So I got some great news today. There's a book I submitted work to ages ago and they are printed and I get a copy. Hurrah!

A little bit about the book. Ethan Bodnar, a seriously talented young designer had a bit of an idea where he would call for designers to show a.) a bit of their regular work, and b.) be assigned a task which is not something they normally do. I got digitally manipulate a photograph, which basically entailed combining my vector illustration style with a photo. Now I'm actually quite scared to see how my work stacks up beside all the other amazing designers but I'm really happy to have been given this opportunity.

And quite just stunned at how talented this young designer is. I know he's embarking on what is likely to be an amazing career, and it goes to show that inspiration comes from the least expected places.

Thanks Ethan, you rock.

You may find more about the Creative Grab Bag Book here and I will add some snaps from the book when it arrives!

(p.s sorry for cross posting this for anyone who reads this blog and my work one)

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Feelin' the love this week so I wanted to share some sites that I'm really getting into at the moment.

Lovely tumblog with letterpress love and other really nice stuff. I found this person through twitter and am so far convinced it's the most useful/inspiring thing to come out of twitter for me.

Midwest Kern

There's a story behind this link. When I was in 1st year at Art School our course teacher bailed and before the replacement came, we had this guy (Chris Downes) came in, and he was our lecturer in design for about half of first year. Maybe more, I can't remember. I was drinking a lot of cask wine back then.

Anyway, he was an awesome teacher and he made a huge difference to my experience of art school, and really helped me think about design in a different way. Having the confidence to do stupid, self indulgent type treatments and illustrations on gig posters sprang from my experience learning from this guy. Some times you realise that people play a larger and more important role in your education and how you do what you, and it was only on reflection I realised how much Chris had helped me out. It wasn't just me either, I was talking to some other ex-art school graphic design students and their faces literally lit up when they talked about him and how he affected them. That's something pretty special I reckon.

A few weeks ago, (the day I proposed to Jen actually) I bumped into him at the Odd + Even market and got the chance to say a thankyou to him for being awesome. So I did - and even though I was a bit embarrassed it was totally worth it.

He keeps a semi daily comic blog and it's just bloody beautiful. Check it out, as he's a nice guy and does lovely work.

Diary of a work in progress.

And finally, for video game love, there's just about no nicer pair of sites to visit than Offworld and Rock Paper Shotgun. A plan for later this year is to see if I can design a game visually and get it up on Offworld to see if I can hook up with a coder to make it happen. I got Offworld'ded a while ago and I think I could do something nice and see if I can add another string to my bow.

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This. This is beautiful.

SCINTILLATION from Xavier Chassaing on Vimeo.

Via CDMotion

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DSC_0049, originally uploaded by funnelbc.

Got a bunch of shots over on my flickr from my weekend visit to the Melbourne Museum of Print.

This is a shot of the Albion style presses. There's two of them and the design is very similar mechanically.

Shot taken at the Melbourne Museum of Printing (www.printingmuseums.com). It's an amazing facility and these shots are just a fraction of the stuff they have.

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Jolicloud App Directory, originally uploaded by Jolicloud.

Can see this as being a great simple desktop option for vision impaired users as well, imagine the navigation up large and everything tuned for that and it would be awesome. In fact, I'm gunna email them and suggest that!

not much to see on their website yet

Edit: Here's what I sent them:

I saw the mockup for the Jolicloud OS and I must say it's a wonderful piece of interface design. Really looking forward to seeing it going. I'll be trying it on my hp mini-note.

What I'm writing to say is that the simplified interface for jolicloud could also be an amazing software platform for vision impaired desktop pc users. My girlfriend's father has a degenerative disorder of his vision called Macular Degeneration (number 1 cause of blindness for over 55's) and although he loves his computer he's getting more and more frustrated with using it due to his poor vision. There's really not that much stuff out there that gives options without taking away functionality to vision impaired users. There are some applications, but they are either expensive or incomplete solutions for the vision impaired. Maintaining a windows pc is also a big challenge for people with low vision, simple and secure desktop software could be a godsend for them.

I suspect you have enough on your hands developing Jolicloud, but if you were interested in even just looking at some mockups of what I think a vision impaired version of Jolicloud could look like, I'd be delighted to do that for you.

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This is amazing. Via [gb] studio blog Making of is over on ze frank's blog.

Also making new category. Things which inspire me.

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