badge of honour
I've been able to design a lot of cool stuff over the years, but this was probably the thing I was most excited to receive a sample of. My client, The Economist Educational Foundation, runs a news club called The Burnet News Club, and membership includes a little pin-badge that students proudly wear on their school jackets. Manufactured by Stupid Tuesday, I'm besotted with them, and one is proudly adorning my leather jacket.
dearly beloved
Let 2015 be known as the year of the wedding. I've been lucky enough to help several couples with their weddings and it's always been a delight. Not a bridezilla or groomzilla in sight, just lovely, unique and beautiful people and their equally beautiful celebrations.
festival lifesavers
I remember Up&Go breakfast drinks launching in New Zealand when I was a kid and everyone going mad for them. Well they've now hit the UK shores with a cheeky campaign to get them noticed. To engage their target audience, they worked with Lab5 to create an Aussie Surf Club style experience at this year's Boardmasters Festival in Cornwall.
what to do if the bank says no
What To Do If The Bank Says No is the second e-book I've produced for MarketInvoice (you can see the other bits and bobs here). Useful for anyone with a small to medium business, I know I learned a hell of a lot. I've been working in-house with the lovely folk at MI and getting to work on all sorts of fun things so I'll have a bit more work coming to the site soon!
no looking, just leaping
I've done it. Finally done it. I've been talking about it for a while, but only really felt earlier this year that it was possible. It was all those lovely ex-colleagues-now-friends who did it. The ones who got in contact and wanted my help on their projects, the ones who referred me to their friends and their teams. They gave me the confidence to realise that I actually do have enough of a network to work for myself.
kpmg cocktail masters
KPMG wanted to start an annual cocktail competition for their internal staff, so they turned to LAB 5 to make the magic happen. Run by the irrepressible Frances, who has experience with some of the biggest global alcohol brands (and thus makes an exceptional cocktail herself), she came to me to to create an identity for the event.
progress
I've been working with the lovely people at Corporate Research Forum for a couple of years now and, among other things, I've helped them to produce an online magazine called Progress. We're up to the Issue 3 now, going live this week. For the cover illustration, I took inspiration from a famous philosopher "Ogres are like onions, they have layers". Not to compare business leaders to ogres, but the analogy fits nicely when talking about the qualities that make a great leader.
a little bit of nothing
what came first, the chicken or the egg? the design or the brief? Sometimes, when working on a project, you take a wander down a train of thought in Illustrator and come up with something unexpected that you like, but isn't right for the client or doesn't fit the brief. You wrestle with it for a while... is there something you can do to make it fit? Can it be adapted/tweaked/coerced? Or do you just accept that it's the doily of design - pretty, but pointless?
red, white and blue
Here's a quick peek at Whitney and Marc's save the dates for their wedding next year. Marc is from Luxembourg, Whitney is from the US. They are getting married on Independence Day, so wanted a red, white and blue theme, but also wanted to reference the two countries uniting. I stumbled across a gorgeous old stamp from the 1960's and adapted the lion to be marching along with a simplified american flag.
colours of israel
Well hello there, first blog post of the new site. Now if only I had anything interesting to say. This is going to be more of a personal project I think, I don't expect anyone to actually read my ravings, but it's nice to have a place to catalog design-related thoughts and not bore distant relatives on Facebook.