Futurefabric — Blog

Sawdust — new site launched I’ve just finished a new...

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:17:00 +0000

Sawdust — new site launched

I’ve just finished a new portfolio site for design studio, Sawdust.

Designing icons for the Government. I’ve recently been...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:03:00 +0000

Designing icons for the Government.

I’ve recently been working with the very talented team at the Government Digital Service — a group tasked with the very difficult job of ensuring the Government offers world-class websites that meet people’s needs.

The first public iteration of their work has just been released at gov.uk and I had the fun job of working on a set of icons to denote different sections of the site, seen above.

The ambition and goal of the gov.uk project is fantastic news for the public. If you care at all about having Government web services that are transparent, usable and helpful, I recommend you head over and take a look. Leaving your feedback for the team would be a bonus too.

Visit gov.uk

A new year, a new start I only had one new year’s resolution for...

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 17:26:00 +0000

A new year, a new start

I only had one new year’s resolution for 2012…

— Become a freelance designer and set up Futurefabric as a limited company.

And well, I’m pleased to say that before the year’s even had a chance to shake off it’s hangover, I’m now a fully fledged independent.

I’m feeling pretty fired up about the year ahead and would love to hear about any interesting projects or collaborations. Please get in touch if you think we could work together, it’d be great to hear from you.

Oh and a happy new year to you!

Machinarium I recently finished this point-and-click adventure...

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 22:13:10 +0000

Machinarium

I recently finished this point-and-click adventure game from Amanita Design and was pleased to find it totally lives up to the indie game studio’s past form.

I highly recommend it to anyone with an appreciation for thoughtfully crafted design and excellently paced conundrums that require a bit of lateral thinking.

Visit the Machinarium site.

Airside 1998—2012 Today I received some news that left me with a...

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 23:38:00 +0000

Airside 1998—2012

Today I received some news that left me with a heavy heart — Airside, the design company I worked for for five happy years is to fold early next year.

I have so many fond memories of being a member of the Airside team and feel privileged to have played a part in the studio’s story. I was also lucky enough to meet and work with so many super cool, talented people.

It’s fair to say that never before have I worked for a company (nor will I likely again) that so vehemently protected, trusted and cared for it’s designers and the creative process. This is something that could only ever have been possible with designers themselves at the company’s helm.

I see now that Airside’s directors made huge sacrifices to keep the company this way, giving the rest of us enormous creative freedom, often at cost to themselves.

For that I want to say thanks Nat, Fred and Alex and thanks for the good times Airside, we’ll be sad to see you go.

Baroque.me baroque.me by @alexanderchen visualizes Bach’s first...

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 15:33:00 +0100

Baroque.me

baroque.me by @alexanderchen visualizes Bach’s first Prelude by drawing notes as strings. Lovely.

Anaconda Lovely symmetry/geometry in this animation by Iain Acton

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 13:00:00 +0100

Anaconda Lovely symmetry/geometry in this animation by Iain Acton

Time lapse of Earth from the ISS In a word, amazing.

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 12:53:00 +0100

Time lapse of Earth from the ISS In a word, amazing.

Sawdust I’m currently working on a lovely new site for the guys...

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 23:30:40 +0100

Sawdust

I’m currently working on a lovely new site for the guys over at Sawdust, due to hit the interwebz sometime this summer.

They’ve got some brilliant new projects to showcase, including this great new typeface, New Modern that they‘ve designed for the Hype For Type foundry. Impressive stuff.

More news on the site soon.

Typetoken I was recently invited to contribute to this excellent...

Thu, 12 May 2011 23:59:43 +0100

Typetoken

I was recently invited to contribute to this excellent newly launched typography blog.

I’m planning to focus my energy on posting about type in the context of interactive and online projects. If you have an interest in such things, please swing by.

And apologies if it’s felt like there’s been a bit of tumbleweed blowing around here for the past few weeks — I just became a dad for the second time, so I’ve had my hands pretty full!

Le soleil brille! This pretty much sums up my mood right now as...

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 22:41:54 +0000

Le soleil brille!

This pretty much sums up my mood right now as winter *finally* realises it’s time to move on.

And the clocks go forward this Sunday too — roll on summer! :)

Flashman — The Proposition I love this video for the first track from Flashman’s début album “To...

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 23:03:40 +0000

Flashman — The Proposition I love this video for the first track from Flashman’s début album “To...

Homemade is best I love this project by Forsman & Bodenfors...

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 21:49:37 +0000

Homemade is best

I love this project by Forsman & Bodenfors for IKEA.

Beautiful, minimal, graphic layouts of ingredients make for a brilliantly unusual and compelling cook book.

The project has just picked up a Brit Insurance Design Award in the graphic category. There’s more over on Creative Review.

Many hands do the same work… There are few things more...

Sun, 13 Feb 2011 22:04:08 +0000

Many hands do the same work…

There are few things more frustrating than working up a good idea to find it’s already been done.

And this is exactly what happened to me towards the end of last year. While finishing up work on a new print (above) for the Airside Play shop, I was sent a link by a friend — to this.

I was gutted. I knew this was the death knell for my idea and that my hard work would amount to nothing. I couldn’t go ahead with it in the knowledge that something so similar was already for sale.

So how to salvage something from the ruins? Well, blog about it of course! So here I am.

I plan to write a more extensive account of what happened and the wider implications it has on intellectual property and plagiarism on the Airside Play site soon. Hopefully see you there.

Light painting Every now and again, a project comes along,...

Tue, 08 Feb 2011 15:29:00 +0000

Light painting

Every now and again, a project comes along, where you think ‘Damn, I wish I’d done that’.

For me, last year this was BERG and Dentsu London’s collaboration — ‘Making Future Magic’.

It involved the creation of typographic light paintings using an iPad/iPhone and stop frame long exposure photography. And lovely music by my friend Matt Brown.

You can see the stopframe movie here.

The icing on the cake was in the release of Penki, an iPad/iPhone app allowing anyone to have a go at playing with the technology.

I hadn’t had a chance to have a play with Penki until now, but it’s a lot of fun. When I’ve got some better images than the one above, I’ll be submitting them to the Penki Flickr group. It‘s cool, have a go!

Hands up… …if you want to do more drawing! Well,...

Sat, 08 Jan 2011 22:10:00 +0000

Hands up…

…if you want to do more drawing!
Well, That’s my intention for 2011 anyway.

So, in that spirit, here’s a little owl I drew on a winter’s day recently when my son and I were snowed in with a box of crayons.

North Korea A place that I am utterly fascinated by. I have...

Sat, 08 Jan 2011 22:03:00 +0000

North Korea

A place that I am utterly fascinated by. I have just finished an absolutely amazing book called ‘Nothing to Envy’ by Barbara Demick. It is a collection of first hand accounts from North Korean defectors and offers a unique insight into the bewildering and terrifying DPRK regime. I can’t recommend it enough to anyone interested in the subject.

The cover photography is by an extremely talented photo journalist, Eric Lafforgue. His photography on Flickr offers a rare glimpse into a country which has imposed absolute control over it’s people for nearly half a century. Take a look. Amazing.

Block Clock A year or two ago, I spent some time designing and...

Sat, 13 Nov 2010 14:15:00 +0000

Block Clock

A year or two ago, I spent some time designing and coding a clock in Flash using Box2D — a code library in which objects obey the laws of physics.

Block Clock relies on gravity to allow blocks to fall into frame and collide with each other as each second passes.

Blocks stack up as the seconds pass and when each minute elapses, the colour palette of the blocks changes.

It was just for a bit of fun really and I had hoped to put it out there as a free, downloadable screensaver, but as the popularity of Flash and screensavers has waned, this never happened.

I thought I’d share it here anyway - it seems a shame for it never to see the light of day.

You can also read more about this project in my portfolio.

Airside Outside Really looking forward to tomorrow night, when...

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 23:23:00 +0100

Airside Outside

Really looking forward to tomorrow night, when Airside will be hosting an evening of talks, music and entertainment for Glug at Cargo.

Full details of the event can be found on the bookings site, ~~where you can buy tickets~~.

Sorry, the event has now sold out! Hope to see you there though :)

Chronophotography Finally buying my GF1 has given me a renewed...

Tue, 26 Oct 2010 21:19:00 +0100

Chronophotography

Finally buying my GF1 has given me a renewed vigour to get out and about and take more photographs.

On one such recent trip to the Southbank, I took a series of shots of skaters and BMXers as I’d been wanting for a while to explore some different creative techniques through my photography.

The results offered a great opportunity to finally try my hand at chronophotography — a technique used to catch frames of action and bring them together in one composition.

You can see one attempt above. There’s a few more over here, where I’ll also be adding future efforts.