Heineken are back.

Heinekens' PR department's gotta fork out some money for their ads. Definitely worth it though.

Thank you Heineken for sharing this with us.

'Open your World'

(click video to play)

Advertising Experience: In a different way.

Amazing advertising method.

BMW uses Flash Projection to burn their logo into the eyes of their audience.

(click on the video to view)

James and the Giant Peach: The 2nd.

My second try to make the children book for the Puffin Book Cover Competition 'James and the Giant Peach' let me know what you think of my draft.

(Yes, this is meant to be a flap that you can open =) )

(click to enlarge)

Roald Dahl's 'James and the Giant Peach' draft

Slightly obvious representation of a peach,

this is my initial draft, there's hopefully a second idea to follow.

Meanwhile I'd very much appreciate some feedback on this one though.

Hit me! Thanks.

(click to enlarge)

Second attempt

This is my second draft for the same book. Referring to the Gypsy magic in Gabriel García Márquez's story.

(click to enlarge)

Book Cover Draft

hey there, here's one draft of my book cover design for 'One Hundred Years of Solitude'

Any feedback or criticism is welcomed!

(click to enlarge)

I'm liking these creative ads.

Pretty awesome advert.

The dark side of the lens.

Some pretty beautiful pictures there.

DARK SIDE OF THE LENS from Astray Films on Vimeo.

Apple Remote and Presentations

A few days ago, we had our final presentations for the Cardiff Airport project in University and we accommodated quite a few guests from the industry. Mike Smith from Elmwood, London came to Cardiff, the majority of our mentors were there such as Burning Red, StazikerJones, Hoffi, Design Wales and Elfen - last but not least, Cardiff Airport was represented by one of their Managers.
Anyway, Just before the presentations started, I was tying to make the apple remote work with another MacBook. Baring in mind, the lecture theatre was full of creative people from the industry, students, professionals, academics and business managers - nobody knew how to set up the remote to a MacBook.

In the end, we just left it and had to use the arrow keys on the keyboard to navigate through our presentations.
So I thought I'm gonna blog how to link an Apple Remote to your MacBook, iMac, etc. here you go:

Hold the remote about 3-4 inches in front of the computer
Point the remote at the IR receiver
behind the Apple logo on iMacs
on the front right on MacBooks
to the left of the latch on MacBook Pros
to the right of the optical drive for Mac minis
the top left of iPod Hi-Fis
the center of iPod Universal Docks
Click and hold the Menu and Next/Fast-forward buttons for 5 seconds
For computers, an image of the remote and a linked chain will flash on the screen indicating that the remote has been paired with the computer. Only that remote can control the computer, and vice versa. There is no visual feedback for iPod Hi-Fi or the iPod Universal Dock

To unpair the computer, open the Security pane in System Preferences and Click Unpair (near the bottom right corner of the window).

For further protection, check Disable remote control infrared receiver in the Security pane. This will lock out any remote (if you are worried about malicious folks in the coffee shop).

ONE MORE (FUN) THING
You can verify that your Apple Remote is working by using the built in iSight camera on your iMac or MacBook Pro. Open Photo Booth and point the remote at the iSight. Click the Play button and you should see a faint blinking light coming from the end of the remote. If you do, the remote is working. If not, you may need to change the battery.

AND HERE IS WHAT YOU CAN DO WITH YOUR REMOTE
Click any button on the remote to wake your Mac from Sleep
Control the volume of your Mac with the +/- buttons
Control your QuickTime Movies, including Play, Pause, Fast Forward, Rewind, and Skip to the Beginning; Pause the movie and click the Next button to step through the movie frame by frame
Control DVD playback
Use the Next and Previous buttons to control presentations slides in Keynote
Use the Next and Previous buttons to move between songs in iTunes; Play and Pause songs with the Play button
Next and Previous buttons move you through the Source pane in iPhoto.
Click the Play button to start a slide show using that source; click again to pause the slide show, and the Next and Previous buttons will move to the next or previous slide; Click the Menu button to exit the slide show
Click and hold the Play button and a “snoring” image of the remote will appear on screen. Continue holding the Play button and your Mac will go to sleep
If you have multiple remotes or devices that use remotes (in a classroom setting with multiple iMacs, for example), you can pair a specific remote to a specific computer.


For all those who wonder why I did blog this - I know - you cannot use the remote for PDF presentations but there's a nice little app that does the job for you and converts PDFs into Keynote presentations - and you'll be able to use your IR Remote with Keynote.

If you want to spend some money on it, and you've got an iPod Touch or IPhone, get the 'Remote' app from the iTunes App Store, that will let you navigate presentations too with more advanced tools.

This blog was mainly sourced from GNUHAUS. Thanks.

Europe at the crossroads

Nice poster-design from quite a nice website I stumbled upon,
check it out it's Moo-moo! Haha.

Have a nice day, I'm off. x

Adidas: Fast Don't Lie, Beast - LOL!

Hahah!

Best Outdoor Ad August 2010

Advertising Agency: TBWA Switzerland



Advertising Agency: Amélie Company, Denver, Colorado, USA

Awarded Adverts August 2010

Britvic Drench: Cubehead
Advertising Agency: CHI & Partners, London, UK
Gold Award
Click here to watch.

Carlton Draught, Slow motion capturing.
Advertising Agency: Clemenger BBDO Melbourne, Australia
Silver Award
Click here to watch.

Volkswagen: The letter
Advertising Agency: TRY, Oslo, Norway
Bronze Award (Although my personal fav out of them.)
Inspired by this...?
Click here to watch.

Night-photography in London

I love random things. I love doing them.
I love being with my friends. And I love to travel.

A few weeks ago I combined these two things and went on a random trip to London with one of my mates who's quite into Photography. Julian and me left Cardiff at about 6pm as far as I can remember.
So packed with all we needed, tripods, cameras, warm clothes, food, beverages and money, obviously - we were on our way to the big city.
There's one thing I definitely share with Albert Einstein who once said 'I love to travel, but hate to arrive.', especially if it's a trip to London, but this time it wasn't too bad. I had nice company and was actually looking forward to get to London for some night-photography.

I could go on and on about it and the amount of time we spent there, it was a good laugh - I'll definitely going to do it again - better organized, and with new vigour!

Now, let's have a look...

Click here to see all on Flickr.

TinEye

Search engines - Surfing the web without search engines? Hard to imagine, I think.
They do (well most of them) a pretty impressing job. Whatever we're looking for, we type it in and within a few seconds we get 84,000,000 search results. Whether it be sites, images, places or documents - search engines on the web became so important to us we even invented new verbs. But have you ever tried to 'google' an image?

I know, it sounds weird, but so far, search engines work with the word tags you provide and they look for matches on the web.
Well how about TinEye? TinEye is a reverse image search engine that finds out where an image came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or if there is a higher resolution version.

Pretty cool uuh? I like it. Check it out.


Example: I 'googled' a picture of the original Mona Lisa painting and looked for modifications,
have a look what it came up with...

minimalism.

Minimalism describes a specific movement in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is stripped down to its most fundamental features.
Here are some pretty awesome minimalist movie posters I found in the web from www.listal.com.

Found on www.listal.com/list/minimalist-posters.

Multiproduct Commercial

I'm not gonna lie, I'd love to see this on telly!

Check it...

The Future of Commercialism comes to an End

One of the best and most inspiring short animations I've seen in a while. My friend Matt found this video by the French animation collective H5 on the web, and put it in his blog.

I think it's a must have so here you go...

Wicked Skateboard animation

An absolutely amazing skateboard animation. I guess that's one way to spend a hell lot of time and skateboard magazines when you're bored. Definitely worth it though. Beautiful outcome.

Click the image or here to watch.

New blog layout.

Soo... I thought I'm gonna change my blog layout a bit, as I got fed up of the old one.

Nothing special either. If I have some time soon, I'll sort it out properly and design it a bit maybe.

You can look forward to some new posts soon though. =)

Bit now.

Changes to my room

I've recently made some changes to my room in order to get stuff in the right place - basically to get rid of the mess in my room.

So I went to IKEA™ - who would have thought - and ended up getting some really nice new furnitures.

I got an EXPEDIT sideboard with some files and boxes, an ALEX plan-chest drawer unit and a magnetic whiteboard for my wall!

(left wall) whiteboards, (underneath) ALEX, (at the back) EXPEDIT

Portfolio Surgery

After spending the last 2 hours in a lecture theatre at UWIC's Howard Gardens campus in Cardiff, listening to D&AD Senior Manager Rhiannon James and some design professionals a few of us signed up for the following portfolio clinic, where students get the opportunity to show their portfolio & work to professionals, either attempting an interview or just a scan through the portfolio to locate strengths and weaknesses.

We were initially located to see 2 designers, for some reason though (I think I was the only one) I got to see 4 different designers. Which was interesting yet stressful and it didn't allow me any time in-between two talks to get some notes written down.

In fact, I was pretty damn pleased that Phil, the last professional I was talking to, took some sticky notes for me and put it in my portfolio. Funny enough - seeing so many different designers I got confused by their opinions of my portfolio.

All of them seemed to be pleased with my Anti-Smoking campaign I did for my persuasion module in uni for AshWales.

Overall I got a 3:1 plus points for it though. But the one minus point didn't wanna leave my mind and I guess that's only a good thing - as designers we wouldn't be any good if we couldn't take criticism - I do believe it just makes us work, think, try harder.

Focus 2011 calls

You might remember my trip with a few friends up to IPEX in the NEC Birmingham, dedicated in this post. However, by surfing the web I found out about another fair in March 2011 and it's all about photography and cameras.

It's Focus2011 and will kick-off on Sunday 6th March 2011 until Wednesday 9th March. Opening times are 10am-6pm on the Sun,Mon & Tue and 10am-5pm on the last day.

I'll post a comment or another post once I've found out more about it or possible fees.

I hope it's gonna be free for students just like IPEX! That would be sick.

An interesting online article I came accross, 'Mobile Portfolios'

Quite a good design mag that is,

PAGE focuses on designer and those who want to become on.

In the latest issue i've found an interesting article about portfolios and how to present and promote yourself in situations like job interviws and what not.

Have a look, the article is approachable via this link and is in German, PAGE Online - Mobile Portfolios – PAGE 11.2010

D&AD Rep and Talk

Right, how am I gonna put this.

My tutor came up to me within the first week back in uni and asked me if I want to be the D&AD Rep for the 3rd year, again. I happened to be in the same position last year, being the 2nd year D&AD Rep.

After one year of being this Representative for the Design & Art Direction organization or if you want to, let's call it an educational charity, I'm still not quite sure what it means or what I'm supposed to do.

I've been invited to a couple D&AD events last year, but failed miserably to get involved - shame really. I did try hard a few times, but the events of interest weren't supposed to be for 2nd year reps. Gutted.

So this might change this year - when I'm actually allowed to attend some meetings.

Let's see how that goes.

Former, I guess I'm meant to keep my class informed about D&AD events, competitions and opportunities. That's what I understood after one of my tutors attempt to explain the reps job utterly failed.

-----

The second week back in uni, I think it was, D&AD came to our campus, Howard Gardens, for a D&AD Talk session under the motto 'tackling real life briefs and winning a student award'. That was really enjoyable - they explained how D&AD works, who they are and what sort of competitions and other opportunities they offer for students in the creative industry.

Alongside lots of professionals to talk to and learn from, they've invited i.e. Phil from See Corridor and Marcus from New Future Graphic, providing a portfolio clinic session after the talk.

See this post for the portfolio surgery.

Reflective Journal

What?

Yeh. - That's exactly my reaction to it.

We're meant to keep some sort of diary for our course, where we keep our module briefs and feedback sheets, ideas and inspiration. Well I thought I'm gonna use this blog as my reflective journal, to an extend.

So you can look forward to some more uni related posts, my ideas and projects we're challenged with and maybe some feedback as well. Keep looking.

PS: Blog updates relating to the reflective journal will be indicated by the 'reflection'-tag.

Back to School

Hi and welcome again. I know - it's been a while since I last posted - here's my apologies.

It's been quite a busy summer for me to say the least.

Anyway, I'm back in Cardiff and back in University. It's the scary, final 3rd year of my Graphic Communication studies - and it's doing my head in already.

So many things that jump around in my head, ...

I'll post about the first project we do in uni soon, don't you worry - will try to keep this blog up to date!

See ya.

Work-placement.

Sooo, back on the work front, it's been quite a while since I've had some work experience/ work in general.
Luckily I got myself a job over summer from 16th August - 15thSeptember in BOSCH's Marketing Department in their AE (AutomotiveElectronics) plant in Reutlingen, Germany.

Bosch is such a huge company, so I didn't really expect much from being put in AE/Rt NE4, their marketing department, as they obviously don't do much corporate design related work - they rather give it to outsourced agencies.

I had a really good time though and enjoyed working with their staff. It wasn't super-hard work I had to do, but it definitely was a challenge. All the stuff was mainly in English, which I was pretty happy about, being in Germany for over a months time and not speaking English - that went pretty well in the end though.

The most demanding part of my job was being correct and to know what I was doing, never really worked with super technical stuff before - I had to study a 200 slides power point presentation my very first day. I confronted myself through it slide by slide slowly but bravely - interspersed over a couple of days - and managed to get into the fields of sensors and semiconductors.
Anyway, I had a good time being back in good old Germany, and did get to design a couple of things for them as well, I've done PowerPoint presentations according to their CI, several booklets and CD covers for their further education promotion pack intended to reach university professors all over the world.

I'm afraid, I won't be able to post anything I've done online due to their copyright policy - but believe me it was nothing near a big deal anyway - considering their massive folder of corporate design, designers waste their time looking for design-freedom.

I shot the serif!

haha, that made me giggle quite a lot.

Thought it's worth a blog post!

Good ol' puns!

New attainment!

I got myself a new pair of 6.0 Nike Zoom Mogans after looking for some decent Air Mogans for months now - without any success.

They're pretty cool tho I like them.

Have a look,...

I'm liking Matts invisible lacing. Cheers for doing that mate.

Quiksilver Tony Hawk & Friends Tour - Maxïmo Park

Heading down to London to pick up two mates just to spend another couple of hours on the motorway down to Brighton to see some skater freaks and some weirdos playing music doesn't sound like fun?

Ahhh...it does! Haha.

As a birthday present for one of my mates, we were going down to Brighton to see the

Quiksilver Tony Hawk and Friends World Tour, incl. a Maxïmo Park gig down there.

After spending a ridiculous amount of time in the car and Central London, it just wouldn't stop getting less busy on the roads.

Due to the shithole some people call London and its busy rush-hour roads we actually ended up missing Tony Hawk doing amazing tricks on the biggest transportable half-pipe in europe.

But luckily we arrived just in time to get to see Maxïmo Park!

And they were amazing!

Gutted about half a birthday present,... but it was still good.

Actually managed to get an autograpgh by Sandro Dias in the end. (see last pic).

New hobby?

I actually started skateboarding a few weeks ago,

lol I know this might not even belong in this blog and definitely hasn't deserved an entry yet. But I'll do it anyway.

Just find it funny enough as it's pretty ridiculous to start skateboarding with 22?! Hah!

It's going allright, managed to keep some sort of balance on the board - I guess that's good xD

The reason that made me wanna start skating really is that I snowboard and recently started surfing too. So the only thing out of the 'package' I've left out so far is skating.

Well, not anymore.

Couple more Ollies and some Kick-turns and I'll be confident doing it I hope xD

PS: A great, big thanks to Matt there, credit where it's due. Thanks mate for being patient enough to teach me some basics and any advice you gave me.

3D Stuff, now how cool is that?

I've been interested in 3D stuff for quite a while now, I just find the method and the effect just stunning.

So I tried to create my own 3D images, it's fairly simple...

Hope you like them, it's nothing major so far, just a dry-run really...

You will need Red/Green-Glasses.

My new passion: Surfin'

I got myself a surfboard the other day, wicked times.

After I hired one with a few mates I had my first go on one and just loved it.

I've been snowboarding for several years now and definitely want to start surfing properly now. As I 'recently' moved near the sea anyway, I guess that's an amazing opportunity to start.

Here it is, check it...

My new passion: Surfin'

I got myself a surfboard the other day, wicked times.

After I hired one with a few mates I had my first go on one and just loved it.

I've been snowboarding for several years now and definitely want to start surfing properly now. As I 'recently' moved near the sea anyway, I guess that's an amazing opportunity to start.

Here it is, check it...

IPEX - Birmingham

A couple of my fellow student colleagues and friends and my humble self went to Birmingham to visit the famous IPEX Exhibition at the National Exhibition Centre Birmingham in May 2010.

IPEX © is an international recognised Design, Print, Paper, Pre-Press, Post Production and Print Finishing exhibition. Hundreds of exhibitors and stands, amazing freebies and give-aways. Especially for students.

Stunning displays and demonstrations in all sectors.

And the best thing about it, if you pre register it's FREE! Which saves you about £30 Entry Fee.

IPEX 2011 - South Asia, will be held in India

A similar exhibition is Drupa in Düsseldorf, Germany

Here's some pics,...

The road trip from cardiff to Brummy was fun too! =)

Type Sex - Durex

Here's something I stubled upon the other day, I found it quite witty and thought it's worth a blog post.

There are some things I don't like about them though, such as the wording, I think this idea did deserve something more thoughtful maybe. But anyway,... enjoy:

2nd Year Show, Graphic Communications

We've been working on our final piece of work for the last couple of weeks in uni now,

some of us used the last project 'persuasion' that dealt with a design job for a local charity of our choice.

I've chosen to put up my persuasion project anyway, which was an anti smoking campaign for the non-profit organisation 'AshWales' based in Cardiff. I've produced a series of postcards and posters for their promotion stand at the Royal Welsh Show in July 2010.

Here's my poster, I put up on the wall for the exhibition.

Underneath I had a table with the full range of bi-lingual postcards, they came in English and Welsh.

Alongside with some Jelly shots (for 18+ only :-P ) that went well with the non-edible fag-jelly I had on the shelf just underneath the poster.

In conclusion, my showcase/display worked well enough to get chosen with 4 fellow students, out of the whole year-group to have a chat and job interview with Mark Lloyd, the Creative Director of the Brand Union based in London. Who offered a 2 weeks work-placement in their Branding Agency in London to 3 out of us 5.

Unfortunately I didn't get the job in the end but I felt pretty happy for my friends Jon Sheahan, Ruth Lucas and Matt Cornelius who managed to get a feeling of the creative industry.