www.balldesignconsultancy.com

A collaboration website made with Kingston based graphic design company Ball Design Consultancy for their company portfolio website. They specialise in academic brochure design and wanted a home site with an approachable atmosphere and that shows the people behind the work.

The site has a content management system that allows easy updating to all areas of the site. It also has details of how to find them when travelling by pogostick.

I was contacted by LA based Healamonster & Tarsier a while back and was asked to make a website for them, they liked the artwork I made for it so much that they also asked me to design the band logo and artwork for their album ‘Cupcake Cave’. I made the designs through lots of sketches and collages which was infinitely more enjoyable than, say, optimising a MySql database if I’m being honest…

You can see their video for the single ‘Ships With Lights’ by following this link. As well as an introduction to their music its also a nice reminder that living in LA is both hotter and yet cooler than living in the UK.

I say this alot about my clients, but it was a pleasure working with two such lovely, creative people.

In honour of this I’m using this post, my first of this half finished year, to show some footage of one of my favourite bands. Mogwai will be releasing a live film ‘Burning’ next month, its directed by the ludicrously talented Vincent Moon and as someone who has seen them play numerous times I’m delighted to see that someone has managed to transfer what makes their shows so phenomenal to the screen.

Here’s “I’m Jim Morrison, I’m Dead” from the film.

www.wearebear.co.uk

I have been working with the guys over at Urban Fruit for a few years now, and wonderful people they are too. Meetings with them are tests of concentration as they put dishes of their delicious snacks on the table  and you have to see if you can stop yourself from eating all of them at once. Being a consumate professional I tend to have a few and then try and grab as many as I can when leaving. But I digress….

Urban Fruit decided that they wanted to create a new range of snacks that retained their healthy and ethical principles but yet appealed to a wider audience and stepped away from all the preconceptions of what dried fruit snacks are.

So BEAR was born, a fun and edgy new fruit snack with a lovely range of products. The site was a collaboration with the good folk over at B & B Design who came up with the original concept and design and I sorted out all the tech elements and animations.

The site has a CMS and can be updated easily and a simple e-commerce shop that means you can buy their products – I recommend the Mango Pineapple particularly – absolutely lush….

It is always a pleasure to work with the guys over at BEAR, a small company that make a wonderful product and that are really starting to see the fruits of their labour (I can’t believe I put ‘fruits of their labour there….). Success that they thoroughly deserve.

www.bonbiforest.com

A couple of months ago Lee May, of the until recently named Bonbi Forest Indie Emporium, decided that she wanted to downscale her shop and concentrate on the designing of new and beautiful trinkets.

So she has slimmed the name back to Bonbi Forest and now concentrates entirely on her own designs – this can only be a good and wonderful thing, as a look at some of her beautiful artwork shows that she is a rare talent.

As always her site was a collaboration between the two of us as we aimed for a design that had a more minimal feel that still entirely reflects Lee May’s unique artistic world view.

There can also be seen a return of one of the world’s most reluctant male models, my good self. As it may be a little known fact that Lee May is my long term lady friend, she has also agreed to marry me next year! Potential clients can be assured that marriage is in no way a normal part of my web design contract.

The site was made with bespoke templates and designs and has a full ecommerce system as well as a content management system all of which can be controlled and updated by the client.

www.thestellarboutique.com

Stella McClure is the lady that runs The Stellar Boutique in which she sells her incredible selection of vintage, rare and, more often than not, one-off clothing. In her own words:

“Vintage clothing (to which it is most favourably known) is fast becoming the ‚Äòtrendiest‚Äô way to shop, and with today‚Äôs most prominent fashion power-houses continuing to look to the past to create future collections, it seems vintage clothing is the way forward.”

Stella wanted a store that reflected the diversity and quality of her wares and also reflected the name of her store, so the site is full of unique designs that combine astrological imagery with a vintage, psychedelic feel.

The overall site aesthetic benefits from Stella’s fantastic product photography, and if your wondering how the weather looks amazing in all the images, this is because Stella is based in Spain – where it appears to be very warm indeed, unlike the very cold UK summer we had during the project development….

The site has a full ecommerce system as well as a blog content management system all made to web standards.

You can see more of his stuff on his Flickr page

One of my highlights of the weekend was getting the chance to see Richmond Fontaine, a band that I’ve loved for years. Their new album ‘We Used to Think the Freeway Sounded Like a River‘ is wonderful – you can buy it here and I really recommend that you do

Here’s a track about getting a phone call from an old friend.

I wholeheartedly recommend that you listen to this wonderful, minimal, brooding album that despite the use of those words has a real sense of joy and positivity to it. The tracks ‘Islands’ and ‘Infinity’ I pretty much have fallen in love with and its the first album in a long time that had got me genuinely excited about people making music again.

In these times of the increased concern of how music should be delivered to the consumer it is wonderful to see someone forging their own path, creating something that turns music into a tactile, coveted, complete object that absorbs the listener both visually and aurally.