NEWCASTLE RADIO ON TWITTER

NEWCASTLE RADIO STATION

Back in September 2011, I attended an interview for the role of a web developer for an agency in Newcastle named "Th_nk". 

I have experience of working with PHP and developing CSS, but it was seen very quickly during the test session of the interview that I still had a lot to learn to take on such a technical role. That saying, the result was that I was not offered the place. The senior developer at Think was incredibly helpful when giving me feedback and felt that my enthusiasm for the practice was undoubted, but my skills were still in need of developing further. 

He mentioned that if this was going to be something I was serious about getting into, I needed to learn to hand code in HTML, so that is what I went about doing. 

Whilst picking up the basics, I felt that I needed to put some context to my learning and come up with a project that I could add to, learn more to better it and generally, have something that would keep me motivated. 

I came up with GumBum Radio. I love using social media, so set the site up to connect to Twitter where I began to tweet YouTube music videos that showed up on my site. At first a one page site, but as I began to tweet, I began to gain followers and in particular, independent artists asking to have their own videos tweeted to my followers. The growth in just  the first week, took the follower stats to 1000 and also got my radio station (I mean this in creative terms) to a featured station on reelr.tv.  

I have had the pleasure of now interviewing several artists and even held my first Tweeterview with a talented rapper Bl'eve Brown. I have a tune of the week and artists request plays every day. My last is an artist call DjCell Block who's last mixtape got 500,000 downloads before he approached me.

In addition, the connection that twitter has given me with these artists, has even resulted in couple of design projects for them, branding for Freezy and soon, a new site for Bl'eve Brown. 

Please take a look at the work and I hope you enjoy the music that these musicians fortunately share with me. 

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO GUMBUMRADIO. 

Logo Designer, Newcastle

I am currently sat in a chair waiting for a scan on my knee- as I recently had an acl reconstruction, so thought with aid of my beloved iPhone would do something useful and blog about Logo design.

If you take a trip to my site, you will notice that some of my portfolio is found on Design Crowd. Design Crowd for any free-lance designer is a great way to start out building a decent set of cross-industry pieces for graphic and web design work. Plus, a great way to earn a little extra cash from time to time!

I have been working on Design Crowd for around 12 months and currently rank 41/2nd in the UK.

I only tend to respond to project invites nowadays and the example below was a result of a recent project invite.

After looking at current trends with logo design, what is seeming to be emerging is "stamp" type branding - simple, one colour, print type logos. I am guessing that this may well be down to print costs being lower if the brand is a print rather than a "gradient-powered" piece.

Taking this into account, I have looked to create designs using solid shapes, one colour and essentially what would come from using negative space. In the below instance, take a look at how I have achieved this. The actual example
did not get selected, but I feel that the Klimt expressions the client was looking for was achieved. But never mind.

Film Logos From Newcastle

PARADOX FILM LOGOS: 

A week or so ago, I posted up a DVD Cover I drew up for Layer Cake. All part of the paradox approach or falsidical paradox approach to creating design work. 

The first piece of work I brought together was a series of logos which I post daily on Tumblr and have been gaining some interest and the odd follower or two. 

The above are the first crop of icons that to explain use an iconic or well known film and look a little closer into the name and the plot of them. Using a little bit of lateral thinking, some comic touches and at times, common sense the above examples are the result. 

ALL EXAMPLES CAN BE FOUND HERE ON TUMBLR

BUSINESS CARD DESIGN - COMIC BOOK STYLE

WOLVERINE BUSINESS CARD TUTORIAL USING INKSCAPE OPEN SOURCE TECHNOLOGY.

The tutorial will show you how I put the card together.

Firecamp Firestarters CD Artwork

Firecamp MixTape Design : Through the growing working association with London based Hip Hop promoters Dizzle Promotions, the studio was asked to design a series of proposals for the forthcoming Hop-Hip Gig "Firestarters". The Covers were designed with an idea of creating a visually attractive, attention-seeking product that might produce that "second take". Looking at past examples such as the Nirvana "Nevemind" cover, the final design shown (left) was the cover they will soon be putting on the event's mix tape. Several designs were created and shown to the group and the studio is glad they went with the final design, as this was Portobella Rain's favourite of the bunch.