Insane in the Brain

February 29th, 2012 by Mat Dolphin

Fancy seeing an exhibition featuring some stunningly rendered illustration work? Want to check out some beautiful and delicate sculpture? In the mood for some elegant, balanced typography? If you are, we would advise you to steer clear of London’s Haywood Gallery until the middle of May. They’re currently showing Brain Activity, the first major UK solo show by Glasgow-based artist David Shrigley. Being big fans of his work, we checked it out last weekend and whilst we can confirm you won’t be seeing any of above, you will see a fantastic mix of interesting, bemusing, weird, thought-provoking and utterly hilarious drawings, paintings, photography, sculpture and animations. Thankfully, the opportunity to exhibit old and new work on a large scale in such an established gallery space hasn’t tempted Shrigley to stray from his signature style; a combination of crude, cack-handed imagery that effortlessly walks the line between ridiculous visual puns and abstract, emotive poignancy.

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Ten Questions 025 – Abigail Dixon

February 22nd, 2012 by Mat Dolphin

This is the 25th post in our Ten Questions series and as it’s a bit of a milestone we thought we’d do something special. Since we started the series, we’ve spoken to some of our favourite designers, illustrators, writers, artists and creative directors. This time, after months of talking to her agent and countless emails, we’ve finally managed to pin down a response from a uniquely talented individual who can turn her hand to all of these disciplines and many more. A true visionary and all round creative renaissance woman, ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce Abigail Dixon. Writing, illustrating, art directing and overseeing production of her own independently published books, she has forged a unique, distinctive style that is gaining a huge amount of attention within the creative industries. Expect big things from this one, you heard it here first…

See below for what happened when Abigail was kind enough to take some time out of her day to answer our Ten Questions.

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Standing out from the Crowd

February 15th, 2012 by Mat Dolphin

The ‘£25 logo‘ article we recently wrote for Creative Review seemed to cause a nice bit of debate in the comments section of their blog. Which is what we had hoped for. We did however notice their was a bit of confusion over certain wording. Although we never mentioned ‘crowd sourcing’ or ‘spec-work’ in the piece, people leaving comments were using these terms in reference to the cheap logo service we used. We thought it was worth clearing things up a bit.

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It’s Müller Time

February 9th, 2012 by Mat Dolphin

If you’ve read this blog before, you may have already guessed that we like graphic design. A lot. It’s what we love doing, looking at and talking about. There are a huge number of designers and design agencies that we admire, look up to and take inspiration from – some of them are well known greats from the past, some of them are a bit more obscure, some of them are our peers and some of we’re lucky enough to count as friends. There are a small handful of designers we admire, however, that are simple legendary. Josef Müller Brockmann is one of those designers.

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Ten Questions 024 – Jon Burgerman

February 1st, 2012 by Mat Dolphin

Jon Burgerman is a multidisciplinarian artist and illustrator who has created a unique, distinctive style of his own. Often working on a large scale, his loose, colourful creations are instantly recognisable and have graced all manner of client commissions, personal work and solo gallery shows around the world. Alongside drawing on stuff he lectures at a number of universities and produces lots of lovely things for you lucky people to spend your money on in his excellent shop – in need of an laptop sleeve, pillow or pair of socks? Get them all and much, much more at Burgerplex.

Mr. Burgerman kindly agreed to be the first Ten Questions participant of 2012 and we’re very happy to get him involved in the series. Read on for plenty of random ramblings, beautiful doodles and a glimpse inside the mans mind – it’s an interesting place to be.

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