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28th February 2010
In my last post I hinted towards some 'doings' in Bath. Those doings are actually a collaboration between 7 graphics students from Bath University and 7 from UWE in Bristol, including myself. We're taking over an old AV (audio visual) shop in Bath for one week, with all of us creating new work for the show on the theme of AV. For the posters and invites all 14 of us created a custom letterform that could be both an A or a V, depending on what way up it was. The show starts on the 12th of March with the private view, come along for a few beers and to check out what we've produced.
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25th February 2010
There's some doings afoot over in Bath. Everything's still a bit hush hush but I can promise you it's all very exciting. More details to follow in the next few days. I've been very busy on lots of new projects recently, so what I lack in blog posts I make up for in backstage effort! I'll be in touch.
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9th February 2010
Yesterday I organised a workshop for a few friends at Bower Ashton, my uni campus. The Workshop of Potential Design, named after the translation of Oulipo (the French writing group), aimed to impose rules on the practice of selected designers and illustrators. They were given the same message, but each had a specific rule they had to apply to the communication of the message. It was great fun and a lot of great work came out of it, which I'm not compiling for a publication of the day. Thanks to everyone who came and made it such an interesting day. Flickr set here.
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6th February 2010
Sexy cats? Saucy sheep? That must mean my Mr Bingo print has arrived. In support of the Haiti crisis, the brilliant Mr Bingo created a couple rather surreal prints which he sold with 100% of the money going to the relief fund. In total he raised a whopping £2,485! A noble effort and some great little prints. Good on you Bingo!
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3rd February 2010
I chanced upon a rather cool book in the library at uni the other day: American Wood Type by Rob Roy Kelly. It's amazing! The book contains a selection of specimens, logos and pages created using wood type made in America between 1828 and 1900. It really surprised me to see that some pretty fresh looking fonts were so old! Check out a couple of my favourites here, particularly HAD, which reminds me of the header for Elephant magazine, which is also pretty good.
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28th January 2010
It was my Dad's birthday yesterday. I owe my father a lot, financially and in other more important ways. I screen-printed him a card to say thanks for everything, and had a lot of fun designing and printing it, so everyone's a winner. Happy Birthday Dad!
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27th January 2010
I've just finished printing some posters for Slap Dash, a club night run by two friends here in Bristol. I'd say it's an homage to designer Bob Gill, but I actually mean a rip-off of his classic work for the TV show Private Secretary. The poster is a two-colour print that nicely reflects the simple nature of the DJs who make up Slap Dash.
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26th January 2010
I went to the aquarium the other day. I like these little guys, they look a bit suspecting, almost standoffish.
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25th January 2010
In London I picked up this wonderful little publication, Cook for a Day by Lemon & Herb. It appears to be a collaboration between 3 young design students, a result of breaking their routine and running a cooking workshop at their university. It's letterpressed, using two typefaces and two colours, which is no small feat using university equipment, well it would be at my university anyway. It's very well put together, fun to read and a bargain at £3. Well done Lemon & Herb, very inspiring.
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24th January 2010
Another show I checked out in London was the If You Could Collaborate show by Alex Bec and Will Hudson. It's pretty big, with loads of amazing and varied pieces in a wide range of mediums. It's not on for much longer, but definitely worth checking out if you're in London next week. My favourite pieces we the 'Calligraffiti' by Craig Ward & Sean Freeman & Alison Carmichael, seen here as well as the set of illustrations by Anthony Burrill, who I met at the show, and astronomer John Griffiths. If you can't make it to the show, check out my Flickr set here.
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23rd January 2010
I've spent the past few days in London checking out a few shows and meeting some people. The first show I checked out was Losing the Plot at Kemistry Gallery by Danish 'design polymaths' Hvass&Hannibal. It's an entertaining little show with lots of brightly coloured wooden sculptures and some very nice prints. My favourite was this piece tucked away at the back of the gallery. The painted sides of the wooden waves reflected beautifully onto the white reverse sides. Very nice, and with a price tag to match! More updates will follow in the next couple days. Flickr set here.
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18th January 2010
I'm pleased to announce that my blog has finally got RSS! Really Simple Syndication allows you to subscribe to a blog's updates without having to visit the blog regularly. If you use Google Reader or an equivalent service, or you have an RSS aggregator (Mail can do this if you are a Mac user, just press the plus icon in the bottom left of the program and select add rss feed) then you can subscribe to my feed at http://www.jonolewarne.com/blogrss.xml or by pressing the RSS icon on the left of this page. Thanks to Christian of MicroAngelo for his time and usual willingness to help me with all things code.
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15th January 2010
Sneek-peek week draws to a conclusion today. Here is a glimse of my most recent book, A Battle of Wills, which documents imbalances of power and accountability between the UK government and its citizens. It's not finished yet, changes need to be made. As soon as it's complete I'll put up more photos.
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14th January 2010
Sneek-peeks continue today, with a quick look at a booklet I've produced called Rule Britannia, which is a collection of rules gathered from recent news stories, some of which have been featured right here on this very blog. I'll end sneek-peek-week tomorrow with a look at a book I've been producing recently.
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13th January 2010
Time for the second sneek-peek at some of my recent university projects. Rules for Snow is a screen-printed business sized card with some basic rules for snow I created after my recent experiences of trying to navigate snow covered pavements. It's just a bit of fun, but handy nonetheless.
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12th January 2010
I handed in all of my recent work at university yesterday, without any hitches I'm pleased to say. That marks the end of preparing for self-directed study and the beginning of actually doing it, which is exciting. This week I'll be putting up sneek-peeks at a selection of some of the work I handed in. First up is my zine documenting where rules have failed people in international sport, featuring Thierry Henry and the Irish football team and mean old cricketer Greg Chappel and his unfortunate brother who had to do his evil bidding.
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6th January 2010
The snow is showing little regard for my rapidly approaching deadline. I had to walk a couple miles through the snow to get to the printers today, and on my way took a couple of photos of people enjoying the snow more than I was. And I fell over a couple of times. If the buses don't run tomorrow, and I can't get into the screen-printing department I might get very angry at the snow! Flickr set here.
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4th January 2010
I've been going thought some of my work from the past few months prior to my hand-in next week and came across a nice quote from the Dieter Rams exhibition. I thought I'd put it up here for all the world to see.
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1st January 2010
Happy New Year! As is becoming typical for me close to hand-in, my blogging is reduced due to me being pretty busy all the time. I thought I'd squeeze in a quick rule though, and a very appropriate one too.
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26th December 2009
Another image of Christmas for you, taken yesterday. That's it now, festivities are over, well for me at least. It's time to get back to work.
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25th December 2009
Christmas Day, 8:58am, the middle of nowhere in Cornwall. Merry Christmas everyone.
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24th December 2009
Merry Christmas! I'm back at home for the holidays, at my parent's house in Cornwall. I'm still as busy as ever so I've taken over the dining room and commandeered the space as a temporary studio until I go back to Bristol.
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18th December 2009
Rule 15: Stay in the limelight and blame others for your own misfortunes.
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17th December 2009
A couple weeks ago I sent a letter asking a few questions to living letterpress legend Jack Stauffacher. I wanted to hear his thoughts on current letterpress practice and how things have changed. This morning I recieved a reply from him which is amazing. He kindly answered my questions and with them he sent me an article he'd written and a small booklet of some wood-type prints he created, which is very cool. I'm honoured and very grateful for his time and thoughts. Thanks Jack!
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12th December 2009
As part of my self-directed study I will be formulating rules from stories in the news each week. At the end of this I'll collate them into a rule book for 2010. In the mean time, as and when I gather the rules I'll post them here with links to the story so you can see the project evolve. First up rule 1: Whatever happens in the dressing room stays in the dressing room (http://tinyurl.com/y8jdkne).
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11th December 2009
A few weeks ago I got involved with a Kickstarter project by artist/designer Sam Winston. His Dictionary Story is a wonderful little exploration of words that is both fascinating for a designer like myself and great fun for anyone with an interest in words, stories and language. The funding project was successful and yesterday my copy of the book arrived. It's such a nice object, and great to finally hold after seeing it in Grafik when I first started my degree a couple years ago. Thanks Sam!
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6th December 2009
On Saturday I visited the fantastic Minnie Weisz Studio in St Pancras in London. The lovely Minnie kindly let me visit her and meet the artist Tom Foulsham, who realises near impossible ideas into contraptions. Most fascinating is his Wiggle Table, which takes news feeds or user generated input and translates it into words by wiggling a surface under a pen, held by the user. It's hard to describe, and this video does a much better job of it than I ever could. Thanks very much to Minnie and Tom for letting me come down — Flickr set here.
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5th December 2009
After my visit to the Alan Kitching show yesterday I walked over to the Design Museum to have a look around the Dieter Rams show, Less and More. Being a child of the 80s I was well aware of the simple beauty of Braun products, but I was only recently made aware of the man behind the beauty. The products there are extremely wide-ranging, from televisions to shavers, shelving systems to lighters. They all have in common a stark simplicity, pure functionality and a genuine desirability. It's a great show, check it out — Flickr set here.
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4th December 2009
Today I went to Advanced Graphics London to check out the Alan Kitching and Celia Stothard show they have on there at the moment. On display is a range of the prints they have produced at the Typography Workshop over the last 20 years. Not surprisingly, the work is amazing, interesting and almost impossible to figure out in terms of how they did it. Printing yellow on black paper and getting yellow? God knows. However he did it, it's a fantastic show and well worth checking out.
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25th November 2009
This morning in the post I received possibly the best thing I've ever received in the post; a selection of letterpress work by Desmond Jeffery and Libertad Gosling, his partner for many years. I've been in regular contact with Libertad since the Late Letterpress show at St. Bride which I blogged about last month. It's been great to chat with her about her and Desmond's work, and it's been a real honour to learn from her wisdom on the subject of letterpress. So generous is Libertad that she sent me an extensive selection of their work that illustrates the scope of their talents as printers. My photos do not do the work justice, but here are a couple anyway. Thanks Libertad!
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20th November 2009
Just a quick update to say I've updated my Selected Projects page and added two recent projects; my Creative Review Monograph and my Oppression poster for Amnesty International.
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19th November 2009
While I was in London yesterday I also decided to check out the Collateral Damage photography exhibition which is part of the Human Rights in the Frame series at The Human Rights Action Centre. It documents the legacy war has on women and highlights the inequality many women suffer the world over. It's a small show but definitely worth a look. I also checked out th Sophie Calle show at the Whitechapel Gallery, which is also great, but no photos were allowed!
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18th November 2009
Today I went to the Signs of Revolt exhibition at the Old Truman Brewery in London. The exhibition charts the visuals of creative resistance and social movements all over the world from the past 10 years. It's a great show, rich in message and illustration. It's not on for much longer though so check it out asap!
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13th November 2009
A few weeks ago I began to print a letter to American letterpress legend Jack Stauffacher. With my hand-in out of the way, I finally got time to print the reverse side of the letter with the important questions about letterpress I hope he will answer for me as part of my dissertation research. I'm about to pop it in the post to him, hopefully he'll get it and have time to respond. Fingers crossed.
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9th November 2009
I handed all of my finished pieces in this morning for the first hand-in of my final year. I've been meaning to upload the pages for some of my older work for some time now, and today I finally had the chance. You can find the older work here, along with a details of my recent Year Planner and Burnham-on-Zine projects.
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5th November 2009
As my first hand-in of my final year looms on Monday, my graphics course-mate Myles Lucas and I have found some time to create a zine about our day-trip to Burnham-on-Sea. Titled Burnham-on-Zine, it is a light-hearted document of our experience there and the fun we had messing around for the day. It's laser printed onto 4 dfferent paper stocks and has black and white as well as colour spreads. There is also a screen-printed gatefold! It's an edition of 6 in case you were asking. I quite like it so I might put up some more pics soon.
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3rd November 2009
Today I received a copy of the book A Time Chart of Social History by Winifred Gosling, and an incredible book it is too. It takes many of the most important events and people in the history of the world from isolation and overlays them so you can see what else was going on and influencing other areas of life. It's a great piece of design and is a fascinating read. It was a bargain too, £2.76 delivered to my door!
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31st October 2009
Currently on display at Here Gallery in Bristol is a show by the People of Print. Loads of artists and designers from around the world have got some super sexy screen-prints on display for your viewing pleasure. Check it out, it's free!
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28th October 2009
After my visit to the Hand & Eye press yesterday I made a visit to St. Bride library to check out the talk about the work of Desmond Jeffery and the accompanying show Late Letterpress. Some of the work on show was incredible and truly distinctive. The talk was also really interesting to hear about his practice from 3 close friends of his.
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