I wanted to share what I have doing since finishing my studies. I was lucky enough to get a job at a small web design studio called Mucky Puddle. It is not the aspect of design that I expected to get into but it has been incredibly fun and rewarding. I am so grateful for working with an incredible group of people and such exciting projects.

With my re-branding finally finished I was due to get some business cards printed. I have always had a fascination with business cards and have been collecting good quality ones for a couple of years. I decided to go with Moo’s Luxe cards which are extra thick, premium 600 gsm stock with a seam of colour which runs through the middle of the paper stock. I decided to go with a black seam to go with my self branding colour scheme. The packaging was exceptional and a great surprise.

My favorite new feature in some games today is photo mode. Playstation has been very good to implement this in many of their first party games and I hope that this will become a staple for future games. I have recently been replaying Uncharted 4 on Crushing and am spending a lot of my time taking photos of the amazing environments that Naughty Dog has created. Here are some of my favorites:

Ian Anderson started his famed design career when he created the cover art for  Person to Person’s ‘High Time’ single in 1984. This then lead to him founding ‘The Designers Republic’ with Nick Phillips in 1986. The studios designs and slogan ‘Work, Buy, Consume, Die’ and ‘Design Will Eat Itself’, and many genre defining record designs inspired generations of creatives. In the 23 years of the studio, it managed to work on projects in the games industry, the television and film industries. TDR’s early work was made using traditional techniques, but had the look of digital before the technology was available to produce such images. In that sense, they were way ahead of their time. My first exposure to TDR was when I played the Playstation game Wipeout (1995) mixing images from Japanese anime and futuristic corporate logos, this games aesthetics still hold up and continue to inspire designers today. 

Unfortunately due to many factors, the Design Republic shut down in 2009. In the words of Ian Anderson:

 “When I took a back seat to allow TDR to grow beyond me, it died; its creative spark was crushed . . . the more I took myself out of the equation to see if it could do better without me, the more obvious it became that Ian Anderson and The Designers Republic were inseparable.”

Here are some of my favorite works by Ian and The Designers Republic:

Infographic poster set on ocean pollution. I wanted each poster to focus on different aspects of pollution in the ocean. These were printed on Newsprint off-white 170 gsm using risograph.

This was an extremely challenging project as it tested my layout, typography, iconography and research skills. I really enjoyed the challenge and it was good to try risograph printing for the first time. I choose risograph for this project as it is an environmentally friendly printing method using soy-based inks and screens made from banana paper. This was very important as it directly ties into the subject matter and it also produces very nice results with a unique texture.

I came across Mike Winkelmann, aka, Beeple on instagram a couple of months ago. He has been doing an everyday piece for 3288 days now. He explains that he is doing this to not only improve his creativity, but also to get over that fear of starting and finishing a project. He has explored many areas of art over the 9 or so years. Such as Photography, drawing and computer modeling. It was his Cinema 4D work that really drew me into his art and it blows me away that he is able to produce one of these highly creative pieces every day. 

One thing that I have always looked out for and appreciated in video games is good user interface. Good UI is one of the most challenging aspects of game development. It needs to provide relevant information clearly and quickly in an aesthetically pleasing way.

One of my favorite UI’s in recent history is in Bungie’s Destiny. It is minimalist, slick and takes a lot from good web design. The cursor was a brave choice for a controller but many small choices like the speed and size of the circular click area make it a joy to use and require much less clicking than most RPG’s. The streamlined nature of it makes it less intrusive and really exposes the core of the game. Along with some incredible iconography, logo design and high res menu assets, Destiny’s UI comes together wonderfully.