough..I actually won them on a giveway Scott had on Twitter…Lucky me! You can check out more of his work on his site and get his latest news via Scott’s TwitterFeed.

Right it’s time for a hangin’ !

Happy to present my daughters Tshirt design entry for the Little Help project competition. Although she was not a winner she did an awesome job of drawing one of her characters ‘Sludgy’ and sending it in! Not only was she the youngest entrant she also is featured on the website as a design worth recognition! Check it out so cool!

Very proud dad off to raid her doodle book for ideas now…

Just joined up to the best logo collection available online: the great and wonderful Logo Pond. It’s a source of some awesome inspiration and brimming full of amazing logo designers. If you haven’t visited before (or even if you have!) get over there and feast your eyes on some really great modern logos.

You can find my logo design offerings on my Spore* profile so you can drop by and leave a commment or two. (Best done over a freshly brewed mug of tea or cup of coffee).