From the eighties synths to the unpredictable peaks from the vocals, this album truly does keep me coming back for more.

There has been some great albums appear this year that I hold in high regard, whether it be Bombay Bicycle Club’s Flaws or my firm favourite, Foals‘ Total Live Forever. Everything Everything have stormed in with Man Alive and given some of the competition a bit of a shake up.

The album oozes confidence and I am going to have to jump at the chance of seeing them if they squeeze in an album tour later on this year.

Oh and before I forget, a quick note about the artwork. I read a review in NME which brought reference to the fox being a consistent theme and maybe its impish and playful nature is reflected in the music. Well I always find these sorts of comparisons interesting and I wonder how much of that was in the mind of the design team when coming up with the concept. Whether it was or wasn’t I can’t say but all I do know is I bloody love it!

I have had the urge recently to try and expand my portfolio beyond projects that I do on a day-to-day basis at work. I feel like I need to do this for many reasons, the main one being yearning for a new creative challenge and I feel the best way for this, is to enter as many competitions as I can.

I have started with the poster competition posted on Don’t Panic for the brief titled Virtual Reality.

With this poster I decided to do something quite abstract as my regular work doesn’t often afford me the opportunity to explore that style of work. All I have gone with the idea that the concept of virtual reality is one that strives to recreate a world that already exists. The better the virtual reality experience, the more normal it should be.

Whether this artwork achieves a loose idea of that to the outside or not, I enjoyed creating this and am pleased with the simple imagery that I have ended up with. Let’s see if I get any votes…

In the last few months there have been some great photos circulating various sites of a series called Le Mans Classic 2010, taken by Laurent Nivalle. They demonstrate great composition with some really nice colour alteration that give the series a really nice vintage feel.

That said, I have a huge interest in urban photography with a particular soft spot for New York, having taken my own pictures back in 2008, which is why I really love the set that Nivalle has taken employing his own fantastic style. Well worth checking out over here.

Very cool illustrations showing the anatomy of some electronic equipment and accessories on deviantART by Madspeiterson. I hope to see more soon!

There are a lot of examples of posters around at the moment that take existing classic films and TV shows, and re-imagine them by focussing on an alternative context. Some are successful and some are not.

When I think of a couple of favourite ones I’ve seen recently, they seem to have the same originator. UK born illustrator/designer Olly Moss. Personal favourites to have been the ‘Films In Black and Red’ series, ‘The Evil Dead’ poster for Alamo Drafthouse and this new series for Rolling Roadshow.

I love the use of negative and positive space and the Saul Bass quality to some of the illustrations. For more great work head over to his site.

WTF is a project that showcases them as being a “laboratory of ideas”. It’s a charming project with a simple concept and just shows that the team in Argentina have a passion and interest in making their own fun side projects in conjunction with their every day work, which incidentally is also very nice.

Nice little project from Portuguese designer and illustrator André Meca. His page on the Behance Network is almost a narration of how he got to the final image. I have picked this for no other reason that liking the image. Nice colour scheme, interesting imagery, very nice all in all.

On a different note, looking at his website there are other equally as nice examples of his illustrations. Check it out here.

Posted as a work in progress, the project Art Walk Of LA is a rebranding project by Aldis Ozolins across four media types. In particular I think the calendar works really well and the screen grabs of the website also look nice. I look forward to seeing it in all its working glory whenever that may be.

There’s also some other interesting work on his site, Collapse in particular is very nice, so don’t dawdle, go and take it all in.

Kim Holtermand has done a great job with this set of images called Illuminated. The subtle blue and yellow colour tones really add a special element that helps create a contrast between the ambient unnatural light and the darkness of the night.

She also has a great portfolio on the Behance Network so go take a look.

]]> http://nib101.com/construct/2010/07/27/illuminated/feed/ 1 http://nib101.com/construct/2010/07/22/learning-curve/ http://nib101.com/construct/2010/07/22/learning-curve/#comments Thu, 22 Jul 2010 07:14:41 +0000 admin http://nib101.com/construct/?p=11 Well, these last few weeks have been a bit of a life lesson. Since my site got hacked by the completely pointless organisation, the Kurdish Digital Army, it has been a struggle getting my site back to working order. If there is one thing I will gain from this whole experience, it’s make sure your backup is complete.

I have lost valuable hours over this whole episode, and all just because one inconsiderate group of people thought that it would be fun to sabotage other people’s hard work.

On one hand I thank them for pointing out that my method of backing up had some serious flaws which had to be addressed, however this doesn’t excuse their patent disregard for other people’s hard work and their livelihood.

Fingers crossed for the future that karma will catch up with these guys. I however, will exercise one human trait that everyone can be proud of. Resilience.