Cadbury Poster at Pearse Station

This was a photo I took at Pearse Street train station (Dublin) on the way home from a trip out to Blackrock which I posted photographs of last week. I think that was the one nice day we’ve had since the start of summer. Anyhoo! It’s of a vintage Cadbury print advertising their chocolate. There’s always a lot of construction work going on in the station. I’d never seen this before so I think it must be something they’ve uncovered as they were doing work but it’s probably been visible a long time now.

I’d love to know how old the poster itself is. I think it should be in a museum because even though the station is sheltered, it’s quite exposed. Then you know you would get a some information on it too like what way it was printed etc. I tried to compare it to other Cadbury posters on this great Cadbury timeline to get a rough idea but I’m not sure, early to mid 1900s anyway!

Smoke & Mirrors

This was a typographic project I completed during college. Our tutor was inspired by Marian Bantjes, a Canadian typographer, in creating the brief. The aim was to create a highly decorative piece of typography that we could make up off the top of our heads. I had no idea what I was drawing or writing as I began. Typically, when I am doodling, I end up writing my name or an initial, as I think many designers or doodlers would do. So naturally enough, the letter “s” was the first thing to appear.

Because of the the swirling and looping nature of what I had just drawn, I was reminded of smoke. And so, my phrase became “Smoke & Mirrors”. I choose the ampersand because it complimented what I was already drawing. I drew the phrase and painted it so as to make it clearer before I brought it onto my computer so I could tidy and adjust it.

So I scanned my image and adjusted it in Adobe Illustrator. I created a template out of my phrase and added brush effects behind it to play up the smokey aspect of the lettering. I layered the effects to build them like a cloud behind the words. The ‘aim’ for the typographic piece was that it would be wall art or a mural of some sort. Then we had to design a promotional materials for the hypothetical wall art. I decided my image would be wall art ‘hung’ outside The Academy as part of a promotion for a new club night and my print materials consisted of a poster as seen above and a flyer.

I like how the words are less decipherable than the original drawing. It brings the air of mystery back to the phrase “Smoke & Mirrors”. In the poster, I reflected the image under the information to link back to the mirror facet of the design.

Freshly Made Font

This is a college piece where the brief called to make a handmade alphabet. The brief was loosely inspired my Stefan Sagmeister’s project Thing I Have Learned In My Life So Far. Although we didn’t have to make a life lesson into a typographical piece of art, we did have to explore the alphabet using lots of materials to try and create an interesting and unusual typeface. I remember playing around with paper clips and the contents of my make up bag (as you do) at first in order to make some letters when I was in the brainstorming phase.

So as you can see, I was blatantly starving in college the day I decided what my typeface was going to be made of!

So each letter in the alphabet is a different layer in a sandwich or a different stage in its preparation. For example you have mayo > lettuce > chicken > cut sandwich, making up the letters A, B, C and D respectively. Or mustard > ham > cheese > cut sandwich, making up E, F, G and H respectively. I used white and brown bread plus a variety of fillings like chocolate spread, sausage, ketchup, egg mayonnaise, onion, peanut butter and jam.

The class took over the student common room and turned it into a little photography studio to photograph our projects. Other students chose material such as elastic bands, ribbons, pins and skittles to make their typefaces. Needless to say I had the place destroyed with sauce, crumbs and all the rest whilst individually photographing all 52 parts of my messy alphabet! And I went through a buttload of white paper, but, if I wanted to make it that easy I wouldn’t have chosen sambos.

You hungry?

CMYK Birthday Card

It’s amazing all the stuff you find as you go through all your work. Things that you completely forgot you did because you did it just cos. No big reason, you just fancied making something? Well that’s birthday card I made for someone that I printed off at home when I had no pennies to buy one. Being a peasant is not fun.

But card making is! :D

I really wanted to try out a new font that I had and I guess the rest of the design was inspired by the font. Simple shapes, basic colours and that future/retro look if that makes sense!