Cats Like Plain Crisps

Whilst searching around for a final year project at uni that came under the fixed title 'Under-Utilised Spaces', I was having a chat with my dad about random things when he relayed the story of a piece of graffiti he used to see on a wall at Kew roundabout on the way home from his job in Richmond back in the late 1980's.

It was such a memorable slogan that it stuck in my mind instantly and I realised I could use it as the subject for this brief perhaps. I visited the roundabout the following day and discovered that the wall was still there, at the gable end of the house, with a small brick wall and some bamboo now obscuring it. I typed the slogan into google and immediately a picture of the wall as it was back then, came up, much to my shock and surprise. This sparked the project off and I went about creating a book that documented the history and legacy of the graffiti, which I am now redoing with a view to getting it into bookshops and to be sold online sometime in the near future.

Watch this space....

IOU Magazine

I replied to a mass email sent last summer by a then MA student asking for LCC Typo to help her out with her final piece- a fashion magazine with a financial theme running through it. Myself and another student replied and IOU Magazine was born some six months later (you could call that a premature birth then I guess!).

Here is the cover with the IOU logo which I designed and some of my selected spreads. We used Futura Upper case for all the headings, ITC Cheltenham for introductory text and Perpetua for body text as they seemed to marry well together and gave impact yet grace. They hinted at fashion and financial matters equally. The grid we used was seven columns in width.

Recent work....

This was the outcome of a self-initiated group brief, a group that comprised of 11 ex-LCC typo students.

Hosted by the Dazed & Confused Gallery in January, the premise behind the work was to create something 'New' out of existing media that we had exchanged between ourselves; One piece of music or mix-CD, one DVD and one section of literature.

Here is my take on the subject, using one quote from each of my given media ('Treasure Island' by Robert Louis Stevenson, 'Dirty Pretty Things' directed by Stephen Frears and 'Everything in it's right place' by Radiohead.)

My style is usually bold sans serif type for maximum visual impact, the colours conveying the mood of the piece. I used children's felt-tipped pens for a crude finish that is akin to the spoken word more than digitally-printed type.

I took a walk to Morrisons..

..and saw this fallen wall outside someone's house on the way back.

I love rusty old type.

I like type a lot...

I see it everywhere I go, and sometimes I take a photo of it..

Are you my type?

Hello.

Welcome.

It's all about the letters and the words....

..and sometimes the pictures too.

What's your type?