Jurassic Lark

This here little blog is, today, about some dinosaur illustrations I was commissioned to create by the National Museum of Wales Cardiff. The Museum presents a sound workshop for young children about the sounds dinosaurs made, centred around the story of a nervous young Apatosaurus "Albie the Adventurer". Albie is a big scaredy-cat - afraid that all the noises in his jungle are T-Rex out to eat him up. His mother gets a little tired of this and so takes him on a journey to show him what a magical place their Jurassic jungle is. While the story is being told the children get to make all the relevant noises - the roars of the T-Rex and the trumpeting of the parasaurolophus. It sounds pretty exciting for a four-year-old!

It's safe to say that this work has been the most fun thing ever. I started by purging Canton Library of their books on prehistoric life, and studied the dinosaurs to be represented in detail, trying not to waste too much time getting drawn in to reading the books (did you know Sir David Attenborough has a pleiosaur named for him?). I then simplefied them into cartoons, retaining a realistic feel in the way they stood and moved. I drew each of the eleven parts of the story in pencil on A3 sheets, then traced over with brush and indian ink. I scanned the inkings into my mac and added all sorts of textures - fabric, bark, cardboard - and shopped in backgrounds from the Museum's own dinosaur gallery. I then added colour, and text in both Welsh and English (he's also Arwyn yr Anturiwr in case you were wondering). They have been approved without amendment, and Grace at the Museum is planning to have a t-shirt made up with one of the illustrations for when she presents the show!

Anyhow, hope you like my dinos - any feedback would be much appreciated.

There was a young man from Nantucket...

I interrupt this general work-related blog to post this, because it's funny and that. Email received this morning, and my reply:

Dear Mrs Duffy,
In the following e-mail I want to ask for your help. I am an IB student at Pangbourne College and I have the exercise to present some of your poems. I decided to work out in what way Mrs Midas is the key poem for the whole collection "the world's wife". Could you probably be so nice and help me with this exercise, because it is very important for my grades in english. I think it is very helpful if I had the opinion of the author. I hope you find time to help me.
With best wishes

Constantin D


Dear Constantin,

I am not the poet Carol Ann Duffy, but a graphic designer. And if you do manage to contact her, I think you’ll find her title, like mine, will be Ms and not Mrs.

Good luck with your studies,

Caroline

Actual LOL there at some guy asking the POET to help write his essay for him. It's very important for his grades.

Rawwrrrr!

I've just been commissioned by Grace Todd of the National Museum of Wales to create illustrations for a children's workshop she and her colleagues present for schools on the subject of dinosaurs. How exciting is that?

DINOSAURS!

Sorry, just had to say it again.

I am very excited about this! (does it show?) I'll have the illustrations done by the end of the month, so watch this space and I'll put them up. Or alternatively just pretend to be a small child and smuggle yourself into the workshop.

I hadn't been around the museum for a few years and it's well worth a visit. I had a quick look around the natural history bit with Grace & marveled at the size of the albatross (I mean, I knew they were big, but srsly, they're HUGE), the gazelle (tiny, like an über-femme goat) the bizarre moths and butterflies and the incredible crystal formations. They've got a good dinosaur bit too with lots of skeletons so I'm going to go in there with a camera and take some pics of the sets for a backdrop to the story I'm illustrating.

Awesome work - thanks Grace!

CIO Connect Winter 2009 magazine

And a happy new decade to you, and all that malarky.

Just before 2009 curled up in its hibernaculum and left us all ensconced in snow, CIO Connect magazine went to press. It's a job I've had pretty much since I edged out on my own as a nervous yet optimistic newbie freelancer, and it's helped my develop my style as much as I've developed the magazine.

One thing that struck me as I saved these pages for the blog is how vital good photography is for a professional-looking magazine. The design can be as fancy-pants as you like but if your images are small, fuzzy, low-res and dark you may as well be the village newsletter. I've met with a few people considering setting up magazines and it seems to be something that, on the whole, they don't regard as important, and resent spending money on.

This is a mistake, and a fundamental one. I may be shooting myself in the foot here, but my opinion is that for the most part, bad photography will let your publication down worse than bad design. Sure, someone with no concept of design will struggle to maximise the impact of good photography, and a good designer will take the same photography and make it sing from the rooftops, but it's very difficult to do anything at all with bad photography.

This, heavens be praised, is something that the people at CIO Connect appreciate, and always have done. They tend to use Martin Burton, who is just bloody ace, and a consummate professional to boot. His skill makes it easier for me to have fun with the layout and means the magazine is a whole lot more pleasurable to work on.

Adventures in the Bush

The superlative Debi Withers asked me to illustrate the cover for her forthcoming book. She wrote her doctoral thesis about the music of Kate Bush, exploring and deconstructing the avant-garde artist's work in fascinating detail.

Doctoral theses, with the best will in the world, are not often the most readable of texts. With this in mind, Withers has re-written her opus with the music-loving general public in mind. The book is designed as a creative theoretical narrative that tells a story. She says:

"I want Bush’s music to come alive in an experimental fashion but retain a focus on how it exists at the interrelation of popular culture, theory, art, the avant-garde, history and philosophy. I also want to demonstrate how sexuality, gender, power, race, class and spirituality shape her work. My desire is to move away from conventional uses of theory that are often found within academic writing. I want an adventure."

I've read the first three chapters of the book and it's awesome - I'm proud to be associated with it and can't wait to see a hard copy.

Withers asked only that I took inspiration from her text for the cover. It became clear that Bush of the book is a flowing, twisting, natural creature, unboundaried, powerful, elegant. I visualised the words of the cover - strong, clean, clear - and saw ivy creeping out, around, everywhere; filling the spaces between things and connecting everything to everything else. I drew bugs and birds, flowers, mammals, strange symbols that came to mind. It was black on white at first draft; I showed it to Withers and she asked that I invert it and add some red and green. I did this and was amazed at the result - often a small suggestion from someone else - something you would never have thought of - can completely transform your work.

The book is due to be published in March 2010, and you will be able to buy your copy here.

Brave New World

I'm still catching up with putting work on here that I've done in the past couple of months. I started this blog as it's a lot less faffy than updating the Flash portfolio on my website but sometimes I'm too busy even to do this. And don't even ask me when I last went surfing. I might cry.

Any how, enough of tears and back to joy, as in November the lovely Wil at CIO Connect asked me to design the brochure again for their annual conference. He'd picked out an iStock image and a typeface and asked me to come up with a design based around them, and here's what happened...

Autumn Pulse

Pulse is the name of my favourite shop in Cardiff - go in there and buy organic raw chocolate truffles and Fentiman's ginger beer and practise your Welsh on them - and also of a (IMHO) toecurlingly-dire gay nightclub - just... well, I warned you.

It's also the name of a fledgling publication put out by the IISP. Steve Newton of Galatea got in touch last year and asked me if I'd be interested in working with him on a potential project, and having worked with him as designer/illustrator on a magazine that he edited, I was happy to. It's midway between a newsletter and a magazine, and information-heavy, so the design has to be clean and clear and simple. I use black and white for type, a strong grid system and fewer larger images, all of which help with clarity.

The people at IISP like the cover to reflect their corporate ID in some way rather than the more traditional photograph and coverlines, so for this second issue I decided that recreating the arrow in their logo using autumn leaves might work. I collected handfuls of colourful leaves, conkers and pinecones in Bute Park and, on a bright afternoon, photographed them all on a white background in my garden. I arranged these bits and bobs into position and worked a rough, textured background upon which to set them. It worked rather well, and the IISP were happy.



Sometimes, being a designer is a bit Blue Peterish. Those times are good.