Saturday 29 May 2010

Buy my stuff!

For the past 2 months I've been designing and producing 21 products that will hopefully all be sold at the pop-up shop that we've set up to raise money for next year's graduation show. This pop-up shop isn't just a fundraiser but it's also our end of the year project. It was all about 'the designer as producer.' It's been hella intense at times but it was fun and I learn a lot too this term. We all had to keep blog-diaries and having the opportunity of following the work-processes of a 100-something other students, step-by-step, was so helpful. I wanted to get away from the magazine/book/poster design niche for a bit so I thought I'd get crafty again and designed a herbal pillow that functions as a natural sleeping aid. (This involved a lot of Laura Ashley-ing; buying and testing textiles and herbs, -pastel- color matching, sewing, excuses for trips to Liberty's...;) For this project I've played with the concept of worrying about environmental damage and not being able to sleep because of it. I've always been a fan of pandas, so I took this occasion to create a product dedicated to one of the most endangered species out there. The Giant Panda is also the international symbol of conservation, £0.50 of every herbal pillow sold will be donated to the WWF. So yesterday we had to hand-in 1 boxed item with a step-by-step instruction sheet and a product photograph for evaluation and 1.5 kg. lavender, 1 kg. lentils, 500 gr. cloves, 4m2 satin, 1m2 cotton, 1m2 felt, 80 m cotton thread,  5 sheets transfer-paper, 30 sheets sugar paper, 35 brown paper bags, 5 hours image research, 10 hours silkscreen printing, 25 hours hand stitching, 8 prototypes, 1 Martha Steward bitch fit, 2 lovely tension-releasing dates and about 100 change-of-plans later, it may as well be called official; my 2nd year is over! I'll be a 3rd year student for the first time ever and if all goes well I'll be graduate next year, which is a big first for me too. In other news, my previous boss (the creative director at the Jewish Chronicle) thought I was graduating coming June and offered me a job for a year as one of their art directors was going on maternity leave! How great is that? I'm soso thankful for these people. But I'm not graduating this year, let's just hope that next year job offers will come at me just as easily :)




Here they are; my 21 herbal pillows, lined up as proud little environmental activists . The bags, notes and pillows are all hand cut, hand silkscreen printed and hand stitched and go for £10 a pop. So buy my herbal pillows; help the Giant Panda and help me graduate.

Product prepared for final hand-in





And here's a bit of my workprocess.

Wednesday 26 May 2010

Tuesday 18 May 2010

Central Saint Martins 2nd year BAGD Pop Up Shop

Click on banner for more information -x-




Sunday 16 May 2010

Little mystery.

Every now and then stacks of random books, dvd's and cd's show up in my living room by the quasi fireplace. Half of the time we don't know who puts them there, no-one's claimed them. 


Monday 10 May 2010

Londonesquapades

I'm in the process of developing a product for the popup-shop event that we're organizing to fund our 3rd year degree show, it'll take place between 31 May and 7 June. You should all come and buy our things. It's going well but it's all a bit full-on and right now I'm kind of stuck. So just to get away from the intense research, prototype & brainstorm sessions for a bit I though I'd edit and post some photos that I took with my BlackBerry during the past year. These are bits of my London life and this collection makes my life look a bit like a Lomo-romance, which it absolutely isn't. I used to love to cross-process but don't have the time or money to indulge in such luxury analog photography anymore. :'( Back to work now. x


Sunday 2 May 2010

Stephen Fry + Cheshire Cat = Heart

This morning I was pretty sure nothing would cure my bastard hangover. However, Stephen Fry voicing the Cheshire Cat and Helena Bonham Carter's massive bitching clownesque head (and a complete English breakfast) did a pretty good job. They're probably the best things to come out of Burton's version of Alice in Wonderland. Hearing Paul Whitehouse voicing the Mad March Hare was pretty cool too, but could do with some proper Northern cursing. The rest are just Tim Burton follies. God, I'm so freaking tired of him (using Johnny Depp as a mentally deranged protagonist!) x 



Saturday 1 May 2010

Cute.

I was cleaning up my hard drives and found these pictures I took a couple of years ago when I was living in New Zealand. They're the first pictures I took with a Holga.



BNZLDN 100th post!! Whatever. Here's some more magazine stuff.

To those who know me well it's no secret. I love the 90's. I've always wanted to be 18 in 1994, when Hip Hop was still alive and Drum 'n Bass still pure, wobble free. Alas, I was 10. Not too young to notice what was going on out there, but not old enough to get infused with its flourishing rave culture and shellshocked by its changing cultural landscape either. The 90's imprinted its mark on me and pretty much shaped my creative interests into what they are today. Halfway through my teens I became a fervent magazine buyer. A habit which for some reason I picked up again in my early twenties. I remember still getting pocketmoney and spending it on zines on a monthly basis. My mum considered this a total waste of money and I always felt a little bad after she gave me the 'for god's sake child, save your money' lecture. But I kept buying them and (in this case) I'm happy I didn't really really listen to her. It's not like I was scoring crack, mother. So yesterday I found a box filled with magazines in a corridor. Awesome. What's even more awesome is that they're DazedConfused issues from the 90's. Yay! I would've been over the moon to get my hands on these back then but I didn't nearly have enough money to buy every magazine I wanted. But I'm equally chuffed now that I have them and probably appreciate them even more now that I look at them, filled with nostalgia.




DazedAndConfused 60
November 1999
Back cover
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Supplement ft. Gilles Peterson 


    
























   

Dazed&Confused 35
October 1997
Special music issue.


Artists in first 3 images:


1. Goldie
2. Autechre, Aphex Twin, Nightmares on Wax, 
Squarepusher, Roni Size, Krust, Suu, Die, 
3. Adam F, Majic, Justice, Technical Itch, DJ Hype, DJ Zinc, Intense, DJ Pulse, Blame, Optical, Nico, Underwolves, Dom&Roland, Rob Playford, Aquasky, Dillinja, DJ Ron, Boymerang, Lemon D, Flytronix, Matrix.


HEART x INFINITE.



DazedAndConfused 61
November/December 1999/2000
End of the millennium / century issue