listening to music to design posters to : The Doors

listening to music to design posters to : The Pink Floyd

listening to music to design posters to : The Cramps

listening to music to design posters to : Spiritualized

website update

jamesreaydesign.co.uk/ has recieved a make over based on the original them and keeping the same photos but now has hi resolution images in the portfolio section and an improved navigation system. As a bonus feature too, there is a mobile variant of the site if you are looking at it on a mobile phone. To be announced is a tablet site for all you people who use <insert witty comment about tablets here>.

This is all because of the new software I have downloaded called adobe muse which is a web design program without the coding so more suited to those of a visual nature. like me. so thank that program for my beautiful new website if I don't say so myself. Have a gander, a peak and or a look. click the link below.

Can a building substance have a birthday?

 don't be silly, What this poster is for is not for the building substance concrete it is very much for the club that is in Carlisle.  Tony got in touch with me and said would you mind doing it so I said yeah. toyed around with the idea of birthday cake because who doesn't like birthday cake? Answers on a postcard please but in the end balloons were enough. just to imply that it's a birthday celebration because if you notice doesn't say birthday on it . oops. glad they like them, glad I like them and they have used them.

A Trip into their world

Last time these guys played it was the first time that they had played Carlisle in the bands 35 years of existence and it is a joy to see them return. They must of enjoyed themselves. and in honor of this return, I the designer for the first poster was given the task again.
Using the same motif as the first poster I did as it is some I am very proud of, and using the construction lines of the album that they are revisiting for the tour formulated this. To me this looks very constructivism despite being very irrelevant to the subject. The purple colour for the background is also from this album; entitled Behind Closed Doors which is amusing as that is where the gig will happen. hahaha I am so funny.

Futura to the Rescue

 I haven't really had to deal with bad logo's as I tend to deal with good people who know about design. But not this time, I was given a bad logo design done by the band I was doing a poster for. So I tried, I promise, I tried my best and I give up. I give up completely. Ditched the logo and just chose a lovely typeface to make the poster. The colours are of fire just to give it a metal twinge to it. My brother was supporting in this gig and he is not a metal artist. he is sublime and you should check out his beats on Soundcloud.

Help a designer out

Lovely People that I call friends I am doing some work for a young minds mental health charity and I would like your help. Please fill in this form as it will assist me in in my design work that will go on to help other young people across the region.

Unemployment TV

Are you unemployed? Or on the Dole? or just a student? then you will be aware that daytime TV is appalling. and not just the content but the design. These programs are so cheap to make and so boring to watch you think that people would make an effort to make them at least look appealing to the eye. My main aim here the BBC but in my opinion ITV is worse as it just has a long running programs that are just talk fests about meaningless nothing.

 Bad over sized font choice, bland colour and a really naff lense flare. keylines on text as well looks pretty dire.

 I have long hated this idea of houses in a shopping basket as if you can acquire several in one shopping trip. and the homes made of money and the font "Homes" is in. It just hurts.

 Nothing says a program about the police like a light blue. Font is not too bad but the screened effected on the brick hurts. The image of the street to represent the "neighbourhood" is done badly but could work.

The newest program I have seen in the daytime slot. The colors are great and British and gritty and we look like we can get money for you cos we have shadows on our face. We use the road so we need to include a road, obviously.

Old Work, New Perspective

My first piece of paid design this was and it seems odd that I am still fond of it. It was made while I was still getting to grips with design.  Designing for a start up company was an unusual first job to be paid for having done no commercial work but the client really liked my portfolio of work.

Applying the principles of logo design rule number one (I think anyway) is keep it simple. I knew something typographic. College didn't say what fonts were good and which fonts were bad, just instructed never to use comic sans as a rule of thumb. I have long hated times new roman so went with the newish default on Microsoft word is Cambria. It's beautiful. The AG are the clients initials. The silhouetted figures are to represent the range of people that company cares for. The colours were introduced at the last minute by the client and I think they work really well and I am not just saying that because my website is that colour.

Orange Strypes

Flat Out! is was the strypes have said on there latest tour poster because it is relentless, so many dates in such a small space of time, Being a big fan of their debut album so I took to designing a poster for the brickyard despite their promoter not accepting outside designers to do work for them. So did it without no aim or intention of it getting posted up around the town but with fingers crossed it might be. Orange is the latest colour choice to represent them hence it's prevalence here. It's a little bit trippy with the dot pattern but take it or leave it, I haven't included a monogram as it is not an official piece for the brickyard.

Christ Hath Risen, we need to get him an egg

I've got a gig review, for you

Regular readers of this blog will know that I love Courtney Barnett. So to see her on Tuesday night was a beautiful thing. She was excellent on top form, and I love all her work. Spring King was before that and they were like a punk band but with an interest in classic indie music. Fraser A Gorman was first and for a small bloke with an acoustic guitar who looked liked Bob Dylan he was excellent, Modern Folk at it's best.

However, I did make the thing you see to the right before hand. The image is based on a still from her Pedestrian at Best music video in which she dresses as a clown and gets laughed at for being an unfunny clown. The hand drawn text at the bottom is mine and the text that says her name is her hand writing.

The Queen Did Die

A tribute band paying tribute to a classic album by the band who arguably invented what it currently means to be young and hipster. Seems like a good night out to me but how do you advertise such an event? If you dis, his majesty aka morrisey or mess up something considered iconic, you will be chased round the block by people with ill fitting thick rimmed glasses, books tooked under their arm of Tolstoy and Wilde, trying their best not to spill the capitalist blood of starbucks coffee.

Don't mess with the formula is the answer. keep it basic keep it simple. Basic effect of the image so that it looks like news print when magnified. For this poster I actually used the exact font used on the front cover of the album. Aren't I clever. I don't like this one as much as my previous work for The Smyths but it does the job and it's suitable. It keeps with the doom and gloom of the music

A Derpy Duck Photograph

 Branding is one of the great joys in graphic design in my opinion. It's a challenge, trying to cram a companies ideals and morals into one icon. But I love it and to get a live branding brief at uni was a dream, we haven't had one in over a year, so it's long overdue.

The brief was to brand a photography conference held by the staff at the university but during the summer so outside of uni time. So I set about drafting ideas and pages and pages of layout paper left I had this idea which I then proceeded to take into illustrator and create. Bearing in mind I hate illustrator I think the logo itself has come out pretty sweet.

Once the logo was done then the website had to be done too. so I set about doing that in photoshop like I normally would and then having completed it, I was told well this is wrong and this is wrong and oh you are using photoshop, well we want you to use inDesign. The second week was fixing it and doing that.

Upon hand in I got some excellent news, not only was it a 75 (aka a first) but also it was in competition with two others to be chosen as the final design. Success. 

Life advice from a blog that you are reading

Beef

I have been wondering what to do with this illustration for a while now and I knew I wanted to make it a logo for something but thought what could I do and then it hit me a good hip and trendy food company (that doesn't exist). So what does a food company need, a mascot, well clearly it is this cute little guy. A Nice colour scheme; Blue, a redish orange and a brown. Typeface: default is still bebas. and a name... no that's the hardest thing of all. My logic with "The Horny Beef Co." was that it risque suggesting an animals sexual state, it's memorable because it's risque and it's got the product name in the title.