Alison Carmichael

Chances are if you've seen some nice hand-lettered typography in an advert recently, it's come from the pen of Alison Carmichael. A prolific and varied portfolio. You can read an interview with her in the latest issue of Creative Review, which is all about typography!

New crafting room

I had a productive weekend - the weather was far too unpredictable to bother venturing too far from home, so I finally got around to sorting out our spare bedroom.. into a craft room!

I'm so happy to have a nice big desk and lots of boxes and organisers. It'll hopefully inspire me to do some more drawing and get my Etsy shop back online soon.

Kitty porn

Sorry, this is just a post of pure unadulterated gratuitous kitty love.



We're looking for a cat at the moment so I'm going completely gooey over videos like this. I hope my cat's as hilarious as Maru!

Moody Motorcycle

This made my morning. Lovely tune by Human Highway, lovely art-deco inspired 'regular' video..



..and delightfully fun interactive video too!



Check it all out at moodymotorcycle.com.

via drawn

Graphics degree show Auction

The graphics graduates at UCA Farnham have a genius fundraising idea going on: they've 'begged, borrowed or stolen' limited edition pieces from artists and designers and are going to auction them off to raise money for their degree show. With the likes of Rob Ryan and Jonathan Barnbrook included, that may well include a bit of my pocket money. Check out all the lots here and get ready to bid in 3 days' time.

via CR Blog

Japanese design - Studio Anny's Ukiyo-E

Japan's position in the design industry seems a bit confused at the moment. They seem to favour Flash and motion-heavy sites - probably because their broadband is ridiculously fast compared to most of the rest of the world - but the quality of the output can be patchy, especially when played back through frustratingly slow Western Internet connections.

Some designers and videographers are cranking out some lovely pieces, however. I particularly like when contemporary artists reference traditional Japanese art in their work, such as this delightful animated short from Studio Anny called Ukiyo-e (the name for Japanese woodblock art).



Watch the film in HD here, and check out Anny's (typically flash and motion-heavy) site here. There's also an interesting interview with the director on motionographer.

If you want to see more Japanese web design, and have the connection speed to allow it, check out Straightline bookmark.

Paper Cinema Props

The Paper Cinema was lovely indeed - despite me being slightly silly and not realising it was a live show until about 3/4 of the way through! Above are a couple of photos of the props used in the show. As you can see, it's based on dreams so is a surreal mix of creepy characters, London buses and mystical beasts. It's definitely worth seeing but hurry because tomorrow is the final night.

Paper Cinema

It's the East London festival this weekend, which celebrates the rich arts, fashion and food culture of the East of London. There's lots of cool sounding events but I'm definitely not going to miss the Paper Cinema, created by a fellow ex-Bournemouth-ite Nic Rawling. They're created a brand new piece for the festival, but here's an older project. I love the Victoriana-style graphics mixed with modern electonic music.

David Bray

We happened to be in Shoreditch at the weekend, so popped into the Stolen Space gallery to check out the current show of work by artist/illustrator David Bray. He creates intricate pencil and ink drawings of doe-eyed girls with a lovely sense of colour, given texture by found objects like playing cards and vintage frames. If I had a spare 800-odd quid I'd definitely invest in a piece.