I’ve been well and truly over the moon these past couple of weeks, galavanting to Dublin for the OFFSET Festival, meeting some fantastic people, working on some illustrations for a football magazine, putting together a body of work for a special project and creating tutorials for a national magazine.

But wait, hold the curtain, I received the most awesomest of awesome news the other week that one of my pieces of work is going to be included in a book! A huge bout of smiles ensued after the email and much drinks of the Sailor jerry’s persuasion were consumed. Finally, after getting back to reality I can let you know that the book is called – “Mastering Type: The Essential Guide to Typography for Print and Web Design” and is going to be released around June 2012.

Mighty chuffed to have been selected and want to say a rather immense thank-you to the author Denise Bosler for including me, it’s an honour.

So yes, I’ll be sure to parp on about the book nearer the release date, so keep some pennies to buy it!

When Pinterest first arrived on the social media scene I couldn’t help feeling a little sceptical, mainly because of the saturated nature of collection sites – but still I had to register to temper my curiosity.

I began by creating a few practical boards to keep a reference of all the ‘stuff’ I come across on a daily basis that either makes me think, makes me smile, makes me envious and downright makes me want to buy. This is all well and good and I plodded along pinning this, that and everything, but it came to a point where I needed to expand this little gateway of harnessing information.

After a little think I decided to create a board call ‘Influencers’, I didn’t want it to be to hard hitting – just a nice place to go to when I need a bit of advice or a pick me up if I’m having a bit of a down day (which is hardly ever!). So that was it, I began a journey collecting images and quotes from the most influential people within the Creative Industry – each with their own story and beliefs. As the journey went on, I decided to widen the so called ‘Creative Industry’ walled garden I gave myself and spread my search to different industries. Quickly I began seeing a consistent theme arising, one which shows how the beliefs of one industry can easily be adapted to another – and almost pushing it in a new direction.

Together with my plethora of boards collecting information and influence, I have started a board called ‘Daily Feature’. It’s a board which is going to be a daily experiment to find a new person and showcase their talents.

So there we have it – if your on Pinterest why not pop along and follow me, and if your not – wake up, pop me an email and I’ll sort you an invite!

My pinterest – http://pinterest.com/jamesp0p/
Daily Feature Board – http://pinterest.com/jamesp0p/daily-feature/
Influence Board – http://pinterest.com/jamesp0p/influencers/

Go forth and PIN

Over the past few years I’ve been fortunate to have seen a great deal of professionals from the creative industry talk at large and small events, but nothing could have prepared me for Dublin’s OFFSET 2012 event. Billed as ‘Dublin’s Premier Creative Festival’ with speakers including Stefan Sagmeister, Erik Kessels, Eike König and Paula Scher to name but a few can kind of give you the magnitude of inspiration on offer.

To develop as a creative, I saw this as an opportunity to get out of my comfort zone and give myself a firm kick up the backside to travel and meet new and interesting people. Throughout the entire event there was such a friendly and accommodating atmosphere – not to mention being able to bump into the speakers and have a quick relaxed chat with them (which I did with Michael Bierut!).

Given the plethora of speakers and insane overload of information I don’t feel like I can give this write up the justice it truly deserves, so here’s a nice link to the awesome guys over at Creative Review who have a great lowdown on the entire event.

Just want to say a big thanks to the organisers and also Mr Steven Bonner who shared a good few Beer’s with me and some ace talk. He’s a massively talented fellow and I definitely recommend you go and check out his work!

One for your calendars people. A Spring exhibition showcasing the Graphic Design graduates from the Shillington College, Manchester. The exhibition will be held at the Cube Gallery on Portland St from 6pm – 9pm.

Drinks plus portfolio’s shall be on offer.

To find out more about Shillington College you can use the following links:
Twitter
Facebook
Blog
www.shillingtoncollege.co.uk

Just a quick note to tell you all to keep an eye out for issue 31 of DigitalArtist magazine – there’s a lovely little tutorial & histrology on the ‘Mid-Century Modern’ style tucked away in there by me.

I was asked by the ace people over at digital agency MadebyShape to contribute to their Christmas campaign. Each contributor gets a shape and then they have to create a digital wallpaper in the festive spirit to portray that particular shape.

Out of all the shapes on offer I was given the beautiful Equilateral triangle. Instantly I could have gone with the obvious option of a Christmas tree, but I wanted to do something a little different. After a bit of playful penciling I had the idea of a top down view of Father Christmas, his sleigh and his reindeers. To create the triangle I used the shape as a set of guiding lights similar to a runway to help Rudolf light the way for the present bearing fellow.

You can have a look at the rest of the entries over here on Shape’s ‘itsashapechristmas‘ site.

Tis the season to be jolly, tra la la…. you know how it goes! Being a big fan of the work of Made by Many I entered one of my illi/type work to be included in their festive seasons update of Holler Gram. It’s a lovely app that allows you to fill your screen with different messages and to also create your own, you can have a quick look at what I’m talking about here.

I was lucky enough to be amongst some rather talented people speaking at the recent GF Smith x BLAB mini event in Nov 2011.

Speakers on the night included:
Percy Dean
James OConnell
Natasha Wilcocks
James Gilbert
Matt Kendall

The night kicked off with a wonderful speech by Paul Scharf from GF Smith, going into great detail about the history and progression of the design industries leading paper supplier.

Throughout the night there was different views of how inspiration is perceived and collected. Overall the night was a great success and a big thank-you to the guys at Eskimo Creative and Northern Digitals for organising it.

It was a warm evening at the end of October and I managed to wangle my way over to the Cornerhouse to see an array of speakers all talking along the theme of Creativity.

The line-up consisted of:
Young – Geth and Pete
Red C Marketing – Julian Gratton
Golden – Rob Brierley
Magnetic North – Brendan Dawes

Young’s Geth and Pete kicked off the night by talking about how they found it difficult to initially establish themselves and their name, being fair we were going through a recession where spend was minimal and almost non-existent. They utilised every method possible from cold calling to sending out mailers and funnily enough it was the mailers that grabbed the most attention. It was only when they began to take a different direction by using a self-initiated project to push their brand name that things started to come together. This resulted in ‘Learn something new everyday‘, a drawing a day revealing a fact that goes un-noticed in everyday life, they were onto a winner. Their site had an immense raise in traffic resulting in gaining more and more exciting work offers. This was kind of their theme, revealing how important it is to pursue self-initiated projects and how it’s not only beneficial to yourself, but also to the clients around you. Last but not least they finished their talk by introducing their new online tool called ViewRL – a tool which allows you to view Twitter differently, something that will aggregate all the precious links, videos and other media into a usable cauldron of eye-candy. Go check it out; it is rather awesome!

Next up was Julian Grattan from Red C Marketing. You could see his passion for creativity immediately, talking about how he left his initial role to pursue his current one – even though he explained that they were producing below parr work. A risky move but the upward growth of Red C and it’s quality of creative is an example of how introducing a forward thinking and somewhat unconventional (that comes from ripping up his teams pitch docs at midnight and telling them to begin again the night before the pitch) figure into the mix can really make a difference.

After a short break, Rob Brearley from Golden took the stage. I was quite excited as I’ve followed his and Golden’s work for quite some time. He opened with an array of slides talking about his studio’s work and clients. I’m sure everyone was blown away as this is probably the first time a lot of the people in the room have seen their array of awesome work – mainly due to Golden’s site not giving much away, but as Rob explained, a site can’t really give justice to the finishes involved and the conceptual ideas. I can vouch for this as I’ve seen their work first-hand and their craft is unbelievable! After viewing slide upon slide of fantastic work for clients large and small, Rob’s underlying point was all about how much hard work goes into every project, and how it’s not just about having a great idea – but also having the ability to craft it perfectly.

Coming to the end of the night Brendan Dawes from Magnetic North took the stand. After seeing him talk at the MadLab for one of Northern Digitals #BLAB events I knew he was going to be ace! I’m a big fan of Brandan’s upbeat nature and how he tirelessly experiments with old and new things. He talked about how we are all living in the future, surrounded by an immense amount of opportunities. He revealed a few of his personal projects where he has used Arduino and 3D printing. Hearing him talk about a recent project where he managed to connect the Arduino chipset to a wireless printer, simply to print a series of random images from Instagram every morning was a delight. Although I’m sure it was far from simple, it was the way he told the story with excitement and how he was nervous to look in the brown bag where the prints should be – just in case there wasn’t any in there. This to me was the core meaning of the whole night, not to be afraid to experiment and try new things.

Big thanks for an absolutely fantastic night by the guys from #NoteToSelf: Chris Roberts and Dave Moore. Looking forward to the next one!

Check out the pictures from the night here

Thought this deserved a mention, not only has the Manchester and Salford Illustrated been seen on:
Design Week
Creative Times
The Drum
Creative Boom
Central Station
Spotted by Locals
Manchester Confidential
Orchard
MPA
Vision+Media
MMU
Manchester Beacon
Salford Star
and a whole host of other blogs & radio shows, it has made the BBC News Manchester site.

I’m truly grateful for them choosing my illustration to be shown on the site, the projects coming on leaps and bounds!

Update on the night will be coming shortly!