Octoblog

2020 hasn’t been quite the happy new year that we all wished each other just three months ago, has it? With floods verging on biblical, the realisation that Brexit is a sad reality and now a public health crisis to contend with, can things get any worse? Sadly I fear they can. Back in the eighties when I was designing …...

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• softoctopus
• March 23, 2020

It’s great being busy and thankfully I nearly always am. This is why it’s taken me so long to find time to get my own house in order. But I’ve now got around to assembling the new office furniture that’s been in the corner of my studio since last Autumn and more importantly I’ve updated my ancient website. Cue fanfare! …...

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• softoctopus
• February 25, 2020

I've been a fan of Keith Haring's work since I was a design student in the 1980s. Pre-internet, it wasn't easy keeping up with art trends, particularly those outside the UK. I came across his work in The Face magazine which was something of a style bible - the art and fashion Ying to the Yang of Smash Hits magazine's pop and frippery....

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• October 1, 2019

I like it when my joint worlds of art, design and music collide. It's a collision of the nicest kind... Last year, one of my favourite bands, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD) released a new album. They've been at it now since the late seventies and The Punishment of Luxury is their 13th studio album. The album's title was inspired by a painting that I'm familiar with from my many recreational and business-related visits to Liverpool's Walker Art Gallery....

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• May 25, 2018

In my many years as a graphic designer, I've worked on materials for an incredibly diverse audience. Whilst it is the function of design to make things look good, it's really as much about function as it is form. We've all come across documents that have evidently been written by a corporate committee of people, seemingly from a planet that speaks its own rarefied dialect. One that ticks boxes of corporate accountability, one that can write something that everyone approves of, and one that soun...

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• April 10, 2018

The word 'Design' understandably crops up quite a lot in my social media posts and clever algorithms ensure that I see advertisements catering to my specific interests. Or that's the theory anyway... Technology really is a wonderful thing and I am as geeky as they come - I even worked at Apple for a while so that I could get up close to all the shiny goodness that makes life easier. Not everything can be aided by technology yet though, and creative imagination is a prime example....

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• November 17, 2017

It's Eurovision season and this year's host broadcaster, RTP in Portugal has today revealed the slogan and theme artwork for 2018. Portugal as a country has always connected Europe to the rest of the world through the ocean, and 500 years ago Lisbon was the centre of many of the world’s most important sea routes. Today, Lisbon is using the ocean’s connectivity as inspiration with the slogan - All Aboard! inviting the international community to come together for this year’s competition....

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• November 7, 2017

Tomorrow, the largest format article I've ever had my design work printed on to will be hung outside one of my city's loveliest buildings. Lubaina Himid's Meticulous Observations and Naming the Money exhibition is on now at Liverpool's Walker Art Gallery until 18 March 2018 and my hard to miss hangings inside and outside will welcome people into the building. ...

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• October 29, 2017

Last week, the Tales from the city exhibition opened at the Museum of Liverpool. I first became aware of this exhibition about 18 months ago through working on other installations at this wonderful location. The curation team there were keen to gather stories, artefacts and the personal possessions of LGBT folk from across the city to tell stories rarely told....

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• October 28, 2017