Octoblog

With our wiggly tentacles in many places, it’s interesting to reflect on what’s happening on the open seas of creativity. Check out our blog for musings and observations on design related matters and connect with us in the comments.

The punishment of luxury

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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Artistic v Autistic

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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You get what you pay for

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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All Aboard!

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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Well hung

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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Telling tales

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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Circular thinking

Back in June this year, the International Eurovision Song Contest fan club - Organisation Générale des Amateurs de l'Eurovision put out a call to graphic designers across the world. Quite rightly they had identified that their ageing logo was no longer fit for purpose and something more dynamic and flexible was required....

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Homologo

For the last few years now I've been delivering an annual lecture, just like The Queen. Mine are a bit more down to earth though and I don't get as many people eager to hear my pronouncements. Nevertheless, it has become something of an annual routine and in my previous post I outlined a little of what I've been up to at Edinburgh University recently lecturing about design there....

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Demolition Man

This time three weeks ago, I was in Edinburgh speaking at a symposium devoted to critically exploring the influence, impact and legacy of Grace Jones as actor, model, musician, entertainer and icon. It was hosted by Edinburgh University's College of Art and was the second in an ongoing international series devoted to exploring the topic of ‘the iconic’, Grace Jones followed last year’s acclaimed Pet Shop Boys symposium where once again, academics and enthusiasts from across the world gathe...

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