You Are Beautiful

You Are Beautiful is the Graphic Design and Illustration studio of Kerry Roper. Roper is one of several artists who are collaborating on the latest Topshop t-shirt project, and as Vogue say 'At just £22 for a T-shirt or £35 for a T-dress, owning your own contemporary artwork has never been so affordable.'

You Are Beautiful showcases Roper's wonderfully diverse portfolio, he uses mixed media and different illustration, photographic and typographic styles, on everything from album art to bags. His work really appeals to me, it's organic and dirty on the surface but the shapes, colours and type treatment are sophisticated and structured. My favourite is the stamp, designed for a car ad, it's gorgeous!

Fashion Market

This is a book I bought a while ago but then totally forgot I had, it's a little bit like getting something new! Fashion Market features interviews with 13 UK artists and designers from Spitalfields Market in London. It's a fantastic source of inspiration, full of colour and creativity. I love the unique stitching on the cover too, no two copies are quite the same.

Moo!

The nice people at Moo gave me some free MiniCards when I got my Flickr Pro account. I'm not an illustrator (I'm a web designer) but I still enjoy drawing and painting, I used to do lots at Art School and it doesn't feel like work! The illustrations on these are just ideas I was playing with.

Pretty Packaging

I went to all the secondhand and charity shops on my lunch break today, I was hoping I might find a good umbrella or something vintagey and nice. But I had no luck whatsoever. The few little things that did catch my eye were really over priced. I did get some things in the Middle Eastern food store though, I love that place. I bought Mango Syrup and Jasmine Tea, pretty much just for the packaging. The Mango Syrup is strange, a bit like mango flavoured turkish delight that's been mixed with water, I quite like it!

Ceramic Type

This delightful ceramic type is the work of US based Stephanie DeArmond. As a designer, I have a real affection for type. I would absolutely love to own a piece of Stephanie's work, even if it read 'crap!', in fact especially if it read 'crap!'.

Family Wallpaper

I love this wallpaper and the idea that you can create something really personal to you by adding your own photographs or artworks. It's designed by Lisa Bengtsson and it's available from the Scandinavian Design Centre, £59.33 a roll.

Lisa Bengtsson also has a wonderful portfolio of illustration, pattern and graphic design.

All-American Ads

We needed to research some advertising from the early 1900's today and found this book, All-American Ads 1900-1919. Nearly all the work is created by hand and as a result each piece has a really beautiful unique quality. It's surprising how some of the styles and messages are still so relevant today.

By Hand

I've always loved to draw type and I used to carefully practice my handwriting when I was little. Since I left Art School and started work as a designer nearly all the type I use now is digital. I've only just realised how much I miss drawing and creating letters. When I saw Hand Job: A Catalog of Type by Michael Perry, I had to get myself a copy. It's an absolutely delightful book, with page after page of yummy hand drawn type. It's given me all sorts of ideas and inspiration already.

Brownie

We had a nice quiet day at work today so I made the most of it and started designs for a new font, I've called it Brownie. I drew the letters by hand, scanned them and then traced them in Illustrator. Hopefully I'll get round to finishing it one day.

BW teaser by Julien Vallée

Julien Vallée is a freelance graphic & motion designer from Montreal, Canada. He first caught my eye when I saw this teaser for Black and White. I have a bit of thing for artists and designers who create things with paper. It's even more exciting when they are magically brought to life through animation.

Brand new (to me)

We don't have an American Apparel in my home city so when I was in London for work recently it was on my list of shops to visit. It wasn't so much the clothes that I was interested in, although they are brilliant basics, it's the branding that I like. The heavy Helvetica typography, block rainbow colour and dirty amateurish photography is just really doing it for me.

Kate Moross Rocks

It's really exciting to see Topshop have commissioned a signature range of printed t-shirts, vests and jumpers by young Graphic Designer Kate Moross. She's only 21 but her portfolio is seriously impressive, she's produced a huge amount of exciting and intricate work. Kate talks about her collection and her inspiring approach to design on the Topshop site.


Don't Panic Poster - View the full design here

Coping with clients

I'm realising the better I get at my job, the harder it is to take client criticism and requests. I thought it would be something I would learn to cope with, not so. I feel more justified in my decisions and opinions with some years of experience behind me. Hmmmm, does that mean I'm actually getting worse at my job then?

I'm going to read How to be a graphic designer without using your soul by Adrian Shaughnessy... and the Stupid Client Quotes on Clientcopia to cheer me up. It's not just me, honest, some clients really are twats.

Penguin Covers

These beautiful Penguin and Pelican covers are from Joe Kral's extensive collection. This style of cover, from the 60s and & 70s, is designed on the Marber Grid, which unifies the Penguin Books from that era.

We Are What We do

If you could ask one million people to do one thing to change the world, what would it be? Send your ideas to We Are What We do and maybe they'll make it happen...

Foals artwork

Foals artwork is great. I even bought the t-shirt after their gig a few weeks back and t-shirts aren't really my thing. This is the cover for the new single Balloons and I can't wait until they launch their website, and an album too for that matter.

Edit: I've written a second post on the illustrator who produces Foals artwork, Tinhead, The Sixth Foal

Things like this

So this is the difficult first post. Lets get it out of the way. I want this blog to be a place where I can collate all the things that I like. Hopefully you'll enjoy some of them too.

The spread is from IdN magazine v14n5 Art Directors issue.