Don’t turn -> to turn on
My flatmate could have saved some ink…
For cup’s sake
One of the cups from the house. I wish I had more interesting things to say about the cup. Okay it’s a drawing of a cup so there could be a whole existential argument that it’s not a cup at all. Happy now?
I hadn’t sat down and drawn anything that was actually in front of me in a while so on Saturday I tackled this mug while the football was on. Hopefully out of work productivity will start to go up now that the football season is over.
Speaking of football season there’s only one gameweek left in the Premier League. I’ve spent the season stressing out over a fantasy premier league that I’ve been playing in with two friends. The forfeit for the loser is to get a tattoo with the either the word ‘loser’ or some incorporation of an image that represents being a loser, e.g. a wooden spoon. Actually a wooden spoon seems to be the only thing we can think of. You can see our league table and even our awesome spreadsheet of our changing teams and the rules. The entire thing was very strict given the FACT THAT THE LOSER GETS A TATTOO. I already mentioned that? Whoops.
Interview with Nevin Öztop – Turkish Activist
During her recent visit to Ireland Nevin Öztop dropped by the SpunOut.ie offices for a quick interview. Sitting around a table of enthusiastic listeners Nevin spent almost an hour discussing LGBT issues in Turkey and the civil unrest following the planned demolition of Istanbul’s Taksim Gezi Park. I recorded the whole thing but sadly the sound wasn’t the best.
I trawled youtube for creative commons videos of Turkish and Brazilain protests. Honestly YouTube should make CC stuff easier to find as I’d hate to accidentally use anything I shouldn’t. I also trawled 500px for some photos from the ground and found some excellent photographs by Ozan Özdil. I emailed Ozan to see if I could use his images for our videos and he was happy to oblige. Which was super cool.
Nevin was incredibly interesting to listen to and was very nice as well. Hopefully she’s happy with the video.
All about voting
In an attempt to explain Ireland’s system of voting to young people (well to people of all ages) I made two animated videos for SpunOut.ie. Our political expert Ian passed me a big scripted explanation of how things work and asked me to make a “short” animation. So I condensed those four A4 pages into two short videos. It was fun.
Tools Used: After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, Final Cut X
Enniscorthy Drama Group
My brother was involved in establishing the Enniscorthy Drama Group and asked me a favour, design a logo and poster. I should really start charging for this stuff but I have to admit, it was fun to design. I drew the doll and Bride before scanning them into the computer. When they were inside the computer I worked on their contrast and made the image colourless because I don’t even know if they’ll be printed in colour. I applied a filter to the original sketch and then set up the text the way I like. There isn’t a whole lot of balance on the bottom of the poster but it doesn’t break my heart.
Botanic Gardens Dublin 2013
Botanic Gardens Dublin 2013, a set on Flickr.
Set of images taken in Dublin’s Botanic Gardens in May 2013
SpunOut.ie 2013 Redesign
In early 2012 it was decided by board, staff and users that SpunOut.ie was in need of a total design and functionality overhaul. Short of funds for external development the entire process was to be done in-house at minimum cost. Using the paid for CMS (Content Management System) Expression Engine, the site aimed to be far more user friendly as well as being much more flexible for our editorial staff.
The entire process, from the basics of content category breakdown to advanced server migration and website optimisation, were all my responsibility. The site is fully responsive in design working equally well on both mobile and desktop environments. This was achieved through process of endless (and currently ongoing) design iteration and testing while working directly with the HTML, CSS and Javascript code.
I spent the bulk of my time working in the Coda text-editor and jumping in and out of Photoshop to create mock-ups and iconography. There was a bit of fun working with a VPS and configuring things to work right with the Plesk control panel. Every detail of the site had a massive amount of thought and analysis in its conception and overall the entire experience proved massively rewarding and tiring, but mostly rewarding.
A basic overview of the design evolution can be seen in the screenshots below, the newer screens are at the top and you can visit SpunOut.ie as well.
