Trinkets of a Trickster

Grunge-tastic Poster 3

2011-10-19T15:21:00.000+01:00

I don't even know if people would buy these things, but I like the look of the first one I made so I decided to make more of them. I prefer to choose the colours before I make something, but decided to do two slight variants of this one :)

FairShare Fest 09

2011-08-30T20:27:00.000+01:00

This has to be my favourite design project I have worked on to date. The event was a student charity week held in University of Limerick during week 5 of the winter semester to raise money for the Duccum Education Project in Sudan and Gift, Ghana Ireland Friendship Trust. Both of these organisations give children and adults from disadvantaged areas an education. Most of my friends involved in creating and organising this event had previously spent their work experience semester in Ghana where they saw first hand the conditions in which children are taught, which meant that this event was very close to them.

Months of preparation went into the week of events and I was on board from day 1 to create anything which needed to be designed. This included a logo, t-shirts for the volunteers, labels for their buckets, a flyer listing all the events, and several posters. The poster above was spread across the campus as sort of a teaser advertisement during weeks 3 and 4 of the college semester. The poster below was also used as the flyer, only with the colours changed around slightly. I decided quite early in the project that the colours should be vibrant and fit with the theme of it being an African event, and I am still very pleased with how it all turned out.

Overall the event was a huge success and raised more than €10,000 to be split between the two charities. Here's a few photos to show just how much fun the event was.

Some of the girls modelling the t-shirts I designed during the Tea Morning.

We had some rather fancy buskers for the Buskathon!

We also had some not-so-fancy ones who were just as entertaining.

Some of our group enjoying the party on the last night of FairShare Fest!
It was definitely well deserved.

Logo Design: Tí Joe Watty... My first commission!!

2011-08-30T19:25:00.000+01:00

I'm so pleased with this one because it was my very first professional job. My friend's family bought this pub on Inismor called Tí Joe Watty, but the sign on the side of it said Tí Joe Watty's. That doesn't seem like much of a difference, but it's grammatically incorrect in the Irish language to put an apostrophe then "s" after a name like that, because Tí Joe Watty translates into "the Tavern of Joe Watty" or "Joe Watty's Tavern" already, so the apostrophe "s" is obsolete.
So instead of just changing the sign outside, they wanted to get a new logo and get it printed onto some hoodies to promote it. I was delighted to get the work and pleased with the amount of communication I had with my friend's parents. They were very exact with what they wanted and I was glad to be able to give them what they wanted. They chose to use the black and white version above, but I made sure to include the colour version below in case they needed it in the future.

T-Shirt Design 2: Rock Monster!!

2011-08-30T19:10:00.000+01:00

Ok it's starting to seem like I have a thing for monsters... Here's another one stuck on a t shirt.

Sketchy Sketchiness: The Thin Man from Pan's Labyrinth

2011-08-30T19:07:00.000+01:00

Pan's Labyrinth is one of my favourite movies. I just love the realism of Guilermo Del Toro's monsters, and the Thin Man is definitely the scariest. This is one of my sketches which I don't have the heart to touch again in case I ruin it.

More Water Colouring: Batman

2011-08-30T19:02:00.000+01:00

I actually did this as a 21st birthday present to my friend Jeni. It's not my own design, sadly. I copied it from an image I found on google, but at least I didn't actually trace it :)

Logo Design: UL President's Volunteer Award

2011-08-30T18:03:00.000+01:00

Here is my entry for a logo competition held at my university last year. I didn't win, but I still like my entry. Burgundy and blue are the colours of the University of Limerick for most of their current publications, which is why it was a no brainer to go with them. There is a famous bronze statue in UL affectionately known as Brown Thomas, which I took a photo of and used his silhouette as the basis of the backing image of the logo. My reasoning for it was that he is a symbol of UL and by multiplying his image like this, it would symbolise the team work that these volunteers would have demonstrated to win the award. Complete and utter bullshit, I know, but I thought it might sound good. Here are a couple of variant colour schemes I also submitted:

Water colour test: Lt Aldo Raine

2011-08-30T17:52:00.000+01:00

I've always loved Tim Burton's water colour sketches, so I tried to use some water colours on a few of my sketches. This was my first time painting anything in water colour, and I think it's alright for a first try!

Grunge-tastic Poster 2

2011-08-30T17:47:00.000+01:00

Same style, different images and colour. I think this one is my favourite :)

Grunge-tastic Poster 1

2011-08-30T17:44:00.000+01:00

This was more of a test to see what I could do with stock images found on DeviantArt. I've posted all these on Deviant Art too and have credited all the people who own the different images, so hopefully they won't mind them being shown here. Again, for these posters I wanted to keep it simple; a minimal palette of colours, and a unifying theme which this time is Steampunk. I like how these turned out.

T-Shirt Design 1

2011-08-30T17:37:00.000+01:00

When I get obsessed with some type of design, whether it's packaging design, posters or t-shirt designs, I tend to splurge on that particular subject and design 20 different varieties. So expect a lot more t-shirt designs and what not before I run out of free time for another few weeks. My current, non-design oriented, 9-5 job that I have is removing my free time more and more lately, which is why I'm uploading so much at once in a delirious haze on my day off :)

Trickster out.

Mad Poster Design 2

2011-08-30T17:29:00.000+01:00

The Hills Have Eyes and all that jazz. Again, I just thought that your basic poster should be eye catching and interesting, so I just went with the theme of the last one and ended up with this. I don't even know what these would be used for. Perhaps I'll make up some events and add text to these at a later point.

Mad Poster Design 1

2011-08-30T17:24:00.000+01:00

Yeah... There's not a lot to say about this piece. I just felt that I was putting too much thought into overly elaborate designs lately, so I decided to keep things simple. I got a pen and a scrap of paper, gave myself 5 minutes to scribble something to design. I always end up scribbling circular shapes, so just decided to go with an eye ball theme because I feel like posters should be eye catching. And since I'm a big nerd, I thought of the Irish myth of Balor of the Evil Eye. It's about a giant with one eye in the middle of his forehead and one on the back of his head that could shoot beams of energy from them, which is why I went for that sort of look here. Since I like the contrast of purple and green, I usually colour something in those colours first. And I also like the pop art comic book style, which explains that aspect.

So yeah... Turns out there is a lot to say about something which I intended on being so simple