knit two, purl two…

As I may have already mentioned, I taught myself how to knit over the Christmas break. At the time, I had grand plans to knit as many things as possible so that I could sell them off to help raise funds for the GDMA 2010 grad show. I quickly discovered that knitting even small things takes quite a lot of time, so in the end I only finished five pieces. I kept one pair of gloves for myself, and sold one pair to el class presidente. This afternoon, with help from photographer extraordinaire and photoshop guru Jessica Luch, I finally got around to getting some photos of the last three pieces that I knit – one pair of wool gloves, and two yarn cowls.

Each piece is being sold for $10 US on Etsy, and 100% of the proceeds go to helping us poor Kwantlen students fund our grad show.

missed connections

While working on a concept today, I stumbled across the work of Sophie Blackall, an Australian illustrator based in New York. Sophie has done work for clients such as the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Penguin Books, but the work that caught my attention were her illustrations of Missed Connections. I don’t normally make a habit of reading missed connections, but I think I would if they were all illustrated like these.

In other news, I caved to the peer pressure and joined Twitter. If you feel so inclined, you can follow me here. Or not, no pressure.

print design

I was perusing swissmiss this afternoon and came across the Dirt Poster by Roland Tiangco. The backside of the poster is covered in wet ink, so that when it is smeared on the front of the poster, a hidden message is revealed:

“The future belongs to the few of us still willing to get our hands dirty.”

What struck me about the poster, aside from the message, is the experience and interaction between person and paper that the wet ink and hidden message would provide. There has been a lot of talk in class lately about how print design is static, and is not an interactive medium. While I will agree that this can be true, I believe that if print design isn’t interactive, then perhaps it’s not the medium, but the overall design itself. I think that it is critical for us as designers, to challenge ourselves to create work that defies expectations by pushing the limitations of our medium of choice, rather than bemoan those limitations.

In other words, get your hands dirty.

mad men

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything here – I had grand plans to start blogging again over the Christmas break, but I taught myself how to knit and that ended up taking over my entire break. And while knitting, I went through just about my entire DVD library, and finally watched the first two seasons of Mad Men. The show is brilliant, it makes me wish I could travel in time to see what ad agencies were really like back in the day (but then I’m a Doctor Who geek, so I really just wish I could travel through time in general.) So after watching the show and going into Mad Men withdrawal, I was stoked to find these posters by Australian designer Christina Perry linked on Quipsologies. Personifying the pocket squares is such a simple and effective idea, each different fold shows just how different each character is. Do men even wear pocket squares anymore? Someone needs to bring them back into fashion, pronto.

show ‘em how funky strong is your fight

Whilst writing my research paper, I have been listening to Pomplamoose. Not sure how many people have heard of them, but they make ridiculously awesome music.

friday the 13th

Last night was a success, hurrah! Sadly, I did not take very many pictures. Perhaps the next pub night should have a designated photographer/videographer.

daily drop cap

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Daily Drop Cap by Jessica Hische

lorem ipsum

nine simple rules

Originally published in 1963, and last published in the March/April 1999 issue of Communication Arts, this informative piece demonstrates how to turn a “waste of space” into an “honest hard-hitting, two-fisted ad”.

Communication Arts

this never fails to amuse me.