Utility at Christmas

I received this lovely message from design store Utility today. I do like a good santa and this retro styled one made me smile, nice illustration! Check out their stores in Liverpool & London (near Kings Cross) or online here.

Grafica Design

Image © Grafica Design

Image © Grafica Design

Image © Grafica Design

Image © Grafica Design

Grafica is a communication consultancy based in Barcelona, their portfolio ranges from branding & identity to packaging and events material. I like their clean use of graphics & strong fonts to grab your attention.

Design Aerobics

I'm starting an on-line Graphic Design short course at the end of the week & I'm quite excited to find out what its all about. Designboom have been running Design Aerobics for a few years now, its an opportunity for anyone to pick up a new skill for a relatively small payment. This course covers all sorts of areas from Typography & Typeface to Letterpress to Branding to Pictogram's. The course is for work but I might share a few of the outcomes on here.

Game of Thrones

Image from Art of the Title

Image from Art of the Title

Image from Art of the Title

Image from Art of the Title

I was a bit of a couch potatoe over the weekend and watched the entire first series of Game of Thrones. I loved it and have become addicted to the second series. I thought I'd share with you the amazing title sequence, its a magical animation/render that tells the story of the different lands within the programme, with each new episode the map expands. If you like the sound of it why not watch it here, enjoy.

The Fox is Black

Logo from the website

The Fox is Black is a design led blog which covers everything from Graphic Design & Animation to Office Space, inspirational people and Product Design. Definately one for a god daily read.

Inky Advent

25 days

Day 4 

The talented Johanna Basford has created a beautiful digital advent calendar, which is available to view on her website. The calendar is a mixture of detailed inky drawings & QR tags. Simply find today's date and scan the QR tag (using a smart phone app) and wait for a little surprise. 

Girl Geeks

Earlier this week I attended a Girl Geek Dinner as part of the Leeds Digital Festival. I was a new comer to the event held at the Mint Hotel but it was an enjoyable evening (with great food). The 2 speakers - Kathryn Grace, Service Design at Everything Everywhere (Orange & T-Mobile) and Lizzie Sanderson, Web Services Manager, Leeds City Council - shared their knowledge of the digital industry, Lizzie was really funny describing the struggle between creative & IT, something most of us can relate with & Kathryn highlighted the bigger picture of the design world, describing the different touch points of any product / service.