Vin's Cliché Monthly Mix—Dec '15

There are no christmas tracks here, but of course there is a DOOM one.

As always, these are a mixture of what I've been listening to through the month; so this month has been a mixture of falling back into my old habits, revisting some tracks and getting the new Grimes Album; oh man that's a good album!

I never have much to say on these, because the music always says more than I could, so just hit play, okay?

Smint: Anything but fresh

Strap on ye' mining helmets, and flick on ye' torches—we be salt mining today ladies and gentlemen!

I'm salty, and Smint are the cause for this!
Oh Smint, why must you betray me like this; I had such faith in you!
Your slogan is 'Fresh to Impress' though you are neither fresh, and I am not impressed!
Yours, Salty McSalterson

So as you may have known, I entered a Smint poster competition, and myself and Shona (A University Compadré) lead in the votes, neither of us actually won, as the votes were totally discounted, leaving us both in the 25 runners up category—this of course entitled us to some free smint goodies, to help soak up the tears of the money we could have won.

I believe Shona may have actually come in the top three, entitling her to £250, but I can't fully remember, but I'm sure they'll  be sending over some small mints to her either way. So if you look below, you'll see what I received in the mail today. (The cat was not included)

The cat tries her best to get into every photo I take

Above are the spoils of my entry, 4 packets of smints. One regular pack, one fruity pack, one regular pack in a 3D sleeve and a slightly larger packet. And with this amount of small mints you may think that I'll have fresh breathe for the rest of my life, but there is a catch! Half of them are out of date!

How long have these been on the shelf? They are solid sugar tablets, how can they even exprire? Nevermind that, some of them expired 13 months ago. Do you understand how old sugar must be to expire, in a sealed container? #freshmyarse

If you can't quite tell, that says November 2014. 13 months in the past.

So, we've established that the Smint products aren't fresh, but what about the brand, are they fresh? Are their ideas fresh? Yes and no. Their ideas will be fresh because they just got 300+ pieces of spec work, to work and play with the ideas as they so wish. They also just paid £500 for a national Ad Campaign and Poster Design, so their Christmas bonuses will likely be pretty fresh too, because they've just scammed a bunch of students.

But do you know what isn't fresh? This idea. They've run it before, and they'll run it again. Looking through their back catalogue of branding and campaigns, it's mostly a mixture of boring branding, lack-luster campaigns and bloody rubbish slogans. So they'll stick on their caps, throw this idea back into the pot next year and land themselves in the same place.

Thanks for the freebies guys, and good luck in the future, but there are a lot of expired mints in Cumbria this December.

Merry Smint-mas!

When design becomes art

Brian Eno once said said something that goes along the lines of "Art is everything you don't have to do" and to me, that makes a lot on sense but he did also create an album called 'Music for Airports', so who knows what the hell this man is about.

As I said, Brian Eno said that art is everything you don't have to do, it's everything we don't need and that's what sets it free. It's expression because we don't need it. We need water, so it's just a matter of living by drinking it, but we don't need Emin's un-made bed, so it's art—well I mean, it's art by description but I'd just call it crap to be honest.

Something that I've been wanting to write about for a while is the debate of design becoming art, and it may not even be a debate, it may just be the ranting of a cynical design student. You see, design is in almost everything we own, and whether you'll agree or not, we need design to function and progress. Everything you own and everything you want to own, has been designed, and it's quite likely you own or want this item because of it's design.

Design is creating something artistic for a purpose, it is purposeful creativity and as I've explained before, Art is anything we actually don't need, it's pure and direct expression. So I feel that I'm seeing a problem, within current trends where people are beginning to turn design into art. By this I mean adding a colour to make it pretty, rather than for a purpose; choosing a typeface for it's looks rather than it's suitability and making something to follow an artistic trend rather than suiting the clients wishes.

When you design anything, it's important to know you are under commission for someone else. You are creating this design for a purpose—whereas art is created without purpose.

So when design becomes art is when you are influencing the design to suit yourself, rather than the client, and this is where I feel both a problem and an interesting solution both lye.

Personally, I think it's a serious problem choosing aesthetics over purpose or suitability. Choosing that nice bright green and pink combo because you like it, rather than it actually working for it's purpose. And this doesn't just come under the umbrella of pleasing the client, because they'll likely only be interested in the aesthetics also, but it's your job of the designer to make the most attention grabbing, most beautiful, most suitable design you can.

But on the other hand, when you have full freedom to disobey the client and create something for your own personal liking, it can really create something exciting and different—which could feed onto being suitable if the client and brief were changed to suit as such. But that's the problem, you are designer and your are operating under the command of another needs, otherwise you wouldn't be paid, so changing the brief or the client to suit yourself is where design becomes art.

I feel this is just a massive mish-mash of thoughts from my head, so if it made no bloody sense I apologise, but well done you for getting all this way. If I had a sticker, you could have one! But I don't so you'll have to go home stickerless. Sorry.

Milk, why have anything you don't need in there?

Lets be honest here, you wouldn't want a dinosaur in your milk, or even an elephant in your jam; so why have it in there?

So for part of the YCN (Young Creative Network) brief this year; there was a selection of topics we could cover, so like any normal person I was head strong into branding milk with a different protein strand; obviously.

I was working on a project for a2 Milk of whom are a milk company, working to get more people who may feel that they are intolerant to milk, whereas they are actually allergic to the 'a1' strand of protein—thus making this milk, but without anything you don't need in there.

I worked with the idea of not having something in milk you didn't need; and through this process I came over a huge range of ideas. One I was planning to run with was an idea of disbelief; animating a character to support this, but that just would not support my time frame.

Considering my time frame, and knowing that this project had to be a moving image as it's final outcome, I decided that it would have to be filmed, in a day and edited the next day. It had to be fast, stupid and milky.

As we were speaking of stupid, I feel I should really highlight something for you.

I realise you may have noticed that the glass is smashed, and you may even see the clip where it does so; and that my friends was my decline into a dark period of strangeness and milk stains.

It was my second clip, I had been setting up for half an hour, I had been shooting for 3 minutes and of course my second item, to fall into the milk breaks the bloody glass; who knew a plastic toy car can be such a destroyer of glass?

Instead of crippling myself into a ball of tears and anger, I flipped that and made something strange and in my opinion, hilariously shit. Don't get me wrong, I love the outcome, I think it's brilliant, but you cannot deny that it's funny because it's just bloody terrible.

So for this,  I didn't get a great grade, but it's going straight into my portfolio, I think it sums me up quite well, it is the definition of a Vincent Walden Botch Job.

And finally, for the music bats out there, you may have noticed my soundtrack is really rather funky, well my friends that is all due to the geniuses that are Vulfpeck, of whom's music I stole for these clips. I haven't the rights to use them, but this is a personal, educational project, so I hope they don't want to sue me to hard!

Also, as I was salvaging the clips I also took a few images for I could make some GIFs for advertisement on social media—cuz all kids know GIFs are where it's at baby!

Those Demon Ways

Beware the GIFs, my son! The clips that move, the frames that jump! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Graphics Interchange Format!

We had a project, it's was a tough one and it was a strange one. It went by the title "These Demon Ways". This project, of which many suffered with, is slightly my fault—actually a lot my fault. So if you are part of the Grillust massive, reading this, sharpening the pitchfork, lighting the batons; I apologise.

Before this brief came into life, I was asked by my tutor (of whom ran this project) of whether I felt that people would be interested in doing said project; and of course I though they would love it. I was wrong, we were wrong.

The project was to work with an author / poet and create a set of moving image pieces to support her debut production in theatre. These would be displayed behind the performance, supporting what the actors were portraying upon the stage. It turns out, people didn't like this; not at all.
I knew that nobody knew truly how to animate but I thought it would be an individual and most unique portfolio item anyone could have—though it turned out a little too different. Sorry guys. 

Above is a test I made of my initial concept. Emma (poet and project creator) had said that she felt that time was non-linear in this play; so instead of showing that, I wanted to show the 'permanence of existence'.

As you'll see, there are white lines moving across the screen; depicting the movements of people rather than actually showing them, as they'll be on stage and I am merely using this to support them.

I wanted to show the permanence of existence was an over arching theme in this non-linear story.

Here is another test, from another scene. Turn out, I had gone too indepth, and needed to make it a little more simple. Oh well, I learnt more about animation!

Vin's Cliché Monthly Mix—Nov '15

LADIES AND GENTLE LADIEs, IT'S THAT TIME AGAIN! IT'S BADLY ORGANISED PLAYLIST TIME!

If you were wanting a small trip into my mind, into my working day and into my music taste—this'll be a great, terrible way to do so. For the November list, you'll see it rapidly jumps from edible desserts to hardcore, right back into duet folk. YEEEEHHAAAAA!

Despite the fact I'm saying it's terrible I also truly believe it's kind of nice to listen to in the same sense; so why not? It's not like you've got anything important to do, like work or spend time your family. pffft!

Better budgets don't make better ads

There is an advert that keep showing it's ugly face, and after months of complaining to the better half, I'm now going to complain to you.

Above is something terrible—something that I would have cut straight away. Above is the advert that I see repeated over and over on British television; it's an advert for Chanel with some strange downbeat cover of Grease.

I assume you will have seen it before, but it just bugs me so much, that I had to write about it.

Firstly, after looking for this advert on Youtube, I find it's actually a 'film' of just over 3 minutes and this is a cut down version for standard TV advertising; this means I'll be going a little easier on it and a little harder also.

This advert is straight up crap. Nobody ever knows what they are trying to sell you with perfume adverts; but this tops the list of unrelated shite. And as I said, it feels really disjointed because it's been made from cuts of a longer sequence – but my god – if it's good enough to be a 'film' then you could have at least tried to make it good or spell out any kind of narrative.

So we start with a woman in the water, trying to surf; with more arse shots than all the coverage of every surfing competition since time began. She's flipping around in the waves, trying to get her balance in which to surf back to her beach side apartment; but there is a problem!

From her mad rocking wave, see can clearly see some suited man looking overly depressive at what I assume is her house, leaving her some kind of note. Now this would be really difficult to see if you were surfing because it takes a lot of concentration to hold on the wave with your balance—luckily for her, she's very clearly not surfing and her gormless expression is easily seen past the terrible green screening and dry wet suit.

It's really very obvious this woman has never surfed, but why on earth is the wet suit constantly open? I get sex sells, but that dumb ass face she's pulling completely cancels that out.

Now the man is leaving; and she's running up her beach towards a large fence blockade. But just as not knowing how to surf wasn't a problem for this 'surfer chick mom', passing large fences as if they didn't exist also applies to this strange person.

So after she's surfed the biggest wave of the season, been dumped and levitated over a fence; her next miracle is to suddenly be wearing a full new outfit just as her daughter comes in to give her a hug, right next to the perfectly written dismissal letter.

Now she's modelling or something, by some large number 5. I assume this is actually here job because it's the only time she's looking even mildly convincing as a character; and the little note that it's telling me Gisele Bundchen is featured in the ad makes me think I'm supposed to know this model or face from somewhere.

Now she just randomly looks at the letter in different circumstances, drives over a bridge in what looks like a vintage Austin Healey and confront the same man who left her on the balcony of some swing club. Like star crossed lovers, they of course kiss and make up, with his bow-tie looking horrendously crap. All this happens, the advert ends and I'm sat there thinking—what the hell just happened? Who the hell is the target audience? Why the hell are there the same large scale, brightly lit number 5s in alley, just as there were in the photography studio.

All I can conclude is; the advert tells you that if you get left by your man, make sure to dwell on it and chase him to his beck and call. Because how else would you and your daughter survive in your Malibu beachfront property if you don't have crappy bow-tie / light blue suit man.

Chanel, you have a massive budget; get yo' shit together.

Motown and Soul: no Adam, but an Eve

We are on the eve; the eve of the year and the eve of a re-design—but it's not Christmas Eve! You festival bastard!

As you may be aware, I do posters for the Motown evening at The Brickyard. You may also be aware that I do an absolute tonne of posters for those guys, and you may also be aware that I've been doing the Motown posters for what seems forever; so now that we're on the eve of 2015, we are also on the eve of a redesign.

Seeing as I'll be in my final year of university, and after I finish I'll hand the posters onto another designer—I'll be going balls to the wall with the next update, mixing up a little bit of everything, making it feel a little shinier in my poor old withered eyes.

But for this one as a pre-re-design, it's a mixture of influence and the burning desire to have someone upside down on a poster. 

For quite a while now, I've be dying to have some form of image upside down on a poster, and this time, it actually worked! I can now strike 'upside down soul stars' off my poster bucket list, and that does make me a happy little 21 year old.

Returning the note of influence, You may be able to see my Hatch Show Print references, with the overlapping slab serif fonts and rigid structure. All in all, I've slammed together two burning poster desires I've had for a while and somehow they've actually worked! Fantastic!

OH GOD! WHAT IS THAT!

Anything I write doesn't matter. Try not to be sick.

Building business, building clients

 It's not Will's son, but it is Wilson, building a building.

Mid-Summer I got contacted by my friend named after shaded meat; Graeme (Gray-ham). He runs a business with his father, making, building and breaking things and he wanted to look a little cooler than just a black van and a chin-strap beard.

The brief was to make an amalgamation between street wear, a construction business and the heritage him and his father have—so this was a strange brief for me.  But if it's strange, it's exciting; and damn right you know I enjoyed it.

I've never really created a neat, smart, modern logo before so it was an odd turn for me; but after a tonne of tests, it came out really rather well. I may also add that I will be screen printing these t-shirts, which will be really rather fantastic (might just nick one for myself).

Killing poor William once again

I've killed Bill again, and I'm wondering whether I truly killed him the last time.

Now, I know this was in the past but I'll be honest; I totally forgot that I had done it.

I made this poster as a follow up for a friend, and although it was a quick job it was really rather fun to do. I have secret passion to cut up letters, so of course I just cut everything, threw yellow around and scribbled text here there and everywhere.

Vin's Cliché Monthly Mix—October '15

Yeah I made a mixtape, and yeah I doubt it makes any sense, but have a listen!

Recently I realised that whilst I work, I have a craving need to have music in the background. It's like a little cheering momento to keep me going through the day. This music tends to dip and dive all over the place depending on what gigs I'd been to that month, the mood I'm in and the ad's that spotify is ramming down my throat.

So to make some kind of output for this, I wanted to make a little mix for two reasons. One for people who might want to just have a casual listen to the music spinning round my head for the last month.
Two; I hope to return to these at some point in my life and be like "Wow, I haven't heard this in ages"

Now; I'm going to make something very clear. I have the best taste in music above any person in the world; literally the best, most correct taste in music that is humanly possible. I even collect vinyl records, so of course me opinion on music is greater than any other person that doesn't have sleeves full of plastic discs. So with all my credentials taken into account, you may or may not like this; but if you don't, then you are clearly wrong because I even like freeform jazz. Yes, jazz. #suchculture

Anyway, now the rules are set, and you are aware I am the overlord of music taste – just like every A-level music student ever – you should get yourself some work to do, and stick my little mix on in the background.

The digital mixes I'm making will be a monthly thing and are starting with the songs I couldn't shift from my head throughout October, and will likely resurface each month due to the fact I consume far too much music on a monthly basis.

Vincent Walden's Not-So-Professional Reviews: The Computers

Last night was a mixture confusion, shouting, zoot suits and over extended microphone leads.

Last night, me and my buddy James went out for his birthday; and although it may be actually on Sunday, a gig on a Friday will have to do because I'm home for a Christening this weekend.

We started the night with a trip down to Moo bar (local ale bar), we were served some of finest local ale by out good friend Nathan. Pints finished, we headed to The Brickyard, really super early.

We were there so early, that we even managed to catch sound check. Of course to me, hearing the sound check of Colt 45 wasn't all that different because I've found myself around them quite a bit recently; but for James, this was a secret event that he'd be snook into—so with just the idea of getting to the yard quicker for the needing of a pee, I'd already made the night a little better.

After a pee, half a pint and a good ol' chin wag with the lads from Colt; they pondered on up to the stage and dived right in with a mildly aggressive "GO" and following heavy punk riff. It was such a strong and fast introduction. It was like being punched so quickly that you forgot that you had be hit square in the jaw with your nose dripping with angst.

So of course I'm going to be bias, as I design for them—but Colt 45 played great, possibly the best performance ever, possibly more memorable than Glastonbury and Woodstock combined. They were so great I could hear their guitars single handedly impregnating ladies and making grown men weep.

So after a half hour set; many law suits on the basis of unplanned pregnancy and a new song; Colt 45 had finished their set and we began to wait for The Computers to embark onto the stage.

Honestly, so much happened whilst The Computers were playing, I may accidentally leave a load of information out, but here goes. The lead singer had a great fondness for singing on the mosh barrier, he had the longest microphone cable on earth, he chipped Andy's lovely new floor, they were all in matching 'zoot suits', they ensued a mosh pit and he repetitively danced with a candle. Sounds mad right?

Well, it was. Half way through we even found ourselves straddled with this man, dancing in circles, whilst he continued singing the chorus. All the while being backed up by the brilliant band, just slightly behind him.

On the note of the band, a large round of  applause to them. The drummer was constantly in high alert and thrashing his hi-hat like a weasel on speed; on his left was the keyboard/guitarist who would switch between the two, whilst the drummer (already with a huge job on his hands) continued to smash fills and provide excellent backing singing. 

What else can I say, The gig was great. I can say that because I was in the audience, but I bet I'd think he (lead singer) was a right wazzack if I had be working that evening. They offered a fantastic set, full of energy and shouting, which you can't go far wrong with in my eyes.

To encapsulate a mixture of punk & rock n' roll is difficult but these guys really pull it off and making one hell of a sound out of it. With that in mind, I urge you, if you find yourself free to go to one of their gigs—you really should. They are described as one of the best live bands, and that really isn't wrong.

As a final note, if you hadn't seen before; I made the poster for the gig also, and I really rather like it.

Vincent Walden's Not-So-Professional Reviews: Lucy Rose

Heavy punk excites me; but soft folk soothes my soul.

Last night, I went to a gig; a folk gig. It's quite unlike me, but it was really rather good.

If you know me, you'll likely know I have a lady friend, and if you know her you'll likely know he has quite a love for Folk music.

If you are any good at joining up the dots, you'll now realise I took her to this last night as a sort of 'thank you' for all the crazy hours she put's in selling people drugs.

No she's not a dealer; well she is, but she works at a pharmacy.

First up we had Billie Marten. She was like a hybrid of Laura Marling, Bon Iver and a farmer's daughter (though I assume all folk artists are born out of agriculture). She was in a green-demin dungaree skirt combo and sang like she was trying her best to not wake her grandma; this is not a criticism.

Her soft spoken words and poetic rhymes made this short set very enticing. She graced the stage with a large smile, a lovely sense of politeness and an armoury of acoustic loveliness.
After a couple of tracks, she covered a Royal Blood track, of which naming isn't all that important; but it is important that I tell you it was brilliant—just like the rest of her songs.

It's a shame only a third of the crowd came to see her, because of a few reasons: She was brilliant and we got free badges.

Second up was Jake Isaac; a 6"4, smiley, handsome sort of bloke—the heartthrob of the entire female audience and this was only made worse that he played a whole song within the crowd. This isn't a problem, he's just a hell of a lot more charming than me and that's a problem.

Not only was he possibly the most handsome man to grace The Brickyard (excluding Andy of course) but he brought along the worlds happiest drummer by the name of Fez. This man could not stop smiling if he tried. It was like watching the sun from the Teletubies smash out a heavy drum fill, except male and real.

Anyway, his set was pretty brilliant and very much upbeat; so just like Billie Marten, well worth coming a little earlier to hear.

Last up; we have the main attraction, the lion in cage and the grand finale – Lucy Rose. She played the hits, she played new songs and she played soulful quiet songs. It was a rollercoaster of emotion and it was really rather brilliant.

Even though her hits have saturated the market, and are all over the radio; they were performed in such passion and with such empathy that they felt like they were played from the heart strings of her beautiful acoustic guitar.

Overall, I have little more I can say. Both myself and Gaby really enjoyed the gig. It was fantastic and it was a very nice way to escape all the stress I've got pushing on my Third Year shoulders right now.

p.s. apologies for the lack of weekly posts recently, I'm working on two long deadline projects so it's hard to post up any work from them because they are all really rather rough at the moment.

New blog name, Same old me

For those of you who don't know me, I'm Vincent—for those of you who do know me, I'm still Vincent.

Nothing exciting here, just I've changed the name of my blog; and I have for a few reasons.

• I don't like to take myself too seriously
• The other one was boring me
• And I bet you to it sucker!

Stay tuned for more posters, gibberish, writings and general design; and if not…

Remember kids: Vincent Walden Sucks

I walked the line

Vincent, we need a poster. I've been told you are the man to come to and we need it quickly.

That's what I was confronted with yesterday; I feel that my A3 notoritity has become somewhat of a signifier for me. I think a name change by depoll might be best option: Vincent Poster Walden

Anyway, an illustrator by the name of Oliver East set a brief for the studios illustrators, with the outcome being exhibited along side his in the gallery space. The exhibition was under the name "Walking the Line" as the brief was that you had to take a journey, only take notes and then recreate the experience you had in a comic style format.

So of course, after weeks of knowing that this would be the outcome, days before they realised they needed a poster; bloody tutors ey'
I'm complaining a lot but I actually really rather liked the project and it's strictly short time scale—it was somewhat of a challenge and I'm always up for a challenge.

You may be looking at it thinking "Why the hell is that text so strange?" well he has strange text in his comics when he is amplifying sounds and noises; and I thought that it looks pretty darn strange (and brilliant)

Overall, really rather happy with the poster and I think it looks rather brilliant in it's place on the wall. 

As a sneak peak; I have a little more for you.

Here I have the first version of the poster I did; the incorrect one by my favourite one. I made the poster exclusively about Oliver East as I was unaware that the other students would be displaying in the exhibition also.

There is little justification for me feeling that this is better than the other poster other than I like the heading text better. I would even argue the other one has a stronger layout, is more legible and works better as a poster; just the rebelling angsty designers in me just wants to go with the inappropriate 'pretty' poster.

Without the 's', it's just a mint

No really, it's the most simple branding idea on earth.

For our first project of the year, we were given the guidelines to use and abuse the resource pack supplied by Smint, to create a poster in which to enter their poster competition.
That may sound a little crap, and I thought it was pretty crap to start with also; but the fact it was so limited and un-established (when compared to Coca-Cola who often run this same campaign) that the constraint of it all added to the fun of it.

I'll say, I think little of their branding guidelines and campaign title; but they gave me a lot of weights of Avant Garde for free, so I'm just going to say thank you on that font.

Their competition ran under the mast head of their new 'ingenious' slogan Fresh To Impress, which is a pretty poor excuse for a slogan. When was the last time you were out on a hot date, and they go "Oh, you're breathe is very fresh" and you've replied with "Oh yeah, thanks. I got a smint from the machine next to the condoms in the bathroom".

Anyhow, I had two strong ideas for this project. One had classic painting and the other I removed the 's'—and there was me slagging of Smint's mediocre ideas.

So as you'll of see, above is my idea with the classic paintings. It works on the idea of photoshopping the 'iconic' Smint box into the paintings; with the tag line, reinforcing that the main characters of the painting are impressive because they are fresh rather than the subject matter of the original artwork.

This may be a big blasphemous middle finger to my love for oil paintings and the early works of Picasso but my goodness, look how happy Jesus' disciples are to see that mint box in the age of standardised halitosis.

I really liked this idea but within the conjunction of possible copyright issues and people actually fully understanding the premise of the poster; I went back to the drawing board, stood there wondering why I still have a full scale drawing board in the 21st century and started again.

After a bit of thinking & some tutor intervention, I came to coin the term "Without the 's', It's just a mint." and that's where the fun (and pain) began. I got a dictionary and hired the help of many immature students as we embarked on trying to think of any word that would mean something else if the 's' was removed.

Above are some that I rather liked, but below is the one that made me giggle my toilet humour right through my rib cage and straight onto the page.

So this, is the polished poster that made it to the final cut. I would have done something else but I had to follow the branding guidelines and other such rules; either way I still rather like it.

Now it's in the competition and I was wondering if you could vote on it? I could win £500, and I will happily buy you a pint for your effort.

You can vote every 15 hours (I think) and the cash would really make my overdraft feel a lot better than it currently does. Thank you please.

https://www.facebook.com/SmintUK?sk=app_451684954848385&brandloc=DISABLE&app_data=from-g25g1l%2Cchk-561946cfe8663

I've heard from people that there are problems accessing it, so if you are on mobile or can't access via that link; go on this one and click "Gallery". THANKS!
http://woobox.com/nhb4de/g25g1l

Forget Machete Kills, Colt 45 Kills

Points to the first person to correctly guess who that man is.

Colt 45 are touring in January; and like any band, they need a poster. So here we are, a moustache man, a strict colour pallet and a few dates.

I'll be honest, I really like this poster; and I hope you will too. Fin.

Colt 45 vs. Germany

Three northern lads went to Germany, got lots of free beer and filmed it all—from that I edited it into one coherent sequence of punk and elevator music.

It was hard to edit due to University work, but it was pretty darn fun looking through all the footage and making their terrible divings sync to the backing track.
I've got to say, the background track is fantastic, the lads were rather easy to interview and well although there are a few too many 'erms' and middle fingers, I kind of love it!

Uma Thursdays: Make William Extinct

THURSDAY, THURSDAY, THURSSSSDAAYYYYY!

A few good buddies and a string of fine artsy farties have clubbed together to start running their own little space for arty and strange things alike—they run by the name of The Fisher Street Collective, and operate out of Carlisle's strangest looking building.

Like anything run by artists, it's full of random crap and great, expressive things; one of those is a film club focusing on particular actors that have made an impact on cinema, and what you just saw is a product of that film club. The club will change through different actors and directors, exposing their best, worst and most notorious films.

For this run of films, it's focusing on the widely eye-spread woman by the name of Uma Thurman; and I rather kindly was asked to do the poster for it. Like any rational person, you think, "well this poster clearly needs to have her eyes spread right across both sides", so that's exactly what I did.

Though there is little I can say that you can't already see; with these posters I'm trying to have a strong typographic feel to them, using a mixture of production techniques and effects to make a poster that has mainly just titles and dates, but can grab you a little more than that terrible 'factory' poster you'd see at a traditional cinema.

Also, Morgan is there because he can be there, alright? MOTHERF*CKER!

Dahmer: possibly the strangest poster to date

If there was ever a rule at the Brampton Road campus, it was that drama posters look terrible – so I wanted to break that, and make it really rather red.

Drama students are as drama students do; they act all the time, shout, scream and make performances about serial killers. Yeah, that seems a little out of place.

Jeffery Dahmer was a serial killer—he was also a paedophile, a rapist and a cannibal. There is little to be celebrated in his life other than the fact it came to and end. Though, this is my view, I feel it is not supported by the dreaded drama students of Carlisle.

I was approached by an old housemate to make them a poster for this performance based around the events of this mans life. I know nothing of their play, and I know little of what it contains but anything that is based around a person with such notoriety as he would surely have to be more serious that the EDL in a Halal abattoir, armed with christianity & bigotry pamphlets.

With a little research it seems only fair to have a strict 'blood' colour palette and a selection of dismembered bodies. I was going to have 17 different body parts on the poster, to reflect the amount of people that died at the hands of this man; but as you'd imagine it looked like a crowded prop department after reaching around 12.

With a mixture of blood, body parts, terrible hand writting and the disgusting 'Stanwix Theatre' logo I feel that this poster is quite a success. Two pats on the back for Mr. Walden. 

Vincent Walden's not-so-professional reviews: Sleaford Mods

It's that time again children, review time, with the worlds most under-trained internet reviewer.

Thursday evening I trotted on down to The Brickyard at around 7pm to go see those angry English men otherwise known as the Sleaford Mods. But as gigs always go, it was not just those guys I saw; we also had Mark Wynn and Steve Ignorant (+ band) to entertain us.

So, in the interest of chronological order and making this review remotely readable—I'll start with Mark Wynn.

Explaining Mark Wynn is like trying to teach the rules of gravity to a dog armed only with a box of packaging foam and a Spanish-to-English phrase book; everything you say will make no feckin' sense.

At 7:30 prompt this scrawny man entered the stage with a small punnet of grapes, a mix-board and a domestic egg timer. He walked straight up to the microphone, spoke some very unrecognisable words then hit play on his mixer to start this funky tune of which he began bopping and reading poetry to.
If it wasn't already weird enough, his set just became more and more strange with the introduction of a range of marker pens, a tiara and incessant rambling of grapes and pineapple juice.

His poetry was a mixture of talking about his Grandma with the flu, mixed feeling of his sexuality at a young age and embodying a shouty woman who insisted on knowing "You pissed mate?" in an ear bleeding manor. And if his poetry and props weren't strange enough – his stage presence was like watching someone who is possessed by a devil in a mid LSD trip, shirtless, confused, scoffing a range of fruits.

After the whirlwind that was Mark Wynn we then necked back our drinks, and waited patiently for Steven Ignorant to grace the stage. After a few minutes, he walked right on, cued his band and started a merciless rant at modern British men and the state of our country; and it was fantastic.
His set was brilliant, his poetry was better and the best part was that his name has almost zero reflection on the person he really is.

Ignorant is the word furthest away from what I would describe the former member of Crass.
He was full of heart and heartbroken, he was angry and he was caring; the whole set was like being told the hardships of life by a werther's original in an leather jacket and a pork pie hat.
He was more brilliant than he was strange so I won't elaborate as I did, just employ a digital round-of-applause for this good man.

Photo courtesy of Chelsea Cannar

After both really enjoyable sets, the majority of the male audience went for that 'just before the main act piss and pint' then we and all pushed to the front, waiting patiently to be shouted at by an angry man with a microphone. And we were not disappointed.

The set was once again, brilliant, they covered tracks from the new album, all the hits and made sure they could slur the worlds "CURRLIYLE" after every couple of songs. The lead singer (or poet) refused to face the crowd and threw his headmaster like frown towards the speakers, and it's quite good that he did. I don't think it affected the performance at all, and I assume full eye contact with said man would likely have the effect it would if you met Medusa in greek mythology.

It was relentless. There was never more than 5 seconds between songs, and never more than a minute between each curse word. I liked Sleaford Mods before this, and now I would put them right up in the top ten, because my goodness, my goodness.

Photo courtesy of Chelsea Cannar

I can't say much else other than I really enjoyed it, because I've reached my quota of "brilliant"'s, used every single analogy I could think of. A great, yet confusing gig all round.

Thank you for coming to 'Currliyle' you angry, angry angry men!

Stick your money where your XY chromosome is!

The gender divide in the design industry and why the money isn’t the main issue.

If you work in the creative industry or have ever heard of it, you’d know that we are mostly all ‘bloody lefties’ and would likely all vote for equal rights on any given chance; yet there is still a large gender divide in the industry, and it seems very bizarre to me. So, although I want to ask why, this is not what I’m going to do.

I’m not asking why, because as far as I can tell that’s done very little to change the problem, so I’m going to get mildly angry on an internet blog and tell you all what I think about it (obviously).
The problem that is the gender divide is most obvious in the industry when you look at pay, and although it’s the big pointing arrow to the divide—I don’t think it’s the main issue.

I am a male by definition, and that fact entitles me to more than it really should. Because I have a deformed chromosome and a penis between my legs; I am due to earn roughly 18% more than a female counterpart in the creative industry. And Christ, that is a large amount and would be the difference between paying rent and living comfortably in anyone’s pockets – so with the only real difference between us being the accolade of being able to piss standing up, it does not seem totally fair to me.

Now, although the pay gap is rather large and I certainly wouldn’t want to be paid less than anyone else – through my eyes it’s not the real problem here, it’s more the large blinking light; furiously flashing at the face of modern day sexism.

It’s not like the money wouldn’t help and I’m sitting on my high horse saying it’s not the problem when it’ll never effect me; but please hear me out. The problem lies in the sexism that surrounds this issue, rather than the pennies that are missing.

The difference in pay is because bosses and directors alike know they can they can do so, and why do they know they can, because they still have the belief that women are not equal to men.
If they were equal, they’d be paid the same, but in all those directors eyes all a creative woman is—is 18% percent less of a man, than a man.

The money isn’t an issue when you’ve got the fact that people are being seen less that other due to their gender. It’s not even like women haven’t achieved great things in design and their pay gap is represented in the ignorance of some peoples set in perceptions. Some of the biggest designers in the world are female, and punch way above the directors that are setting the unfair figures on the pay cheques. There are many influential females in the design world and I’d like to point out some to prove my point.

Firstly, in our current design sphere, we have Jessica Walsh of Sagmeister & Walsh. Not only is she a partner in one of America’s infamous agencies, but she is also one of the most famous designers on social media with her bright palettes and lovely hand text. We also have Paula Scher, another hugely influential designer, who carves her path in the industry with the world-renowned agency Pentagram; of whom only employ the elite of the elite. So both these ladies are clearly not any less of designers than any man on this planet.

 Even though I’ve only named two designers, I think their stance alone should emphasise my point. These two women will likely achieve more than I ever will, and their influence will likely go on to inspire generations of designers that aren’t even born yet—but if I were in a similar position I’d still be worth 18% more than either of them. That is fucking bullshit.

The fact that women are paid less is not the issue, the issue is that they are paid less because they are seen as less. At the end of the day, gender is nothing more than a social construct, so it gives even less of reason to these differences in pay. Sort yourselves out design industry, I thought you were better than this.

What do you get when you cross bear arms with a colt 45?

You get cross-country punk (of course)

It's a well known fact that I make pretty things for Colt 45; from music videos, to logos, to posters but what hasn't been well known until this morning is that they are touring in December. Touring around Scotland and England, with a soul of punk, northern-ness and the poster I've just made for them.

I got an email saying, we're doing a tour, we need a poster in a week and we're touring with Bear Arms, so what else could I say? Well, I just said yes and sketched everything that flashed into my head from the moment of being informed of the tour.

I thought, what have we got here? Two bands that share named with items that exist. Items that when singled out look quite strange. A lone handgun and the upper body of a forest wandering beast; that'd look brilliant on a poster.

So here we are, a few days later with a bright orange crest for their tour – filled with the finished imagery and fonts. I created the poster mostly from one of the ideas that struck me right at the moment of reading the email, but the white outlines behind the image came when I mistakenly made the background that bright orange that it is.

It seems rather instinctive of me to do so, and I think it's come from my cliché love of Penguin Book sleeves, but I didn't even question it at the time; it just looked right.
I'm rather chuffed with this, as it's pretty minimal and not too similar to most the posters that I've made recently or making at the moment, and that little change adds a whole lot of fresh air to my idea buzzing head—which is always a good thing.

thebrickyardonline, is now running a newer; sexier model.

If you know me, and have had any contact with me recently—you'll likely know that for the past month I've been trying something completely outside of my comfort zone, and if you don't know me, but just read this, you'll now also know.

It's nothing exciting like BDSM or learning spanish, No I have conquered the mean feat of creating a full responsive wordpress website! Yes, quiver in fear my child!

It's quite a big step, creating a big commercial website; for the boy that has barely learnt how to build his own simple HTML site. I encountered the lovely mess that is .php, had a load of helpers along the way and I'm still fixing bugs here and there.

I have never really done anything as stressful and as fun as trying to make a wordpress website, and changing all those little snippets of code just to make some text that slight bit more colourful.
I would like to take my hat off to James Sessford and Robbie Scott for their helping hands & patience; and I'm sure I'll likely call on you soon to help me fix something or other.

I can't take all the credit for creation, as it's based on a theme, and has many a plugins but it's like a company that build cars. Technically they built the car, even if the engine and gear box were bought in and tampered with to work for their need.

I've got to say though, I am pretty proud with the fact that I have managed to do what I have, without any prior knowledge of .php or Wordpress websites. I have helped make the website automated and far more simple for them to make gig listings, archives and modifications.

At the end of the day, I'm pretty proud and I think you should check it out.

www.thebrickyardonline.com

Corbyn approves, or disapproves; I can't tell.

You can't trust a Dave

First we had David Cameron and now Dave McCabe – you can't trust a Dave.

Well, maybe you can trust a Dave, I know a few nice ones – but I'm a little scorned. You see, I made this poster, and it was pretty darn fun to make, I really like it and well it'll never see the light of day.
Dave McCabe has cancelled his tour, thus rendering this poster useless and that makes me sad.

I was actually rather looking forward to seeing him, because he sounded pretty cool but there just mustn't of been the demand, and now he's not coming up north (as they say).

I made the (almost) the whole poster with just the pen tool, it's really a long ass way of doing things but it's really rather fun also. But this is going straight into the vault as it's not really needed, so feast your eyes young one; I won't be needing it.

Motown is 2 spook 4 u

Blood splatted, decapitated and pink; everything you want from a poster.

Only hours ago I finished off adding the blood splatters, and moved James Brown's head into place, to complete the Motown and Soul poster for this years Halloween Special. It has the works, the mark of the anti-christ, open wounds, cut skin and blood squirting—what more can want?

Getting truly sick of impatient fairground rides

You know what really grinds my gears? When that Ferris Wheel just won't be decent and patient. Bloody fairground equipment eh.

I've been working me butt off, getting the second cover by the lads of Colt 45 ready. The deadline was it had to be ready before they left for Germany – of which they are touring round right now – and I managed to do it! Well, just. Two days early, just for peace of mind.

There is little I can say about it that you can't see, but they said they wanted it to display the ruddy good summer they've had, and wanted the edit to follow the upbeat, bright and vintage tone that the original song holds. So with colour filters, films burns and a hell of a lot a childlike smiles, I think I managed to do it.

You may also notice some clips are at a slightly higher bitrate than the others, that's because I shot them myself when I was their AAA super photographer, come roadie, come reviewer. Enjoy!

Learning lettering, and tattoo aftercare advice

Well it'd be fair to say my lettering still has a way to go, but I'm getting there—slowly.

On my progress of trying to teach myself lettering, I'm doing pretty much everything I can to get some real world practice; and this time came in the call of some chalkboards for our friendly local tattoo studio.

The lovely duo of Matty and Zoe run The Shadow Gallery tattoo studio, which is the go-to studio that myself and the lady friend visit to get our fix of filling our skin with every colour under the sun. They  wanted two chalkboards, looking similar, holding the same information to be displayed inside the shop; and well in return for some tattoo hours, I couldn't see any reason not to accept their offer.

I'm pretty happy with the boards, and although they are a little rough in places (I'll explain soon) they suit exactly what Matty and Zoe wanted. Not to mention the strict colour palette of Red, Black and White hit adorns the rest of the shop like some kind of national flag.

If you have a closer look at either of the boards, I think you'll see a good amount of consistency but a few small flaws here and there keep staring at me. I know I really need to get my "R"s sorted because it's mostly what is letting both of these down, and I know that I'm being a little nit-picky about it, but I put all my effort into every bit of lettering I do, and those small errors bug me no end.

Anyway, I'm going to keep trucking and I'll get those "R"s sorted one day!