good things come

Little things make me happy: this weekend's delicious Spanish red, the label of which is featured in the contemporary wine label design book I recently acquired as research for the beer label project. 

As a design theme it works brilliantly: according to the blurb, Matsu is a Japanese word that translated into English means "to wait". But Dunnottar Wines, my local wine emporium, doesn't stock the older dudes - I guess as you would expect, they're featured on the finer Matsu vintages. (Not, incidentally, a metaphor that necessarily holds true outside of the wine world...).

As an aside, I downloaded the snapseed app to edit the image on the iPad... and I like it! It's more intuitive than PS express and has a bunch more filters and textures. Best of all, it's free. And, as the blurb on the website where I found it said: "Snapseed: only you can decide whether to make your photos approximately 72 per cent more ominous"!!! Recommending...

through a lens

I have something to post for once, so I’m going to ignore the fact I’ve not visited here for a while and blunder on regardless...

You’ve probably seen the small, square, grungy-looking retro camera images that are everywhere just now, and if you’ve been a previous follower of my blog you’ll know I’ve definitely not been immune to the trend. Ahem. Much as I love it, I’m not deluded enough to think my, err, Hipstamatic iPhone app makes me a photographer. But....... (you knew there was a but coming right?) these grimy washed out images have their uses (apart from making everything nostalgic of course) and in this case they were prefect for capturing the faded elegance of beautiful Budapest. Photographs can never convey the full sensory reality of a location, but the skewed colour and ever-so-slightly-disconcerting light leaks, combined with their timeless quality, tell the story of Budapest far more powerfully than an ordinary photograph could (I took two ‘normal’ photographs while I was there, but neither came close to conveying my experience. I deleted, so I guess you’ll have to trust me on this one).

If I had time I could witter on for ages about the city, but I don’t, so suffice to say its turbulent past got me reading... and, while I was obviously on the lookout for my preconceived notions of eastern European illustration, there was a flourishing (and v modern) design culture there that also got me inspired... Actually, it all feels so goddamn energetic that it can’t help but rub off a bit. Expect more posts (and yes, perhaps even some actual work!) from here on...

dabbling

I had a wee shot of a friend's (very expensive) camera at the weekend, took a pic of Jack, then went at the original in Photoshop. The original is at the top, my effort underneath. I think it's quite cute...