THINGS ON FIRE

Brand spanking new blog

thingsonfire — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 10:45:46 +0000

In an attempt to make my website much more cohesive and overall good looking, from here on in you’ll find my new blog posts turning up at the rather freshly designed http://blog.thingsonfiredesign.com. I’m hoping this will also encourage me to post more often, so I look forward to sharing some new work and things soon.

New Look Website

thingsonfire — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 17:28:50 +0000

Yesterday I launched my refreshed website for all to see. I hope you like the improvements, and I’m looking forward to updating it with much more new work very soon!

http://thingsonfiredesign.com

Big Ass/Bad Ass update

thingsonfire — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 17:36:09 +0000

Hello there followers, I trust you are well. There’s alot to recount of my adventures over the past coupla months so I’ll jump straight in.

I did a bit of an interview with Shed Menswear for the community showcase section of their site, which aims to showcase emerging and existing design and illustration talent. Part of the community showcase idea is that the featured designer or illustrator creates a banner which is displayed on the Shed website. This was what I came up with.

You can read my feature here.

I’ve also set up a screen printing company with my girlfriend which we run from her cellar. We make hand made and hand printed posters, prints, t-shirts and books (so far). You can see a collection of our wares, and hopefully be tempted to buy something, from the Back to Back Press Store.

I was asked by Nadine at No-Title magazine to create a poster for an event they were putting on at Santiago in Leeds: The Badass, Dirt Ass, Trailer Trash Party! Clearly a name like that is difficult to ignore, so I got right to work on concepts for the poster. We figured there would be alot of information to include and so decided that this was the best route:

I also have some work in the upcoming issue of No-Title magazine, so will hopefully be able to update you with some of that shortly.

To top it all off, I’m in the process of giving my website a bit of a refresh, and if it all works out and looks good you’ll be seeing a nice sparkly new thingsonfiredesign.com before long.

A roundup of events.

thingsonfire — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:07:42 +0000

Hello people of the internet, it’s been a while since I last posted as I’ve been busy working on various projects and getting our cellar print studio more organised and giving it a lick of paint. Here’s a round up of the things that I’ve been getting on with since I last posted. First on the agenda, I made a T-shirt design for Mondo Cane for a competition. We didn’t win, but I like the idea enough to show you here.

I had a little chat about my inspirations and my work to Katie from a blog called The Young Creatives which you can read right here.

I also did a few personal illustrations that I’m hoping to be putting into a little mailout in the future. I’m trying to explore keeping my colours limited at the moment, and keeping the texture to just add character to a piece rather than become too much of an obvious focal point.

Those Whitby Types

thingsonfire — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 18:11:17 +0000

I’ve just got back from a trip northwards to the seaside town of Whitby, a town steeped in history and folklore, not to mention excellent fish & chips shops. It’s also a nice place for spying a few examples of nice typography and lettering. Some of the shop signs remain hand painted or are based on hand lettering, and there’s many a shop with a quaint little open/closed sign. Here are a few examples I managed to snap on my recent trip:

Buy Nothing Day 2011

thingsonfire — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 21:37:27 +0000

On the 25th of November in the US and the 26th in the rest of the world, there is an event that everyone can take part in called Buy Nothing Day, the basic idea being to spend a day not spending money. I designed a couple of posters for the event last year and decided to have another go this year. It’s interesting from my point of view to compare my work from a year ago and my work now and seeing how different my work has become.

I decided to focus on what I believe is an important aspect of Buy Nothing Day, which is to support local and independent businesses so they don’t sink and go under, especially during the tough economic times we’re going through at the moment. So if you have to buy stuff on the 26th November, try and make sure it’s local & independent!

Belleville, Biscuithead and the Biscuit Badgers & Leeds City Stompers at The Packhorse

thingsonfire — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 14:09:58 +0000

I was recently asked by Ben from Belleville to design a poster for an upcoming gig he was putting on at The Packhorse. The turnaround was quite quick, and the brief quite open, my only real limitation was that it should reflect the “old music played well” line that Ben used to describe the style of the evening. I wanted to avoid creating a pastiche or an imitation of a 1930′s poster, but still wanted to get through a touch of the class that seems to be associated with times gone by. I put forward a few concepts to Ben, and we agreed on the above design. I had quite alot of fun on this project and hope to be doing some more gig posters in the future.

DIY Silkscreen

thingsonfire — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 20:53:40 +0000

A short while ago I made a post about setting up a small, DIY printmaking studio in my girlfriend’s cellar. You can read all about that here. Since then, our screen-printing equipment has arrived (squeegees, inks, screens, coating fluid etc) and, after a little bit of a false start and some practice, we had a short printing sesh today to try it all out.

These hinge clamps didn’t come with the set, but they are a lifesaver in time and effort terms. Well worth the extra money.

A photograph of my girlfriend taping up the screen for me while I prepared some ink. Sadly, as I had the duel duty of printing and taking photos of the occasion, there aren’t any photos of the actual printing process, but here are some of the resulting prints, hanging up.

We thought the last one would make a nice wrapping paper design!

Anyway, that was my short blog on today’s screenprinting spectacular, which we were very glad succeeded as it means we can keep on being more adventurous with what we can make down there. I’m busy with one or two music related projects at the moment, but I’ll hopefully have some images to show for something quite soon.

Recent Illustrations

thingsonfire — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 13:55:13 +0000

It’s been a while since my last blog post as I’ve been sorting out getting work (both freelance and part time), but I’ve tried to keep busy and try out a few experiments in drawing to brush up and improve on my illustration skills. Below you can find a few of my recent self initiated illustrations.

I’ll be updating soon with a few details on upcoming projects I’ll be involved in which I’m excited about taking on, and of course there will hopefully be some updates regarding the DIY printing room mentioned in the last post.

Printorama

thingsonfire — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 21:57:44 +0000

Well friends, this is a first. In fact my first blog post as a graduate, no longer a design student, now officially a design professional (eep!). In an effort to make sure our creativity isn’t allowed to take too much of a break, me and my girlfriend have spent part of the summer planning and setting up a makeshift print studio in her kindly donated cellar. It’s early days yet, we still have a way to go in making it look pretty, and the screen printing supplies have yet to arrive, but we’ve had fun making linocuts and monoprints from the comfort of our own home.