20three » illustration

Sketchbook pages: 02.2012

Owen — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:41:46 +0000

Some recent scans of my sketchbook.

Dan Drakeford: new ‘Now In Lemon’ Illustrations

Owen — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 09:27:13 +0000

As well as contributing to the Now In Lemon ‘zine, Mr Drakeford has also updated the Now In Lemon site with a load of new work. I have posted a favourite of mine below but please take a look at the rest of his work – his ‘The Park‘ strip is definitely worth checking out.

Designers Don’t Have Influences: Austin Howe

Owen — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 09:08:40 +0000

I had better start by owning up to not having read Designers Don’t Read by Howe – I had seen lots of press for it but never got round to picking up a copy. So I have come to his second book without reading the first, but Designers Don’t Have Influences (Amazon US|CA|UK|DE) is stand-alone and can be picked up without any prior knowledge of Howe or his writing.

Designers Don’t Have Influences is a collection of short essays on people that have influenced Howe throughout his successful career in advertising. Rather than write about people working directly in his field Howe writes about all sorts of people from various disciplines. He writes in the forward:

“My basic premise is that we can often learn more from people in other disciplines than we can from our own”

This really resonated with me. As a designer my own influences are often from beyond my profession and can be divorced from their context. Howe’s introduction had already got me excited about reading on.

“Disclaimer: this book is not an exhaustive compendium of every notable author or artist or inventor or entrepreneur. It’s really more of a random collection of individuals who have impacted me in some way – people I think most designers would probably appreciate knowing a little more about.”

There are no work samples in the book – Howe explains that Designers Don’t Have Influences follows in the “spirit and tradition of Norman Potter’s little gem, What is a designer: Things, Places, Messages” (a book I would also recommend, Potter is a great influence on me). Howe also explains that he wanted to dismiss the idea that designers don’t read – hence the title of his first book.

Each chapter in Designers Don’t Have Influences is a self contained essay. At the start of each chapter is the estimated time it will take to read it – I loved this element (one he uses in Designers Don’t Read), as I could pick up the book in my lunch time, waiting for a tube, sitting on Brighton beach, and flick to a chapter which I knew I would be able to read in the time I had. I felt I was carrying round a bunch of observations and ideas I could dip into rather than a book I would have to read from page one onwards. Each chapter has a little nugget of Howe thinking, seemingly designed to make you think a little, question a little and maybe re-evaluate your position and approach to your design work.

Some of the chapters are simply Howe’s observations of the experiences of working with others in and around his industry – the chapter on Bill Cahan gives a great insight into the processes of an innovative and successful design agency and those that run it. Many of Howe’s other subjects will be familiar to designers, the ubiquitous Ayn Rand gets a chapter, as do the Saatchis, Julian Schnabel, Josef Müller-Brockman and Damien Hirst, but it is the people I had never heard of that interested me the most – a great example is the chapter on François Allaire, a Canadian Hockey goalie coach. As a Yorkshireman who grew up with only a passing interest in football (my trips to Elland Road were on the whim of friends, I was never a committed football fan), there was no way I was going to have heard of a Canadian Hockey coach. Within this chapter Howe explains how Allaire re-invented goalie coaching from the ground up, and coached some of the most successful goalies in Hockey history. Howe writes about how Allaire can be an influence to someone working in the field of design:

“First of all he teaches us that it can be done, wherever and whenever it is actually attempted. That by questioning the conventions of how something has been done for years, we can find new ways of approaching it, simply by being aware, observant, ambitious.”

At the back of the book, once the essays are over, there’s a collection of doodle style portraits of the chapters subjects (along side a quote), credited to Aaron James. – my favourite is the starey scary disembodied Damien Hirst, but Maurice Saatchi’s portrait is worth a mention. I also liked the book design and typography credited to Fredrik Averin – a seemingly modernist design subverted with bold lines striking through the words, a treatment carried through from the cover to the chapters headings.

Maurice Saatchi

The best accolade I can give this book is that I already have bought his first book on the back of this one – and I will be keeping an eye on out for further publications and writing by Howe.

This review also features on The Designer’s Review of Books.

Now in Lemon: lo-fi art & illustration

Owen — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 18:33:03 +0000

Now In Lemon is a 40 page black and white zine produced by Dan Drakeford and myself. I won’t try to describe it, you can see it all here.

Available for the majestic price of £3.00 plus postage at the Now in Lemon website.

Now in Lemon was printed by those nice people at Footprint Workers co-operative.

Screenprint: Black Madonna

Owen — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 15:27:27 +0000

One from the archives. Hand pulled screenprint using 13th century iconography, 14th century heraldic imagery and some random shapes. Printed at Brighton Independent Printmakers. This print is part of a limited run of 10, produced in 2007/8.

Illustration: Dials gauges and meters

Owen — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 09:01:15 +0000

While looking through work I produced for Kerb a couple of years ago I came across an e-learning project I worked on – Kerb were commissioned to produce a set of interactive screen based tools to educate drivers on efficient driving techniques. Below is a set of dials gauges and meters I produced which were used throughout the project.

I am usually a little disparaging about my own commercial work when I look back at it but I really like these illustrations. Minimal in the approach and execution with a simple colour palette. Nice.

Sketchbook: 20three type

Owen — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 11:57:04 +0000

I did do some post production work on this scan from my sketchbook – I made the image grayscale then reversed the colours, making the image white on black. The letters were also generated on the computer then printed out, cut up and glued into my sketchbook.

The font I have thoroughly abused is Futura Book. Paul Renner is probably spinning in his grave, considering that legibility was a fundamental concern when he designed Futura, widly known as the first mass produced geometric sans-serif typeface.

Ah well, destroy your heroes and all that.

Sketchbook: L’art brut préféré aux arts culturels

Owen — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 19:49:56 +0000

Sketchbook pages: 10.2010

Owen — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 13:19:41 +0000

Some new sketchbook pages. More on my Flickr.

Science Fiction book covers: a small selection

Owen — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 16:33:53 +0000

Following on from Grahams post about sci-fi and in particular his appreciation of pulp sci-fi cover art, I have scanned and uploaded a small selection of sci-fi books I have picked up over the years.

I have got round to reading most of them but I choose them for the cover art and a few remain unread. Many of these books were bought from Rainbow books on Trafalgar street, Brighton. A few by Azimov I picked up in Solway books in Kircudbright.

I have added the designer or illustrator if one is credited.

06 Cover illustration: Chris Foss

07 Cover illustration: Chris Foss

08 Cover illustration: Chris Foss

09 Cover illustration: Chris Foss

13 Cover photograph: Dennis Rolf

14 Cover photograph: Dennis Rolf

15 Cover illustration: David Pelham

17 Cover illustration: Tony Roberts

18 Cover illustration: Paul Stinson

23 Cover illustration: Paul Monteagle