Spring has sprung...

It's been a glorious few days in Harrogate (both weather wise, and work wise). It was an action packed weekend too, which included a trip to the wonderful Harrogate theatre to see the fabulous Charlie and Lola. It was fab too - made we wish I was a kid all over again. Hats off to both Lauren Child for creating such a cool series of children's books, and to the creators of the stage show - I was very impressed (as you can probably tell).

It's been a busy old working week too (and it's only Wednesday). I've been doing some pitch work with my old colleague Richard Spencer which looks really good; quoted for a couple of new pieces of work for YorkTest Laboratories (which is always nice); and have been creating some rather nifty logo's for a new client (name to be revealed shortly). On top of that I had a really productive meeting in Wetherby (actually it was just outside if the truth be told) which could lead to another exciting new chapter in the life of Howabout Creative Solutions. Not bad for a little graphic design set up that has only been in operation for less than a year!

In fact, the only blot on this week has been the rather flaky performance of the latest Twitter application for the iPhone. It crashed my phone once, and then refused to sent tweets or allow me to view others for two days. A reinstall eventually fixed the problem, so (touch wood) it'll be problem free from here on.

Of course all this work has meant I haven't been able to take full advantage of the recent sunny spell. It looked nice from the office window though.

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New week, new work example

Morning, and what a gorgeous Monday morning it is (I don't think it's very often I've written those words). The sun is shining in Harrogate and although the frost has melted, it's still chilly - the perfect late winter morning in fact. One of the great things about being based in North Yorkshire is the fabulous scenery on our doorstep. Yesterday we took a drive up into Wharfedale to Kilnsey Park (underneath Kilnsey Crag) where we had a lovely walk in the sun, ate great food, and caught a few trout (okay, it was in a fish farm, so it was impossible not to catch any to be fair, but the look of delight on my daughter's face when she helped me to land the first fish was priceless).

Today I thought I'd show a recent piece of work I did for Carlisle Cleaning - a bid document cover (front and back) and content page (shown here as a double page spread) for a Eurostar cleaning contract. The subject matter is pretty dry, which is why it was important to lift the document with some creative thinking. The cover echoes the Eurostar electronic noticeboards, and the lined device on the content page alludes to train tracks. Much of the document was designed elsewhere at in Microsoft Word, and my brief was to make the cover, and content stand out (I also supplied the content page to the same design in a Word format too, so that should the client wish they could input page numbers etc themselves, as the pagination wasn't finalised at this stage).

It was a nice little project to work on, and I wish them well in winning the contract.

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Acceleris and Photoshop masking

Hello. I'm a little late blogging this week, but there is a reason for that. I wanted to include a piece of work I have just done with Acceleris Integrated Communications Agency in Harrogate, and we agreed that I could showcase it on my blog on Wednesday. Today! So here it is... a little concertina fold, designed and written for a housing conference in Brighton - it highlights the many skills Acceleris possess in social housing. The cover image was originally intended for page 3, but I felt it was so strong that it should be the lead image. However, I thought it would be fun to trace around the staff members and duplicate the image on page 3 as a keyline illustration - I think it works really well too.

This is the first piece of work I have done for Acceleris and I thoroughly enjoyed the whole process. Hopefully there are opportunities going forward to work with them again. And again...

I thought I'd finish this blog with a quick 'How To' lesson in Photoshop masking. There are several ways of masking an image in Photoshop, but this one is really useful and quick, and gives really nice results.

Step 1: Open the chosen image, add a new layer and fill it with 100% solid white.

Step 2: On the white layer, add a Layer Mask

Step 3: Choose a nice big, soft edged brush (its trial and error to get the correct size, but it shouldn’t be bigger than the element of the image you are masking off, but not too small either) and make sure 100% black is the foreground colour.

Step 4: Choose an opacity of 20-40%(ish). Again this is trial and error to an extent.

Step 5: Gradually ‘paint’ over the part of the image that you want to be seen through the mask. Make sure you still have the Layer Mask selected while doing this. Because the opacity isn’t 100% (or anywhere near), the more strokes you do over a particular area, the stronger the image becomes. This is what giver the finishes product a nice soft edge though.

Step 6: Experiment. Sometimes it’s nice to include some of the background ghosting through. The more you try it, the better the results get, although its very easy to get great results from the off.

Right, that's it from me for now. I hope you find the Photoshop tip useful. I'm off for a quick run before getting back to work.

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New clients, new relationships (professionally speaking)

Wow, what a busy week that was - and a very successful one too. I'm delighted to say that Howabout Creative Solutions had a couple of great meetings with Acceleris Integrated Communications Agency in Harrogate, the result of which is the prospect of Howabout working with them on their graphic design requirements from here on. Already I have designed a great little 8 page concertina-fold promotional brochure for them, which was very favourably received, and a larger magazine awaits my attention soon. Fab! Really excited by this development!!

Added to that, I did a day on location at Kariba Design Agency helping out with their heavy workload, and the signs are that this may be the start of a continued relationship. I hope so, as I really enjoyed the few hours I spent there, and it does make a refreshing change to get out and about occasionally and be in a studio with other like-minded creatives.

Added to that, two more projects were completed for York Test Laboratories, and a couple of ads for Clive Sutton luxury car dealership. All in all, another strong week for Howabout Creative Solutions in and around the Harrogate area (and beyond). Long may it continue!

Oh and I still had time to listen to some great tunes too: Jane's Addiction, Chemical Brothers, Skids, Beach Boys, Gorillaz, Orbital, Pop Will Eat Itself and Peter Doherty (as well as a few hours worth of the ever excellent 6Music).

Have a great weekend...

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