Check out more of the same here.
Monday, 17 November 2008
Monday, 3 November 2008
Curly hair and Tashes.
The Liverpool Design Symposium 2008? Why the hell not!
Working on the edges of the design industry affords us the luxury of getting to occasionally speed away from the office a few hours early and hit up cool events like these, the last one being a talk by Adrian Shaughnessy in Newcastle organised by the Design Event bods.
I was hoping we could get across in time for a talk by a chap called Dalton Maag, a Massive typography geek who works in London selling fonts to people, but this talk was sold out, so looked like we were all about the Everything...
Universal Everything that is! The main talker of the event [as selected by D+AD President Garrick Hamm] was Matt Pyke of aforementioned agency..but i'm getting ahead of myself - first the beers!
We went across early to see if we could blag into any earlier talks and struck lucky with a short film showing a selection of this years D+AD winners followed by a Q+A session with one of the judges, but as this was a good 30 minutes away the boss treated myself + Msr. Parkinson to a sly shandy at a nearby public house - Doctor Duncan's! When in the'pool you could do a lot worse than drink here, 2 thumbs up from the Character Creative alco's.
The events were all being held in possibly the grandest room I've occupied in my life - the auditorium was circled with about twenty 8-foot statues of writhing women against pillars, the ceiling dominated by a fantastic chandelier and gold gilding across the entirety of the intricate hall decor.
After a quick introduction by one of the event organisers and D+AD judge Stuart Price [of the Manchester agency Thoughtful..pretty certain that was his name] we were away - D+AD 2008 Winners Showcase.
I remember when i was a kid my Mum telling me about an early date with my Dad where he took her to see All Creatures Great + Small in the cinema. She'd been a big fan of the books growing up, and found herself laughing at all of the funny scenes before they got funny for the sake of remembering them from the books..this was me! In particular, these three :
Touch - TBWA
Wind - Nordpol + Hamburg
Viral Train - DDB Oslo
From what I'd not seen before [sorry, another advert!] this was another cool one..kinda rips on Honda's classic Cog advert, but wtf, it works!
Effortless - WCRS
and if you don't smile uncontrollably at the end of this one, then i'm sorry, you're not human!!
Tan Hong Ming - Leo Burnett
The showing started a tad late, so we ducked out during the Q+A to ensure foods were got before Pykes headline act!
Pizza and Peroni later we were back in The Land That Economic Downturn Forgot aka gold-gilded grand hall, and after a brief intro we were being gently guided around Matt Pykes version of reality. Unassuming and modest, young designers could do a lot worse than take heed of his approach and attitude. Although the subject of ethics in design wasn't really touched upon, I got the strong impression that it's a very definite central tenant of his work.
In bringing us up-to-date with what he's got going on at the moment, we first of all went way back to his early college-level artistic endeavours of water-colours and non-Mac technical drawing. Though seemingly incidental in their inclusion, his early understandings of form in design were tied to these and as such it gave a nice insight into the origins of a Designer.
Cutting to the chase [wow, long blog or what?!], after education, some freelance work and an 8 year stint at Designers Republic in Sheffield [loved the story of how he got this job!] he now works from his home, or more accurately a "shed" at the bottom of his garden.
With incredible briefs secured, he then outsources to freelancers across the world to give light to his concepts.
OK, this is most likely over-simplifying his method, but that's the crux. Brilliant!
You've got a website project and an amazing idea for some crazy spiralling and morphing 3D jet of liquid that just Needs to be involved somehow, but you just don't have the rendering skillz. Well then, hire the best 3D guy you can find for the project and Lets Do This!
And that's how he rolls.
After a selection of projects Universal Everything have done in the past and a look at their ADHD-esque website we were treated to a first viewing of a music video he'd directed - directed from his shed in Sheffield via the wonder of the internets whilst the action played out in LA!
I told you that's how he rolls!
I could gush more, an amazingly simple concept for a digital arts festival featuring 20,000 unique creatures on postcards [Love Bytes], contorting the Olympics 2012 concept into something akin to cool [sorry, still traumatised by its initial introduction!], the wind-tunnel + colour explosion of an Audi viral, but think maybe i can cut it short here.
We left the place on a really inspired high and the drive back to Leeds was filled with excited debate between the 3 of us, dissecting each others thoughts and ideals on design practice and the industry.
From the tale-end that we caught, an amazing event, though a shame we weren't able to check out the earlier happenings.
We'll most definitely be back next year, which is already being hyped to shadow this years, and you never know, Character may just throw our hat into the Events arena again after the fun we had with Stopping The Buck - watch this space!
Working on the edges of the design industry affords us the luxury of getting to occasionally speed away from the office a few hours early and hit up cool events like these, the last one being a talk by Adrian Shaughnessy in Newcastle organised by the Design Event bods.
I was hoping we could get across in time for a talk by a chap called Dalton Maag, a Massive typography geek who works in London selling fonts to people, but this talk was sold out, so looked like we were all about the Everything...
Universal Everything that is! The main talker of the event [as selected by D+AD President Garrick Hamm] was Matt Pyke of aforementioned agency..but i'm getting ahead of myself - first the beers!
We went across early to see if we could blag into any earlier talks and struck lucky with a short film showing a selection of this years D+AD winners followed by a Q+A session with one of the judges, but as this was a good 30 minutes away the boss treated myself + Msr. Parkinson to a sly shandy at a nearby public house - Doctor Duncan's! When in the'pool you could do a lot worse than drink here, 2 thumbs up from the Character Creative alco's.
The events were all being held in possibly the grandest room I've occupied in my life - the auditorium was circled with about twenty 8-foot statues of writhing women against pillars, the ceiling dominated by a fantastic chandelier and gold gilding across the entirety of the intricate hall decor.
After a quick introduction by one of the event organisers and D+AD judge Stuart Price [of the Manchester agency Thoughtful..pretty certain that was his name] we were away - D+AD 2008 Winners Showcase.
I remember when i was a kid my Mum telling me about an early date with my Dad where he took her to see All Creatures Great + Small in the cinema. She'd been a big fan of the books growing up, and found herself laughing at all of the funny scenes before they got funny for the sake of remembering them from the books..this was me! In particular, these three :
Touch - TBWA
Wind - Nordpol + Hamburg
Viral Train - DDB Oslo
From what I'd not seen before [sorry, another advert!] this was another cool one..kinda rips on Honda's classic Cog advert, but wtf, it works!
Effortless - WCRS
and if you don't smile uncontrollably at the end of this one, then i'm sorry, you're not human!!
Tan Hong Ming - Leo Burnett
The showing started a tad late, so we ducked out during the Q+A to ensure foods were got before Pykes headline act!
Pizza and Peroni later we were back in The Land That Economic Downturn Forgot aka gold-gilded grand hall, and after a brief intro we were being gently guided around Matt Pykes version of reality. Unassuming and modest, young designers could do a lot worse than take heed of his approach and attitude. Although the subject of ethics in design wasn't really touched upon, I got the strong impression that it's a very definite central tenant of his work.
In bringing us up-to-date with what he's got going on at the moment, we first of all went way back to his early college-level artistic endeavours of water-colours and non-Mac technical drawing. Though seemingly incidental in their inclusion, his early understandings of form in design were tied to these and as such it gave a nice insight into the origins of a Designer.
Cutting to the chase [wow, long blog or what?!], after education, some freelance work and an 8 year stint at Designers Republic in Sheffield [loved the story of how he got this job!] he now works from his home, or more accurately a "shed" at the bottom of his garden.
With incredible briefs secured, he then outsources to freelancers across the world to give light to his concepts.
OK, this is most likely over-simplifying his method, but that's the crux. Brilliant!
You've got a website project and an amazing idea for some crazy spiralling and morphing 3D jet of liquid that just Needs to be involved somehow, but you just don't have the rendering skillz. Well then, hire the best 3D guy you can find for the project and Lets Do This!
And that's how he rolls.
After a selection of projects Universal Everything have done in the past and a look at their ADHD-esque website we were treated to a first viewing of a music video he'd directed - directed from his shed in Sheffield via the wonder of the internets whilst the action played out in LA!
I told you that's how he rolls!
I could gush more, an amazingly simple concept for a digital arts festival featuring 20,000 unique creatures on postcards [Love Bytes], contorting the Olympics 2012 concept into something akin to cool [sorry, still traumatised by its initial introduction!], the wind-tunnel + colour explosion of an Audi viral, but think maybe i can cut it short here.
We left the place on a really inspired high and the drive back to Leeds was filled with excited debate between the 3 of us, dissecting each others thoughts and ideals on design practice and the industry.
From the tale-end that we caught, an amazing event, though a shame we weren't able to check out the earlier happenings.
We'll most definitely be back next year, which is already being hyped to shadow this years, and you never know, Character may just throw our hat into the Events arena again after the fun we had with Stopping The Buck - watch this space!
Friday, 11 April 2008
Julie's first blog entry...
Hi there! To you big fans of great design let me introduce myself: my name is Julie! I'm the frog on the Character's board with Captain Darren and his skipper Steve for three months. Only three days that I arrived and come on I already swear in French handling my PR job! But it is actually only a way to express how much I'm glad to work for and with Character Creative.
For sure get into a team with passionate people by their job such as Darren and Steve, change your way of going to work every morning… which is pretty cool!
Tuesday, 8 April 2008
Steve's first blog entry...
Only a day into my Character experience and we’ve had an office move, enough networking issues to get a geek light-headed, paper-quality debates, endured an electricity supplier cold-call assault and I’ve already been left in control of this mighty vessel whilst Captain Scotland went on a supplies skirmish.
It seems the administrative necessities of the good ship Character were merely a rouse to tempt me aboard, and now we’ve set sail I’ve found a whole host of new and exciting possible projects for me to get my teeth into…more on that later I’d imagine, but for now I’m more than busy whipping the company into shape, administratively speaking.
SteveThursday, 27 March 2008
Plain English web thingies
For those of us that are still confused by such things as, RSS, wiki’s, social bookmarking, blogs etc I’ve just found a great video blog series that explains all of them and more in plain English (albeit in an american accent!).
Check them out here: http://www.commoncraft.com/shows/plainenglish
Darren
Check them out here: http://www.commoncraft.com
Darren
Character's new office
This week saw Character Creative take a brave step out of my (Darren) back bedroom into a fully blown office right bang in the centre of the North’s most exciting city, Leeds!
The move had been a long time in coming but now it’s here we’re really pleased with the space and after a Easter weekend filled with flat pack fun we’ve got the place looking half decent too.
We’re still after a few things to put up on walls etc so all you illustrators and designers out there with pieces for sale (or free donations to give away!) give ME (Darren) a yell and let’s see if we can get the place looking even better.
There are a few pics up on our profile and for those that are in the area, pop in a see us sometime.
Darren
The move had been a long time in coming but now it’s here we’re really pleased with the space and after a Easter weekend filled with flat pack fun we’ve got the place looking half decent too.
We’re still after a few things to put up on walls etc so all you illustrators and designers out there with pieces for sale (or free donations to give away!) give ME (Darren) a yell and let’s see if we can get the place looking even better.
There are a few pics up on our profile and for those that are in the area, pop in a see us sometime.
Darren
Monday, 4 February 2008
New website
After a sleepless weekend we've managed to give our site a much needed facelift.
Using a programme call Inexhibit we think we've created a great space so get yourselves over there and tell us what you think.
www.charactercreative.co.uk
Using a programme call Inexhibit we think we've created a great space so get yourselves over there and tell us what you think.
www.charactercreative.co.uk
Tuesday, 8 January 2008
One year and counting
As 2008 arrives I thought I'd take to opportunity to wish you all a very happy New Year and wax lyrical about some of Character's acheivments in 2007.
After a year of highs and lows we're still here to tell the tale and whats more we have ourselves an enviable list clients, candiates and of course MySpace friends!
We've worked with world famous design house like, Attik and Elmwood as well smaller outfits like my mate Al at Obsessive Productions!
We're relishing what might happen in 2008 and plans are afoot for our first office move and the hiring of extra staff.
Keep your eyes peeled on the blog and as alway if you think we might be able to help you out drop us a line or give us a call anytime.
Speak to you soon.
Darren
After a year of highs and lows we're still here to tell the tale and whats more we have ourselves an enviable list clients, candiates and of course MySpace friends!
We've worked with world famous design house like, Attik and Elmwood as well smaller outfits like my mate Al at Obsessive Productions!
We're relishing what might happen in 2008 and plans are afoot for our first office move and the hiring of extra staff.
Keep your eyes peeled on the blog and as alway if you think we might be able to help you out drop us a line or give us a call anytime.
Speak to you soon.
Darren
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