letter from America

Well strictly speaking, a parcel to America, but it seemed a shame not to reference the Proclaimers... And a double post today as my Blessings image continues its quest for world domination: I've spent this sunny Sunday morning putting together a card order which will be winging its way to Utah, US tomorrow. (I think there's only one continent to go now!).

So, some shameless advertising:

You'll see from the pics that there's now a natty recycled brown envelope option, as well as the original white envelopes. If you want more information about which other images are available, or you want to place an order, just get in touch.

The cards cost £2.50 per card, or £2.00 per card for bulk orders of 20 or more.

printed pages

The latest issue of Juno arrived yesterday, these are the spreads with my illustrations. It looks good, I really love the way the whole magazine is looking these days - editor Saffia is doing a fabulous job. They're using one of my illustrations on a card for subscribers too...

picture it

A little graphic I knocked up to illustrate the figures in the Standard and Poor's report on an independent Scotland. Mainly because I don't think they're getting the attention they deserve and it's always easier to visualise than wade through a dry report, but also as an old design colleague of mine has created a site where I now have an outlet for this stuff! It's still in its infancy, but already boasts Alan Bissett as a follower - not too shabby! Anyone can post, just contact Gordon through the site and he'll let you know how.

Another of our ideas was to have an Instagram gallery of Yes Scotland signs from around the country, #ayescotland - so if you see any, please take a pic and upload, alternatively send them to me and I'll do it for you!

barefoot and books

Obviously overtaken by a moment of utter madness, I have signed myself up for a charity walk. There was a lovely, gentle 8 mile walk (kids and dogs welcome), but am I doing that? Nope, I am doing a marathon 26 miles!!! Not really sure what I was thinking! 

Anyway that means training, so this spring-like weekend, in between the roughs for the Morse book, I have been dragging myself out of bed at ridiculous o'clock to speed walk (ish) 5 miles a day - which is not as easy for me as it sounds, on both counts! I've also ditched my supermarket socks and clumpy hillwalking shoes for some high-tech barefoot shoes and aerodynamic socks. Well something like that, I'm not exactly sure, just rest assured there is oodles of research, development and technology behind what's on my feet. As far as I'm concerned, the fact I have no blisters is good enough for me and a definite result.

Between my walking with technology around the local countryside estate (the logo on the signage of which features, bafflingly and a tad disconcertingly, a wild boar), the Morse layouts and roughs continue to progress.

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...

all thumbs

Working on the layout for 'Morse', small rough thumbnails to begin with... It's tricky, as I have a layout in Gaelic (which I don't read!) and an English translation which isn't formatted at all! As a result, I have to toggle between the two in order to know what's happening on each page... arghhh! It's hard to move text around to accommodate the illustrations, when I have no idea what it says! Will get there eventually!

black magic

Ostensibly research for the Morse book, but actually just helluva cool. The one 'buy new' copy on amazon was £170 (!), this [used] one was a grand total of...1p!!!! Worth every, well the only, penny! Errol Le Cain's illustrations are amazing.