29-11-2010

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I'm blocked in and can't photograph anything interesting here's more snow...

28-11-2010

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Some sheep in the snow...

27-11-2010

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My Mac...

26-11-2010

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My little house in is snow covered glory...

A Year in photos

I have decided to do a year in photos thing, maybe not the most original idea ever, but at the end of it I hope to do something interesting with all the pictures. First picture to follow.

Blog Filling- Graduation

Two posts today, I want to get back into the habit of blogging again so I'm undertaking a project to help me do so, but more on that later. First I finally, after a few sleepless nights, graduated on Tuesday. Despite the nerves the day went really well. And I now finally feel that university is finished, on a sad note I realised just how much I missed everybody, but hopefully Facebook will help us keep in touch.

Yorkshire Sculpture Park

I went for a visit to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park on Saturday. I know it's not as exotic as some of the places people I know have been visiting recently, but I was quite happy for a brief change of scenery, when that scenery has sculptures to it all the more interesting.

The park is in west Yorkshire near Leeds and is easy to reach by car, also it is free, well £4 to park but that isn't too bad, it features some more permanent pieces to see as well as running exhibitions for example the current David Nash exhibition.

Biking Times

Still not much luck getting a design job apart from some freelance work for the Bonchester Brass Band.

In the meantime I have become obsessed with biking I try to get out three times a week for a couple of hours at a time and usualy four or five on Sunday. It means that I'm seeing a lot of the beautiful countryside around where I live, as well as getting fit obviously. The other week I took a ride along some of the disused Waverley line

Unfortunately at Stobs the line became overgrown so I had to find my way back to the road. Hopefully the government will see sense and finally reopen it so I can get into the center of Edinburgh in under an hour.

Lack of stuff going on

Fear not I'm still living and doing a bit design when I can. Recently I have broadened my horizons and visited some new places in the local area, a couple weeks ago me and my girlfriend to a trip to Keswick for the day– and it was brilliant lakes and mountains my type of place...

 

Ban Comic Sans

I personally don't think that comic sans has a place in this world, and in protest I have removed it from my mac! I can however see that in some rare situations it could work for examples in nursery's actually this is it, it doesn't even function in comic books. Whatever I can safely say that it is certainly not appropriate on a joiners van wow is that a poor font choice, despite this I witnessed such a crime today foreshame. I didn't take a picture a reminder to carry my camera everywhere.

P.S. there is a website dedicated to banning comic sans: bancomicsans.com ironically this site uses alot of comic sans.

Guilty not posted in a while blog.

Well what an interesting last month, final hand ins, exhibitions and sadly moving out of my student home. Anyway to occupy me I'm going to post more.

To start some images of our course exhibition:

Inspirational Song Day 5

Today's inspirational song is: Eye of The Tiger, Survivor

Eye of The Tiger, Survivor (youtube) 

Inspirational Song Day 4

Today's inspirational song is: Things Can Only Get Better, D:Ream

Thing Can Only Get Better, D:Ream (youtube)

Inspirational song day 3

Today's inspirational song is: Lets Work, Prince

Lets Work, Prince (youtube) 

Inpirational song day 2

Today's inspirational song is: Don't Stop Till You Get Enough, Michael Jackson

Don't Stop Till You Get Enough, Michael Jackson (youtube)

Inspirational Songs

Well it's the final week and my housemate Emily and I have decided to have an inspirational song for the day to be played loudly first thing in the morning and then again throughout the day when boredom sets in or when general motivation and inspiration are needed. 

Today's song is: Gold Spandau Ballet

Gold Spandau Ballet (youtube)

Printing

I spent a morning printing yesterday, I had good intentions of making something beautiful but instead did some experimentation with linocut, which was definitely worth doing. 

Leeds was fantastic

I took a trip down to Leeds at the weekend to experience some more of the country and I was not dissapointed. I am defiantly feeling recharged and refreshed and ready for any challenge. I took the train down via the Settle Carlisle line the scenery was absolutely breathtaking, I might become a convert to the Yorkshire way yet, could be the life for me.

A trip to look farward to

I am taking a trip down to Leeds this weekend to stay with a friend. It's going to be a nice change of scenery and despite the ever closer deadline I think it will be good to recharge my batteries for the two weeks ahead which are going to be damm hard work.

Dissertation Book

I finally finished the epic dissertation book and sent it to blurb to be printed. I heard about blurb from a friend and decided to give it a go, I sent them a dummy to practice on and was happy enough with the Finnish and quality, also the dissertation is 54 pages and that would cast a fortune in repo plus I would have to crudely bind it myself.

Here are some screen shots from the preview book from blurb.

The whole thing can be found here Toms Book

Another trip to the bookshop

I went to bookcase today to take some photos for my dissertation project. I got all the images I needed plus I managed to buy six books while at it. Shots of the finished piece will follow shortly.

A morning of photography

 I finished printing some book jackets the other day and today photographed them in one of the photography studios I was impressed with the outcome and my wee camera shone with all the bits attached to it.

I found some great packaging

I decided yesterday that I wanted to make fudge, so went out and about in the search for ingredients and found this in Marks & Spencer. I recon its a pretty sexy piece of packaging design it certainly looks a lot better than Tesco own brand stuff but then it does cost a lot more. The fudge also turned out very nice.

emergency post

I have been a bad person and have not posted anything for a while, I have been designing my socks off but have not actually got anything totally finished in the last week but I was trawling through my memory stick and found this old picture of my granddad at a show probably many years ago, he was a shepherd, and I actually own a similar jacket to his from my days working on a farm.

The Massacre on Charles Street

This is for a book jacket I am designing. I needed some blood splatter. I didn't want to get hurt so red paint was a good substitute, in this experiment I stuck 8 sheets of A3 paper together and filled a balloon with red paint. the plan was to stick the balloon the she sheet and pierce it with a dart causing an exciting explosion, the explosion was not so exciting but manually squirting paint etc crated a decent effect.

Brilliant Weather

I thought I would take a moment to praise the brilliant weather we have been having. It seems that a bit sunshine really does bring out the best in people, smiling faces and a generally fresher outlook. Long may it last. Huzzah.

The Book Shop

I took a trip down to the bookshop this morning, this is my idea of a good time, but I am different. I bought a couple of books to read, one of them was a Penguin from 1940 to add to my small but growing collection. I then ate a foot long sub something I now regret.

Yorkshire Puddings

I have been looking for alternative creative outlets this week, and today I turned my attention to Yorkshire puddings. I was pleased with the outcome they were tall and didn't taste too bad either, I have received some Yorkshire pudding based tutelage from my housemate who is from Yorkshire so I had a good starting point.

Holiday

Holidays are here (not that you can call it that I just don't need to go to uni for a few weeks) for the first week I am going home I have my laptop and all the files I need to do something, but I have a feeling that I won't be as productive as normal. Because my parents are taking a trip up north the second week I will be back to Carlisle and with no distractions, well apart from self made ones. The image on the mac is of my website, it is a bit of a work in progress but feel free to visit it www.tomtaylordesigns.co.uk

Chinese Supermarket

I found a Chinese supermarket around the back of the train station a few weeks ago and today on my way to staples I went in, I got myself some soy sauce and sweet chili sauce, I made myself some chili chicken, very good value for money.

YCN is done

I handed in my YCN today to be posted down to London for the deadline on Friday. I wrapped it nicely in brown wrapping paper it looked the part. I really enjoyed working on the project first time around and also working on it again to get it to a standard I was happy with, which I am.

Ordinarily I would celebrate with a good cup of coffee, but because I quit that I will have some warm juice and a biscuit to celebrate instead.

New Life

Before deciding to become a graphic designer I worked on a farm, my family have worked on farms for generations. My uncle Jimmy is a shepherd on a farm in Northumberland and on Saturday night I looked round the sheds with him, it's early days as lambing goes so we just had one in the hour, still a fantastic thing to witness.

Photographic experiments

Amongst many thing today (for example making a kick ass potato bake) I experimented with photographing my work eventually I worked out the problems and it seemed to work quite well.

Illuminating the wall

I went along to illuminating the wall tonight in Carlisle. It was part of a much bigger event, lighting Hadrians wall. All along the wall was lit and in Carlisle this was celebrated with a procession through part of town with the crowd carrying flaming torches, the event was topped of with a fantastic fireworks display. Some great, if not unusual, music was also played.

Collecting

Apart from a stamp collection, that I regrettably stopped paying attention to when I was about 14, I have never had a proper collection of anything. I knew I wanted one and I finally decided that my love of books had to play a part, I have always liked Penguins in particular, and wrote about them as part of my dissertation, hopefully this will be the first of many. This particular book was published in 1940, I look forward to reading it.

Books

I have been working on book jacket redesigns, for some books that I recently read. The main character is an ex military policeman who now lives a drifter lifestyle, I felt for this reason to include scenes or roads and tar-mac that also relate to the story.

Hi, I'm a PC, and I'm incapable of developing an original concept.

Refining YCN

I have been spending a little time refining my YCN hope it's about there now, sure I will be told tomorrow if it isn't.