Paul Arden already said it better than us…

March 13th, 2013 by Mat Dolphin

Creative briefs are, by their very nature, problematic. They are a challenge set out to designers – ‘Here is a problem, solve it’. Sometimes the solution is blindingly obvious, sometimes it’s a little more elusive. Every now and then, the answer simply seems to be impossible to pin down. At these times, the best approach is often to forget what you know, ignore the supposed parameters and do something that doesn’t obey convention. Something you haven’t been asked to do and perhaps even something which strays into forbidden territory. Taking these creative risks is easy to talk about, incredibly difficult to actually do and the majority of the time will create the most interesting results.

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All Work and No Play…

March 6th, 2013 by Mat Dolphin

At Mat Dolphin, we mess about. We work hard on client work, day-to-day admin, finances, quoting, invoicing and endlessly hunting for new business, but an important part of the way we work involves playing, experimenting and trying out things we find interesting for the sake of trying them. The process is often as important as the final result and the fact that these experiments have no real ‘point’ (in terms of financial gain), is the thing that makes them worth doing.

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Valentines Giveaway – The Winners

February 15th, 2013 by Mat Dolphin

Thank you to each and every one of you who took the time to pen romantic verses for our Valentines poster giveaway. We had a huge number of submissions to choose from – some beautiful and creative, some ridiculous and funny, quite a few creepy and vaguely worrying, but all very much appreciated.

We’ve gone through the lot and are pleased to announce the following lucky winners. Our judging process was pretty simple and based on one simple question; which ones did we like the most? Apologies to those who contributed work and weren’t chosen – we would love for all of you to be winners but there could only be a lucky few, and (in no particular order) here they are…

Keep reading…


…You get love

February 14th, 2013 by Mat Dolphin

** UPDATE ** The competition has now closed, we’ve been overwhelmed with a huge number of brilliant entries, and will be announcing the winners soon!

The time has finally come to announce the details of our Valentines poster giveaway! Let’s get it on…

If you’d like the chance to receive a copy of our A2 Valentines print delivered your door anywhere in the world, all you need to do is get in the mood for romance and follow these three simple steps:

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Ten Questions 032 – Non-Format

February 6th, 2013 by Mat Dolphin

Since long before starting Mat Dolphin we’ve been hugely inspired by Non-Format. The two man studio is run by Jon Forss and Kjell Ekhorn and the work they produce is beautiful, interesting, boundary pushing and, at times, a bit weird. The pair have created a style that is both completely unique and instantly recognisable for a pretty impressive client list. Since establishing the company in London in 2000, the pair have gone on to work with the likes of Nike, Coca-Cola, K-Swiss, Gap, Sony, Adobe, EMI, Orange, Rick Owens, Nokia and The Economist as well as a number of small independent record labels – music packaging being one of the things for which they’re best known. Now based in Minneapolis (Jon) and his native Norway (Kjell), their incredible typography, design and art direction has spawned a host of imitators but by the time most people have caught on, they’re already two steps ahead.

They were kind enough to spend some time answering our Ten Questions. Here’s what they had to say.

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It’s 2013…

January 9th, 2013 by Mat Dolphin

With love

Phil and Tom

 


Yours Truly, Angry Mob

December 18th, 2012 by Mat Dolphin

Recently, the University Of California unveiled a new logo. The general reaction in the studio was relatively muted. Clearly they’ve attempted to update their previous mark – pictured below – with a more contemporary look. The result, whilst certainly not horrendous, is also not amazing. It’s pretty inoffensive and basically ok. It would seem that others had stronger, more negative opinions about the rebrand, and weren’t afraid to let their feelings be known.

Keep reading…


Scathe We Wright*

December 13th, 2012 by Mat Dolphin

Weight Watchers recently unveiled a new identity, designed by Pentagram’s Paula Scher. There are a few things we wanted to mention about the identity, which lead on to a slightly bigger, more complex point.

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Work, rest and Playboy

December 5th, 2012 by Mat Dolphin

Don’t ask us how or why but recently, we stumbled upon this (obviously NSFW) online archive of Playboy back issues. The collection spans from the first ever issue all the way back in December 1953 to the present day. The early days of the magazine show some great examples of inventive and well considered editorial design. Creative, elegant and much better than most of the tat that fills newsagent’s shelves these days — Top shelf or not. We love them. So we thought we’d share some of the best we came across. Fnar.

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Jonathan Ive already said it better than us…

November 22nd, 2012 by Mat Dolphin

Approaching each and every design brief as a new challenge which therefore deserves a new solution should be standard practice for a designer. Each problem we’re asked to solve presents its own unique obstacles, questions and stumbling blocks. Using a tried and tested method you’ve used before (or, even worse, seen someone else use before), is hardly going to result in the most original final product. Being different is a necessary and important part of allowing your work to stand out from the rest. But it’s not enough to merely do something others aren’t.

Keep reading…


The Colour Purple

October 9th, 2012 by Mat Dolphin

As you may already know, Cadbury has won the exclusive rights to their own shade of purple. The win is the result of a four year legal battle with rivals Nestlé. Cadbury now ‘own’ Pantone 2685C purple for use across all of their chocolate bar and drinks packaging. More importantly, they can bring legal action against other brands using the colour who they see to be infringing upon their copyright.

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Repeat Performance

September 24th, 2012 by Mat Dolphin

Picture the scenario: You get given a great logo design brief from Client A. You take on the project and submit some ideas. One gets chosen, developed and finally delivered. The client is delighted with their new logo and your work makes a positive buzz in the design press. Everyone is happy and the project was a success.
High fives all round.

Keep reading…


BUG 32

August 30th, 2012 by Mat Dolphin

To the uninitiated, BUG: The Evolution Of Music Video is an ongoing series of bi-monthly events at the BFI Southbank in London, celebrating global creativity in music video. The shows are hosted by Adam Buxton — the funny, petite, bearded half of Adam and Joe — and have become an essential forum for fans of music videos and aspiring film-makers alike. If we can get tickets we try and make it along each and every time, it’s that good. It’s not just about getting away from our desks though, Adam literally has everyone in stitches, and the music videos aren’t half bad either. It’s sound and vision at it’s best.

It’s normally a packed out event, so for those that couldn’t make it along, or for those that didn’t even know it existed, we’ve compiled all the videos shown at last nights event. Watch / listen — have them on in the background. There’s dubstep, there’s throat slitting, there’s weird horse dancing and something a little perverse. So, something for everyone. Just think of it as your Mat Dolphin Friday visual playlist.

Keep reading…


Ten Questions 028 – Sam Green

July 10th, 2012 by Mat Dolphin

It’s been a long time since the last installment in our regular Ten Questions series. Too long. With this in mind, we got in touch with the brilliant Sam Green and asked him if he fancied getting involved.

Thankfully, he was up for it.

Sam is a London-based illustrator who creates stunning, abstract, dreamlike images. Since graduating from Central St. Martins, his work has attracted a client-list which includes 55DSL, Big Chill Festival, Dazed & Confused, The New York Times, Nokia, The Times and Wallpaper* amongst others. We love what he’s doing and can’t wait to see what he’s up to next.

Keep reading…


Keep it Real?

July 4th, 2012 by Mat Dolphin

For a number of reasons, we look at a lot of online design portfolios. The ‘work’ sections of designers and agencies websites are daily fixtures in our browsers and conversations. We sometimes look for a bit of inspiration, we sometimes look to check out what our peers in the industry are up to, but the majority of the time we simply look because we’re really big fans of good graphic design. And there’s plenty to look at.

Most decent portfolios feature multiple images in an effort to show a broad overview of the work. More often that not, a website project will show more than one screenshot, an editorial project will show more than one spread, branding projects will show various applications of the brand in-situ. Showing these is a big part of getting across the thought process behind the work and, if nothing else, makes the portfolio that much more interesting to look at.

Keep reading…


150 of our favourite creative websites + HTML folder download

June 27th, 2012 by Mat Dolphin

Since we started Mat Dolphin we’ve been working towards and sharing a single ethos: If you give love, you get love™*. It’s a ‘does what it says on the tin’ message, and we apply it to everything we do.

One of the ways we like to give love is by using our @MatDolphin Twitter account to share the work and creativity of others we think will inspire our followers. We’ve been using it for over three years now and in that time we’ve spewed out some 13,000 chunks of love. Everyone has their own agenda, but they way we believe Twitter should work is that is that it’s about you, and not us. On a daily basis we trawl through a huge number of creative websites on your behalf, looking for industry news, work or campaigns we think will interest and inspire. Chucked into the mix is the odd opinion piece or post we write for magazines, but on the whole it’s just content and thoughts to get your brain moving and perhaps even make you smile.

Keep reading…


We are three

June 20th, 2012 by Mat Dolphin

We can hardly believe it but today is our 3rd Birthday! A huge amount has happened in the world of Mat Dolphin since our humble beginnings in 2009. It feels like we’ve come a long way and the journey has certainly been an exciting one. We’ve made more mistakes than we care to remember, learnt a huge amount more than we ever thought possible, done some work that we’re incredibly proud of and, most importantly of all, met some amazing people along the way.

We want to say a huge, heartfelt thank you to each and every person who’s been involved with Mat Dolphin over the last 1,095 days. Without you we wouldn’t be able to do what we love everyday and pretend it’s a job.

This is still only the beginning though and we can’t wait to see what happens next!

Thanks for everything,

Phil and Tom
X


BUG 31

June 15th, 2012 by Mat Dolphin

To the uninitiated, BUG: The Evolution Of Music Video is an ongoing series of bi-monthly events at the BFI Southbank in London, celebrating global creativity in music video. The shows are hosted by Adam Buxton — the funny, petite, bearded half of Adam and Joe — and have become an essential forum for fans of music videos and aspiring film-makers alike. If we can get tickets we try and make it along each and every time, it’s that good. It’s not just about getting away from our desks though, Adam literally has everyone in stitches, and the music videos aren’t half bad either. It’s sound and vision at it’s best.

It’s normally a packed out event, so for those that couldn’t make it along, or for those that didn’t even know it existed, we’ve compiled all the videos shown at last nights event. Watch / listen — have them on in the background. There’s dubstep, there’s manga, there’s people jumping out of windows. Something for everyone. Just think of it as your Mat Dolphin Friday playlist.

Keep reading…


U-Turn Ahead

May 30th, 2012 by Mat Dolphin

With the London 2012 Olympics drawing ever closer, the much publicised visual identity is now rolling out and we’re seeing an increasing number of applications using the branding in different ways. The recent unveiling of the Olympic tickets designed by Futurebrand revealed an interesting turnaround. The prevailing consensus – most notably on the Creative Review comments board – is that the previously hated branding was now actually working quite well and a number of people, having lived with it for the last five years, have changed their minds. Anyone with a passing interest in design will surely be aware of the venom directed towards the Wolff Olins designed logo when it first emerged in 2007. This negativity came not only from designers but from the general public and, unsurprisingly, tabloids newspapers. Now, with designers leading the way, is it possible that the tide is turning and the logo, it turns out, isn’t actually that bad?

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Waiting for Lightning

May 17th, 2012 by Mat Dolphin

Earlier this year, we wrote a blog post regarding some of our thoughts on inspiration. Sprungseven left a considered and well written response in the comments section, using a quote from the brilliant Bob Gill:

“Don’t look for inspiration in design books. Don’t sit at your computer, waiting for lightning to strike. If the job is for a dry cleaner, go to a dry cleaner. And stay there until you have something that you honestly think is interesting to say about dry cleaning.”

The sentiment is spot on and one we wholeheartedly agree with. If inspiration for designers comes from the same sources (a finite handful of popular websites and design books), its only a matter of time before things begin to look similar. Without wanting to cover old ground, we concur.

Keep reading…