Kidrobot Christmas

Kidrobot has posted up it's November releases including two Christmas-themed toys I really have to get! There are the Mini Munny Christmas Ornaments and the Reindeer Dunny! Going to be doodling on the Munnys and hanging them up and putting the Dunny with the Gingerbread Man from last year. Can't find any UK websites selling them yet? Any ideas?

Toshiba - The Journey of Innovation

Gorgeous and innovative site by Toshiba here. Make shapes with the mouse to move around the scene and interact with the animals. Beautifully illustrated and thought out.

Found on the fantastic Made in England

Throughout the presidential campaign I've been keeping a collection of designs from the Obama campaign. Not only was his own branding excellent and consistently delivered, the work of other graphic designers was really exciting.

Here's some articles on the subject;

Fubiz.net - Obama Art

Newsweek - Why the Obama "Brand" Is Working

Speak Up - The Hardest Working Presidential Candidate Logo

Here are some great examples designers have created over the past few months;

Shawn Hazen - United Change Poster

Design for Obama

30 Reasons

Obama Art Report

Scott Hansen

Obey Giant - Progress Poster

Patrick Moberg - Nov 4th

Pete Fowler - Mighty Boosh

"Designed by Artist / Illustrator Pete Fowler and blessed by the Boosh the figures show Vince in his personally designed Fountain of youth cowboy suit, Howard in his everyday jazzy slacks and Hawaiian shirt, Naboo in full shamanic getup and Bollo as naked as the day he was born."

All figures stand between 11 and 14 cm, Double pack 1 features Howard Moon and Bollo while pack 2 includes Vince Noir and Naboo. Packaging will be window box style with flip lid, fully art worked by the Boosh team."

Love the packaging and the 'Boosh' guys miniaturised in classic Pete Fowler style. Available from December!

New Site Design

Well, when I put this design up I intended it as a temporary design before I came up with a far more innovative design that was more representative of me and my work. Well the new design is getting there so I thought I'd put up a preview...

Let me know what you think?

Taking photos

So I bought my camera and I've been playing with it at any opportunity I get - see my Flickr page for what I've been up to. As you can see I've mostly taken pictures of buildings, sculptures, flowers and other things that stay still long enough for you to organise a composition, focus and shoot.

However one of the reasons i wanted to learn photography was to take photos of people, I'd love to capture people's expressions and feelings in a photo. This is where I've been hitting a problem. When on holiday I wanted to take photos of these old Portuguese men sitting outside their houses playing cards - but I was so worried they would take offense to the silly, english girl invading their privacy I didn't do it.

Saturday night was one of the first occasions I bought my camera to a meet up with friends. I thought I'd be able to sneak around the edges of the party taking relaxed photos of everyone having a good time... What actually happened was they would suddenly become aware of me raising the camera to my face and instead of getting a nice natural pose I'd get a photo of someone frozen in a pose or looking sideways at the camera with a scared expression on their face! So this is my new challenge to work out how to photograph people naturally who aren't natural posers - like dogs...

Give them the promise of a treat and they'll sit there willingly while you snap away... maybe next time I'll try treats with my friends...

We want tap

Was just reading the metro when the fantastic logo above caught my eye. It's Joshua Blackburn's and Provokateur's attempt to 'brand' tap water and discourage people from drinking expensive and not very eco-friendly bottled water. I love the design and think it's a great - and slightly cheeky idea!

You can buy a branded bottle from them too which is 'made from new generation Tritan plastic, which is 100% free of the chemical Bisphenol A' - this is a good idea as the normal plastic bottles are unsafe to continually reuse. Think I'll be getting one...

Pete Fowler & Monsterism

Don't think I've ever written on here about my love for the work of Mr Pete Fowler - who basically gets to make monsters for a living! He is a designer from Cardiff who is responsible for Super Furry Animals covers and for amazing creati0ns such as the Snorse (above) which is my favourite piece of designer vinyl. His website is here - although its fairly out of date. You can buy his products here.

Think I might go back through my bookmarks and books and write up some more entries about my favourite designers.

Hello Sour Sally!

Love the combination of hand drawn illustrations with a flash interface on this website for frozen yogurt. Especially love the expressions on her face and the way her legs dangle when she's flying!

Have a play at collecting the ingredients!

Graphic Exchange

There are far too many amazing things to look at on this site. Lots of inspiration on one site with links out to the people responsible for the work so you can discover more. As useful as ffffound but far more focused. They even have a dedicated website section. I shall be there a while...

Through it I found the work of this studio Platinum (responsible for the photo above) their website is a little off-putting but go through the portfolio - the work is amazing!

New Toy Releases

Some new designer toy releases I'm looking forward to in the next few weeks. Kidrobot releases their Series 5 Dunny Collection - looking forward to seeing (and probably buying) the Kathie Olivas dunny although there are no photos of it yet!

They are also releasing a Tado Series 'Cannibal Funfair' I love Tado's drawings and am going to try and get hold of 'Lily' as she is so super-cute - hopefully she's not a rare one!

Face Your Manga

No need to wonder any longer what a manga character of yourself would look like with this fun website! Impressive how many combinations you can make! Have fun :)