Gash for Cash*

Gash is a night at the Macbeth pub in Hoxton, most famous probably for being the scene of a kerfuffle involving Mr. Amy Winehouse, or something (though I guess she can handle herself well enough... all the drugs are turning her into John Prescott).
I was asked to help out with a flyer design, working with their established colour scheme and all-by-hand faux-amateur/amateur style. Something to do with young ladies sporting wounds, they said, or skulls. Or girls with skulls. Or skulls with wounds. Or ladies with their faces dripping off revealing their skulls...
I kind of like this first rough design (with all the wording to be later replaced by hand-type):

But not so much this one:

Nor this:

Or this:

They wanted something more like a good doodle, I was then told... so in twenty minutes did this one:

But in the end went with something like this:

I think I'm happy with it.


*Gash for Cash is entirely inappropriate of course: I wasn't paid. But it's amazing how many more hits come through Google with a post heading like that.

New website

Here it is. A new website... this time with a design section.
Plus... the latest Inappropriate Alphabet cover. It's called Love Letters now, I didn't tell you before did I?

Guess What

It's always nice to be commissioned by a real person rather than a soulless mega-corporation. Real people spending their own real money, especially with this "credit crunch" on (sounds like a cheap breakfast cereal). Such was the case with this job: 48 portraits of real people for two bespoke editions of Guess Who? to be given as birthday gifts.


They took ages, but were well received apparently.

Note to any soulless mega-corporations reading: please do commission me.

This blog as a "wordle"

Personal type posters by robots... how long till there's an ad campaign based on these?
Make your own.

Pete Doherty: half man, half man

Here's a picture I did months ago for a Notes from the Underground short story. I was politely waiting for it to be published before posting it, but the paper is on ice whilst they try and secure arts council funding, or something... and I've got to put something up, right? It's been weeks.
The story is about Pete Doherty (once of the Libertines, now of the gossip columns) upon his death giving up his cadaver for Modern Art, and specifically for a Damien Hirst-style halving-and-pickling.
Here's the sketch:


And here's the final:

It's all came out a bit blue and insipid, but I kind of like it. The composition isn't really done as it's awaiting the text of the story to go between the halves, so it'll be interesting to see how it finally looks in the paper.
I'm currently rebuilding my portfolio website so that it can include in it some of my design work, and it looks this image may come in handy as the basis of the splash page. It's often said that Pete and I look alike (see right- he, on the left, deliriously happy on a cocktail of class As, me, right, quite content with a Scotch egg) so I can pass it off as a self-portrait. The division conveniently serves to represent the division within me as part designer, part illustrator (and part pretentious loser, as represented by the negative form in between).
Here's a sneak preview... yawn with your mouths closed please.