CH Blog

Grungebill Triangle Pants

Ferg — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 20:44:25 +0000

Not sure what the critic is saying here, but the words have got a friendly feel to them. My grandmother always used to say that ‘it is never what they say, but how they say it’…

See the short guide to how this was made: the making of Grungebill Triangle Pants

The Grunge-Bill Tee

Ferg — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 17:27:35 +0000

The first thing was to create the spooky mansion in illustrator [CS4] as a vector. Next, I created the sky and ground from photos that I put through various filters in Photoshop. Then I created masking layers to paint on, and painted each layer using different brushes until I got the effects that I wanted. Next, I sketched The character Grunge-Bill [using good old fashioned pencil & paper], scanned him into Illustrator, and made a digital (vector) version. I then took him into Photoshop to add the bluish hue lighting effect. Finally, I changed the T-shirt model into a Neo-Goth Chick to showcase the Tee in a more appurtenant context. Click on the thumbnails below to view the progression:

View the Design in a Flash Presentation on Threadless

Everybody Loves a Clown

Ferg — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 20:40:50 +0000

I have no idea what this particular critic is referring to. Any resemblance between my clown and any other (living) is purely coincidental, although I’ve heard that clowns tend to use the same outfitters which can lead to confusion at times…

Downcold Film Poster

Ferg — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 19:53:02 +0000

We were approached by Downcold Productions at Pinewood Studios to design their latest film poster and build a website to coincide with the release. The poster was created in Photoshop CS4 using layers & alpha channels. The website can be viewed HERE.

Winning Gingernut Branding

Ferg — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 14:15:18 +0000

We are very pleased to announce that we have won the competition to brand Gingernut Foods in Kendal; Cumbria. Michael Thomas creates wonderful recipes for Chutneys, Dressings, Sauces, Jams and Condiments. We created the logo as well as the label design, and look forward to seeing it on the shelves (of my fridge) soon.

Life Cycle of Web Page: StumbleUpon

Ferg — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 00:40:59 +0000

The Life Cycle of a Web Page on StumbleUpon Infographic was designed by Column Five Media, and focuses on the half-life of a link and the length of time users view pages and interact with StumbleUpon. This information shows that the half-life of a StumbleUpon link is much longer than other social media sites that were shared by bit.ly in September.

“You may have heard that StumbleUpon drives more traffic referrals than any other social media site. We wanted to shed some light on this by describing the lifecycle of a web page in StumbleUpon, especially how long you could expect the average web page to keep getting visitors.”

StumbleUpon doesn’t get as many mentions in the media as Facebook and Twitter, but the data indicates that they have more referrals than those two combined. This data is confirmed by my own experience; as posts promoted through StumbleUpon generally get thousands of hits accounting for enormous spikes in traffic.

Found on Visual News / Fast Company Design / Cool Infographics

A Moment’s Peace

Ferg — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 17:05:46 +0000

It is difficult to argue against such learned criticism without knowing what the ‘isms’ mean. I googled ‘romanticism’, and couldn’t understand a thing that I was reading; perhaps it’s a compliment.

Fighting Talk

Ferg — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 16:39:24 +0000

Whether or not the critics have a legitimate point here, depends largely on one’s definition of art and what constitutes a valid premise of such. These ancient arguments are too lofty for me…

The Price of Love

Ferg — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 14:45:08 +0000

The critics may have a point, although there are just too many ways to look at this design. Some critics would complain that it appears to ‘reduce’ men in some obscure way, whilst others might see it as an indictment against the fairer sex, or even ‘love’ itself. Some would argue that the design would be better named ‘The price of lust’, since it is clearly referring to a physical liason rather than a romantic one. Judge for yourself…

Salvador Dalek

Ferg — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 12:46:23 +0000

Indeed I cannot lie, this design was inspired by no more than a very loose connection between a couple of words that jumped into my head. This is probably what I like about it most; the absurdity, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself making this…