A Different Way of Life

Seung Mo Park - wire sculptures

I was shown this the other day and wanted to share it with you. A Korean artist called Seung Mo Park - a wire sculptor who's work, i think, is beautiful. He creates giant portraits by painstakingly cutting layer after layer of stainless steel wire mesh sheets.
His care, patience and artistry delivers stunning pieces of art that i'd love to see for real. Not only beautifully executed portraits, but the technique he uses to achieve them - AMAZING! Worth checking out - the images below take you to a (4 minute) YouTube movie of how he does it. (sorry about creepy music).

Link to Exhibition of Ephemeral Portraits by Sueng Mo Park

The Plot Thickens

This week's showcase, Brian Dettmer's is an American contemporary artist who creates innovative sculptures made from recycled materials such as books and cassettes tapes. Like a surgeon, Dettmer intricately cuts, discards and seals his books to reveal exciting three-dimensional interpretations of the subject matter. He is also known for creating these amazing skull sculptures made from found cassette tapes, in which the final piece is often a reflection of the audio content. Find out more about his work at: http://briandettmer.com/

- Marcus

Newcastle startup weekend 20-22 April

Here's the film from my weekend as a mentor at Newcastle Startup Weekend at Newcastle University Business School 20-22 April 2012. 100 people, 12 ideas, 1 winner.  Well done Job log - an online 'dating' site for employers to find the right

 

A Stella Outfit, Jessica!

Having being appointed Team GB's Creative Director for the 2012 Olympics, British fashion designer Stella McCartney has unveiled some fantastic new outfits to unite our athletes. Showing that we're right on-trend with our own Barker and Stonehouse Summer campaign, McCartney has used the graphically striking Union Jack as the emphasis of her design.

The Olympic Torch will be passing through Newcastle on Friday 15 June with a 4:45pm start on Jesmond Road. I'll be hoping to catch a glimpse of its journey. It's a way for everyone to get involved with the event; especially as the last time London hosted the Olympics was way back in 1948. Not even my parents had been born yet!

I for one really enjoyed the success that Team GB had in Beijing 2008 and can't wait to cheer our athletes on this summer! 

Roll with it.

Look whats just arrived, a couple of roll up banner stands for the new Tall Trees Park project we're currently working on, and hiding inbetween them are Marcus and Carla, who designed and artworked these huge items! Nice. Just waiting for other pieces of the project to arrive back from the printers now!

Neil Fujita: The Godfather of Graphic Design.

Some of you will have heard of him. Others won't. But you should.

One of the pioneers of record (remember those) sleeve design from a time before most of us were even born. Neil Fujita worked for Columbia Records in the 50's after seeing active duty in WWII, his striking artistic works and typographic treatments were miles away from the simple 'Photo of Artist + Type = Sleeve Design' method that was the standard.

Fujita used his own work inpired by the music to create a whole new style for Columbia Records and their artists like Miles Davis, Charles Migus, The Dave Brubeck Quartet and many many others. But he didn't stop at record sleeves, after a stint at the Worlds first advertising agency N.W. Ayer of Philadelphia, followed by another period at Columbia Records before he formed his own agency - Fujita Design. There he mastered the book (remember those?) jacket sleeve creating works for 'In Cold Blood', 'Pigeon Feathers' and the legendary 'Godfather', where he created the instantly recognisable and haunting typeface.

And that piece of work is why he earned the nickname 'The Godfather of Graphic Design'. Nice.

 

Ross

Illustrator of the week

This weeks favourite illustrator is Fernando Volken Togni, a 28 year old graduate from Brazil. He has a beautiful style, clean lines, unexpected colour combinations and intricate compositions. His work is used over a wide range of commissions from books to sculptures, iphones cases to wall murals. Check out his website: http://www.fernandovt.com/

Prometheus "The David 8" viral ad

 

Just wanted to share this you fellow people. Movie trailers are mostly so over the top, sharing way too much information, so much so that there's no point in going to see the movie anymore. Don't know about you, but I'm tired of them, no originality or creative thought going on. And we all love those really cool viral ads.

This mixes the two, which I haven't seen been done before. I just think this viral movie trailer for Prometheus is really cool, using the synthetics character from the Alien films as a member of the crew on the ship. It doesn't give away anything about what happens in the film, just focuses on one character, and is he good, is he bad? Why is he crying if he has no emotions, it's creepy, but cool...or just really geeky

This one goes up to 11

On Thursday evening myself, Marko and our new designer (and drummer!) Annie went to Newcastle College to see an old friend of mine Doug Aldrich from rock monsters Whitesnake and his bandmates Michael Devin and Brian Tichy play at a Marshall Amplifiers event organised by the college's music department.

We were expecting a fairly quiet affair, being shown what the knob that goes up to 11 does, etc but we weren't expecting to be treated to a jaw-dropping 90 minute set by the 3 guys performing as SteamRolla, with songs by people as diverse as Led Zeppelin, KC and the Sunshine Band and Michael Jackson!

Here's some pics I took on the night and also, should your fancy like to be tickled, a bit of video I shot too!

 

The car? That's the Marshall JCM800 limo, obviously!

Falling in love with NE1's Campaign

As most of our clients are based down South, I rarely get to see our work in situ. However one of our clients is NE1. Recently I got to see my first 48 sheet in situ, next to Metro Radio Arena. This was the Valentine's Day campaign we did for them, my favourite to date. I thus couldn't resist a snap!

Carmel and Claire