Muller — News & Blog

Design Assembly 3 — The Book.

hellomuller — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 11:23:39 +0000

Last night Matt Judge & Co. launched 3, a book collecting 3 years of the design blog Design Assembly—
drawing a line under the site’s existence and creating a lasting artefact that archives over 100 published articles and showcases new and exclusive content and images from some top names in the creative industry.

The most important thing though, is that all profits from the sale of 3 will go to 3 cancer charities:
Cancer Research in the UK, LIVESTRONG in North America and WCRF International.
Its a great book, with amazing content, and beautifully produced for a great cause.

You can buy the book directly from the Design Assembly site.

Digital Arts, December 2011

hellomuller — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 10:51:27 +0000

Digital Arts, December 2011 cover

The December issue of Digital Arts Magazine features tips on logo design featuring @helloMuller, johnsonbanks, @stevenbonner, @1hqbrandagency, @hattrick_design and more — as Michael Burns talks to the identity designers behind some of the world’s most recognisable logos, and discovers the secrets of their success.

A helloMuller Sampler

hellomuller — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 16:06:40 +0000

A PDF sampler of selected design work covering 2001—2009 I put together a while ago that contains a cursory glance at a few favourite projects: Designed by Muller: A selection of work. (5.8MB PDF file)

The helloMuller Ltd Ad.

hellomuller — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 15:19:21 +0000

helloMuller Ltd. Press Ad, a photo by helloMuller on Flickr.

Recently this ad for helloMuller Ltd has started running in the comics of Mark Millar,
the creator of Wanted and Kick-Ass. Currently its appearing in Kick-Ass 2 #4 and Superior #6.
Click the photo for the bigger version on Flickr.

Digital Arts, November 2011

hellomuller — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 15:06:35 +0000

Digital Arts November 2011 cover

The current issue of Digital Arts is available now, and I contributed some advice to the issue’s “Get Interactive” feature:

GET INTERACTIVE!
Are you longing to get into web design and apps, but finding the learning curve too steep? People who’ve made the leap give Craig Grannell advice on how best to do it.

The Adventures of Ultraman.

hellomuller — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 11:10:11 +0000

Adventures of Ultraman VHS cover

Growing up in (mid-to-late)70s Belgium I was exposed to a lot of international media. As a country with only 2 TV stations (in the Flemish speaking part where I grew up), we relied heavily on foreign television — and with that came a smorgasbord of cartoons: from Wonder Twins, Top Cat and Mightor to French-dubbed anime like Goldorak, Capitaine Flam, Albator and
La Bataille des planètes (G-Force). I was hooked on the latter, everything about anime was better than their American counterparts: the stories (quite scary in some places), the incredibly vivid colours and character designs, the outlandish monsters and alien robots, and the hyper stylised action scenes. The only problem was that they were bite-sized pieces of entertainment: 25 minutes or less and the story was over.
I yet had to experience feature-lenght anime, until I was introduced to Ultraman by my dad.

As a film fan, he made hundreds of visits to the local video rental shop, and at home we had 3 video recorders: a Betamax C7 and 2 JVC recorders which were connected to each other so he could copy off every movie he rented to build his personal collection. Yes, really. One day he put on the Ultraman video and my 10 year old mind was blown away. This was the nigh perfect anime: a feature-lenght space opera storyline with alien super heroes and giant monsters — everything just looked cool.

Sadly the tape was played to bits, and the Ultraman anime was never a very mainstream thing — so tracking down copies of it proved either impossible, or ridiculously expensive. Imagine my surprise then, that someone has taken the effort to upload the whole thing to YouTube.

Looking back at it now its glaringly obvious the story was hacked together from a serial (you can notice the subtle changes in the art), and that it lifted the best elements from Close Encounters, Star Wars, and its Ultraman franchise lore. Still — didn’t matter to me back then (and now), as it was a terrific piece of anime sci-fi.

The ‘failed’ comic book artist.

hellomuller — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 00:02:24 +0000

I say ‘failed’, but the more accurate term would be ‘distracted’. Its no secret I’m an avid reader, collector, and occasional designer of comics — and, at one time I was seriously thinking about taking a shot at becoming a professional comic book artist. This was during the early 90s when Image Comics had just launched, and in particular Jim Lee’s Wildstorm Studios (more about them in this blog post). As it was, I spent most of my time (if I wasn’t taking classes in art college) at my local comic shop Mekanik Strip in Antwerp who had just opened a new art gallery and needed some bodies to cover the dead space between exhibits, so a few friends and I were invited by the shop to exhibit our work in the summer of ’94 — being dubbed “What’s Your Excuse” focussing on the young talent of Antwerp. Local and national press came down and the buzz was strong enough that the event has been repeated every summer since and has grown into a bit of an institution and launchpad for local young artists.

Anyway, the main reason for this post is that my pal and fellow Mystery Box artist James White recently started a Tumblr blog Piles of Paper cataloguing all his childhood drawings. So I started doing a bit of digging of my own and found the old VHS recording of the local Antwerp TV news (ATV) when they came down to interview my friends and I at our very first exhibit. What follows are a few images I’ve shot from the TV. Not the best quality, but should give you a good idea of what I was into when I was 21. Flannel shirts apparently.

The ATV (Antwerp TeleVision) logo

A few of my drawings and paintings. As you can tell, a lot of Sci-Fi and primarily superhero inspired art.

Still relatively innocent at 21. Rocking flannel shirts.

helloMuller signed to Mystery Box.

hellomuller — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 14:29:21 +0000

I’m very happy to announce helloMuller Ltd. is now represented by Mystery Box, a production strategy and artist management agency that is deeply rooted in the creative and production side of the entertainment industry.
Even though Mystery Box is a young agency, its team bring years of experience and industry contacts with them that will add substantial leverage to my work.

Since starting helloMuller Ltd. as a proper studio earlier this year a large part of my time is devoted to sourcing new clients, and more importantly, positioning myself in the business. I’ve been taking on more and more projects in the entertainment industry as of late, and so teaming up with Mystery Box and what they can offer was a
no-brainer to be honest. As I write this, some interesting things are developing behind the scenes, and I look forward to what the future holds. So join me in welcoming @olliejudge to the team, who can be reached under the New Business email on the contact page.

As an added bonus, Mystery Box also signed my pal James White / Signalnoise to their books. Good times!

Feel free to drop by the Mystery Box site, and don’t forget to follow them on Twitter @MysteryBoxCo.

A Christmas Tweet snags a Bima nomination.

hellomuller — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 10:21:03 +0000

The 2011 BIMA Awards finalists have just been announced, and I’m pleased to see one of the projects I had a hand in grab a nomination in the Use of Data, Mashups & Data-Visualisation category. The project in question is
A Christmas Tweet, a site created by Studio Output and Morph London that tracked and visualised what people were thinking, feeling and saying on Twitter during the festive period last year. Congrats to all involved!

(Did I just pat myself on the back?)

Thank you Steve.

hellomuller — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 09:19:16 +0000

I’m sure I’m part of the legion of die-hard Apple users who are saddened and moved by the passing of Steve Jobs. Weird, because most of us never met the guy — but what he created has become an integral part of my daily routine, especially when it comes to what I do. If it wasn’t for getting that Mac back in the 90s I think my life would have been quite different — and for that I’d like to say a posthumous thank you.

Can’t wait to get my hands on the iPhone 4S.
(Dammit Steve!)