Happy New Year

Hello and happy new year to one and all. I hope everyone had a great break - I know I did, although it was interspersed with work (no bad thing). I really would have preferred last years snow and freezing temperatures to this years mild, wet and windy conditions mind. Ah well...

Shown here is a logo I designed for Acceleris in Harrogate for the Leeds Community Stars Awards 2012 campaign.

Residents across Leeds are being encouraged to nominate individuals and successful community projects for the Leeds Community Stars Awards 2012. The awards run by Aire Valley, West North West and East North East Homes along with Belle Isle Tenant Management Organisation, will acknowledge achievements in categories including Resident of the Year, Best Community Initiative and Most Innovative Project.

I'm really pleased with the end result - it's fairly simple, yet punchy but has a tone that is friendly yet striking. I deliberately reduced the intensity of the black typography to a strong grey, as it makes the font less dense and dead looking. A little bit of bevelling on the star lifts it from the background too and adds an extra dimension to the overall logo.

Here's to a prosperous 2012, with plenty of cheer (and graphic design work) ahead. All the best to everyone.

(Oh, as far as music goes, I'm loving The Leisure Society's 'Into the Murky Water' album. Lovely stuff, I'd recommend it...)

Please click on the link below to see further examples of my work.

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Cars and Christmas

Clive Sutton postcard for
Top Gear Live 2011 (London)

Morning all.

I can't believe Christmas is almost upon us and 2012 is just around the corner. 2011 has been a really good year and I've worked on some great graphic design projects for clients in Harrogate, York, Leeds, London and Surrey. In fact, as the year has progressed, Howabout Creative Solutions have been getting busier and busier, which is testament to the quality of work produced.

With that in mind, here are a couple of recent projects, the first of which is a postcard designed for Clive Sutton for their stand at the Top Gear Live 2011 show in London. The double sided postcard highlights some of the services offered by Clive Sutton, and is a very image led design (and brand led) design that looks visually appealing.

Item number two is a direct mailer for York Test Laboratories in York. The theme was a festive one, without being to twee and clichéd and while we chose the wrapped-up present concept, I think we did it in such a way as to be different and eye-catching. As ever with these direct mailers, space has to be left at the top left for name and address details to be inserted.

York Test Laboratories December direct mailer

The start of 2012 is already looking quite promising with projects that seem set to go ahead in January and beyond, but with a busy couple of weeks before Christmas it's time for me to knuckle down and get creative, so tunes on (The Jezabels), InDesign launched, and here we go...

Please click on the link below to see further examples of my work.

Visit www.howabout.co.uk

Focus and fruit

Solace Focus, November 2011 issue

Hello from Howabout Towers.

Here are a two recent projects I have been working on. The first one is a quarterly pdf magazine for the 'Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers'. It's quite a nice publication to work on, although the content is fairly dry and there isn't a huge amount of opportunity to be creative with images. It's very much information driven - clean and concise with an easy navigation system and external email and web links. It usually runs to between 45 and 60 pages and has a relatively quick turnaround time. The supplied copy is written to a fairly polished standard, so text amends after design has begun are pretty light, and that obviously helps immensely with the whole process.

YorkTest Laboratories direct mailer

The second project is for YorkTest Laboratories, for who I do a lot of design work. Featured here is the latest direct mailer, aimed at customers who have taken an initial food intolerance test but can now go into more detail with a second test and find out which foods specifically they are reacting to.

As ever with YorkTest design briefs, there is good potential to mix some nice typography with great images of food and drink. It's sometimes tempting to use multiple food images as there is a whole array of ingredients that are tested, but on this occasion I thought it would be good to focus on just one really nice image. I think the interaction between image and copy works well, and the curve of the bubbles leaves the all important space top left to include the recipients address.

Please click on the link below to see further examples of my work.

Visit www.howabout.co.uk

Photography exhibition

This is a recent graphic design project that I did for Acceleris in Harrogate for their client the Shipwrecked Mariners' Society. My brief was to design an invitation (shown below) to a wonderful photography exhibition and also the accompanying exhibition brochure (front and back cover spread, and inside spread shown above).

The Shipwrecked Mariners' Society put on the exhibition called ‘Celebrations of the Sea’ – the world’s first photography exhibition underwater featuring images of individuals whose lives are dominated by the ocean. It opened at the Sea Life Centre in Brighton on 21st October and then travels around several more Sea Life Centres through November and into December.

It was a brilliant project to be part of - not only was there the opportunity to be creative with the design of the brochure and invite, but the images from the exhibition were, of course, amazing.

The brochure briefly featured each of the people represented in the exhibition, as well as highlighting the work of the Shipwrecked Mariners' Society themselves. As they state in the introduction to the brochure...

'Celebrations of the Sea aims to honour the maritime industry’s unsung heroes. From the fishermen who brave the UK’s stormiest seas and traditional lobster pot makers who keep precious traditions alive to our most talented celebrity chefs who transform fish into some of the nations favourite dishes – all are celebrated in this unique and special photography exhibition.

'Born out of a partnership between national maritime charity the Shipwrecked Mariners’ Society and renowned underwater photographer and TV Producer Kate Westaway, the project is a celebration of those hardworking individuals who work in and around the sea.'

Without a doubt, this is my favourite graphic design project that I have worked on this year and I'm very pleased with the end result.

Please click on the link below to see further examples of my work.

Visit www.howabout.co.uk

Further OCS spreads and design banter

I have attached a couple of further spreads from the recent OCS annual report that was recently completed because, well, I'm pretty proud of that particular job so thought it was worth another shameless plug.

It has continued to be a manic few weeks on the graphic design front and I have done plenty of work in both Leeds and Harrogate as well as for clients in York and London. It certainly makes for a varied and unpredictable working week, which is great. The recent work has included collateral for the banking sector, the automotive sector, the healthcare sector and some nice work for a photography exhibition (visuals to be displayed here soon).

The only downside to this hefty workload is that I have let the blog updates slip a little, but hey, that can't be helped. On that note, I'll sign off here and get back to the next design job, as deadlines are looming.

Over and out.

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OCS Annual Report

It's been busy recently. Really busy in fact. As well as doing some interesting graphic design projects from my base here in Harrogate, I have also been helping out at agencies in Leeds and also on t'other side of Harrogate. The days have been long, sometimes the weekends have been interrupted by design jobs too, but it's been good fun.

Attached here is an example of an annual report that we designed for OCS (feel free to click on the image for a better view). It was a great project to be involved with - a really satisfyingly chunky piece of work that came with a suitable budget to do it justice. It allowed us to use nice (largely stock) photography, use a fifth special colour in the printing process and make use of a nice paper stock. Myself and Tim Moat worked on the design side, while Richard Spencer was the wordsmith - I think we made a great team.

The process was a relatively smooth one too, and once the job had been signed off and gone to print, I worked on an interactive pdf version. We obviously knew this was going to be a requirement, so when I set up the initial templates and style sheets, I created some navigation buttons on a hidden layer in InDesign that could be activated at a later stage. There was some additional navigation to manually create too, mainly from the contents page, as the size of the overall document meant that it was spread over several InDesigns 'books' that were stitched together later on.

All in all, it was a great graphic design job to work on, and I am delighted with the end result.

As ever, music and design have been working in sweet harmony. I recently saw Gruff Rhys (of Super Furry Animals fame) do a great gig at Harrogate Theatre. It was suitably weird, brilliant, unpredictable and enjoyable. Next up I'm off to see Miles Hunt (of Wonderstuff fame) play a gig in Carlisle (I'm a bit of a sucker for all things Stuffies), and then it's Fleet Foxes in Leeds later on in the year. Fab!

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Healthcare examples

Morning world and welcome to a blustery Tuesday morning in September.

Beaucare Medical
Today I thought I'd showcase a couple of recent bit of graphic design work completed for clients in the healthcare sector, starting with a press ad for Beaucare Medical in Harrogate (shown above). Its a monthly full page ad that appears in Caring UK magazine and focuses on a selection of the products they offer.

Bradfern
Below is the front page of a 2 page A4 leaflet designed for Bradfern in Oldham, again it showcases some of the products on offer for care homes and the like. This is the first of what will hopefully be a suite of promotional materials, each one focusing on different areas of the business.

Actually, I haven't listed the tunes that have been spinning on the Howabout hi-fi for a while now have I!? A man can't design in total silence after all. Well I can't anyway. A look on the iTunes 'recently played' list indicates it's Fleetwood Mac, Prodigy, Ozric Tentacles, Rolling Stones, NWA, Fleet Foxes and Dinosaur Jr. Not bad...

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