Today seems like an appropriate day to dust off my copy of Apple Design: The Works of The Apple Industrial Design Group.

A chance to look back and marvel at some of the finest, most innovative tools I have had the pleasure of using on a day-to-day basis.

Thank you Steve Jobs.

Recently completed the design work on a logo for a new tea room/coffee shop called The Grey Duck – opening soon in Denton, Greater Manchester.

But, try as I may, I just can’t get used to using a drawing tablet. The ‘not looking at my hand while drawing’ concept is just something my tiny brain can’t get to grips with. Fellow designer friends continually encourage me to persevere – “eventually it will happen and you’ll never look back” – but it just isn’t happening for me.

Therefore, if I want to bring my scribblings to life on the ‘puter, I’m left either using the good old mouse or going totally old skull and scanning in my drawings to Photoshop. Not that I have a problem with this. I actually get a lot of satisfaction from turning off the Mac, getting out the layout pad, pencil and ink pens and having a doodle. Many a logo or graphic image that I have produced for a client started out as a sketch that was scanned in to the Mac. I also genuinely feel that drawing freehand on paper encourages experimentation and rewards mistakes. As skilled as I am using the tools in Adobe Illustrator, some of my favourite pieces have started out as sketch that I have merely traced over or ‘coloured in’.

Which brings me on to the Wacom Inkling. A scanner and pen combo that transfers your biro drawings in to editable bitmap and/or vector artwork. How does it work? Well I’m not entirely sure. It appears the scanner (that you clip on to the edge of your regular drawing pad) works in conjunction with the pressure sensitive pen to record the pen’s position and degree of pressure on the paper – thus allowing it to differentiate between light shading for instance and heavy scribbling. The Inkling also has the ability to record ‘layers’ therefore allowing you to split elements of your drawings off for full editable control on the computer afterwards. As a friend on Twitter remarked the other week – “Surely it’s witchcraft?”

The scanner is able to save all your drawings until you are ready to upload to your computer. So, let’s say for instance you are sat in a Starbucks and the urge came over you to do some doodling in your Moleskin*. Just clip the scanner to the edge of your pad, sketch away and when you were back at you Mac, upload your efforts. Unfortunately, the Inkling can not rewind time (yet!), so you need to make the decision beforehand if you wanted to record this drawing or not. I suppose you would just get in to the habit that anytime you decided to doodle, you would automatically activate the Inkling. At present, I just doodle away and if something looks interesting and worth developing, I would scan it in. With the Inkling, you may find yourself ‘retracing’ over doodles.

I am really interested in purchasing one. As someone who doodles a lot, I can really see the potential in it. But ideally, I want to see one in action first before I stump up £150. I’ve already thrown £50 a Wacom Bamboo drawing tablet and that’s gathering dust on a shelf somewhere…

*I have never had the urge to do any drawings in my pad in a Starbucks… or any other ‘coffeeshop’ for that matter.

Recently completed the design work on the latest Creative Calderdale event invite.

The main speaker at the next event is international award-winning animator - Barry Purves.

Here’s Creative Calderdale’s blurp about Barry:

If you don’t know Barry by name, you will certainly know of his work, from childhood classics like Postman Pat and Rupert the Bear, to Hollywood Blockbusters like King Kong and Mars Attacks. Barry has also done numerous TV interviews, animation training courses, and documentaries. He has held workshops about animation around the world at major studios including Dreamworks, PDI, and Pixar. 

Known as one of Britain’s most celebrated animators, his six films have won over sixty major international awards, including Grand Prix, Best Director, Best Film, and Oscar and BAFTA nominations.

Amongst the many animations that Barry worked on in his early years, DangerMouse was one that really stood out for me. Therefore, I felt it was only right to pay homage to the DangerMouse opening credits when designing this invite.

The Creative Calderdale event is being held at Square Chapel Centre for the Arts, Halifax on Wednesday 5th October 2011. The events starts at 6pm. Contact Hannah at Creative Calderdale for more information.

And to mark the occasion, the organisers at Creative Calderdale have decided their July event will be an exhibition/celebration of all that is creative in Calderdale.

For the fourth event running, I was asked to produce the design for invite. Above is the visual presented to the client, the actual invites are printed with gold foil. Nice!

The Creative Calderdale event is being held at the Brighouse Civic Hall on Tuesday 5th July 2011. The events starts at 6pm. Contact Hannah at Creative Calderdale for more information.

Recently completed the design work on a new logo for ebbe – a telecommunications company based in Manchester who, in their own words…

“provide award-winning communications services to enable better ways of working for all our business customers”

Recently completed the design work on a series of web banners and promotional postcards for Smart People – a company based here in Halifax that provides management and leadership training & development courses.

Photography of the Smarties was provided by local photographer Kieron Nevison.

If you want one, just drop me a line.

Recently completed the design work on the latest Creative Calderdale event invite.

The main speaker at the next event is Nik Powell – co-founder of Virgin Records with Sir Richard Branson.

Therefore, it was a bit of a no-brainer that the design for this invite should take on the appearance of an old vinyl single in a sleeve. Do you see what I did there?

The Creative Calderdale event is being held at Ryburn Valley High School  on Tuesday 5th April 2011. The events starts at 6pm. Contact Hannah at Creative Calderdale for more information.

While doing some Christmas shopping in Manchester last Friday, decided to call in Magma – which is always dangerous on the wallet.

First up, Designers’ Identities by Liz Farrelly. Paperback published by Laurence King

Then, Los Logos: Compass by Robert Klanten and A. Mollard. Hardback published by Die Gestalten Verlag

And finally, Retro Fonts by Gregor Stawinski. Hardback published by Laurence King

Retro Fonts includes a CD containing 222 typefaces – brilliant!!