Colourful map from Realites Magazine, March 1967

Over at the fantastic graphic design blog Ace Jet 170, he joked last Thursday about having a 'Found Map Thursday'. I think it could be a fun idea. Maps are something we have to do at work and I often get sick of the in-house newspaper colours. Wouldn't it be great if all of our maps were as colourful as this one I found in a 1960's magazine of my mums? The magazine is 'Realites', and this is from the March issue of 1967. The map designer's name is Claude Porchet, and unfortunately I couldn't find any other work by him on the internet. xxxx

Red Moon

We had a red moon here last night, which was pretty. Apparently thousands of people flocked outside last night to see it. It was on the front page of all national newspapers today, and the Age ran this quote: "I think we have an innate need to find out a little more about where we fit in the cosmic scheme of things," which is true. Anyway, I spent the afternoon making silly collages. The above moon photos are plagarised from Google images and the collage below is made in Cinema 4D and Illustrator. xxxx

No right to be in a bad mood

For the last two days I've been quite grumpy because we're a bit sick, so today I purposely took some photo's on my walk to remind myself that I don't really have a right to be in a bad mood at all.
xxxx

Type Tuesday

A couple of weeks ago I posted about a great book called Hand Job - A catalog of type by Mike Perry. Well - I'm happy to say I now own the book. Here's a couple of cute, scanned images from it. You'll need to click to enlarge to see some of the details. xxxx

Influences

Ages ago I went and saw an exhibition called "Bright Flowers - Textiles from Central Asia", at the Powerhouse Museum and got the catalogue, which I look at all the time. I got it out again the other night and did some really rough drawings. Later I took some of the shapes into my 3D program and kept doodling. The above pic is from the exhibition, and the two below pics are the sketches and 3D doodling I did. More content for the collage folder! xxxx

Lukas loves yellow!

A bit of a silly post today - I've discovered over the last couple of weeks that Lukas has a definite preference for the colour yellow. It all started with his rubber duck, and now I've noticed that if there's a pile of toys he always goes straight for the yellow ones. So cute! For friends and family check out this link to see a funny video of him. xxxx

Octopus forest

There really is nothing on television any more. Instead we both sat in front of our respective computers and tapped away. To make matters worse our internet provider has slowed us to 64K (dial up speed), so net surfing is really frustrating. (&^%*^$^!!!) So I re-rendered the same tree I used in the collage two posts below, and pulled out an octopus from a pattern I'm working on to make this strange little 'octopus forest'. Computers really are taking over television! I just put this picture on my 'Site coming soon' page for my website anna-lisa.com.
Click to enlarge. xxxx

Introducing Type Tuesday

I've decided to introduce a bit of structure to this blog in the form of a weekly segment called 'Type Tuesday'. Because we're living in such a graphically flamboyant time (remember ten years ago when everything was neat, san-serif, minimal?) I thought it would be good to document inspiring uses of typography.

This week I've started with Marmalade Magazine, a fresh, young British publication who have used this cute cutout / collage style for their article headers. It looks like they've been photographed rather than Photoshopped, but I can't say for sure. Anyway - I love it - and the magazine. xxxxx

Colourful Tree Collage

I started this collage inbetween jobs at work this afternoon, then continued in front of the television when I got home. I had to drive through the heaviest rain tonight - I thought the car might actually get swept away. Anyway - I had some other work to finish off tonight, but I'm too tired - so now it's on tomorrow's list.
xxxx

photo

I've just followed Sara's lead and put a photo of myself and Lukas up (even though it's blurred)! After revealing all those facts in the tag game
I thought it timely. xxxx

From Russia With Love

I found this great book at my local second hand bookshop called: 'From Russia With Love - Costumes from the Ballets Russes 1909 - 1933'. The costumes are amazing, and such a great reference for designing kid's clothing. The book is an exhibition catalogue from the National Gallery of Australia 1999. The images are scans from the book. Above are costumes for the ballet, and below is a sketch / painting for set design. xxxx

Tagged!

I just got tagged by Sara from Happy Silly so have to reveal 8 random facts about myself, then tag 8 other blogs I like reading:

1. I enjoy using Illustrator more than Photoshop,
2. I'm not interested in cooking,
3. When I was a kid I had on Olympic sized trampoline,
4. My favourite part-time job when I was at university was working as a gallery attendant,
5. Even though I've overcome my fear of public speaking I still have nightmares about it,
6. My favourite unhealthy food is yogo (kid's dessert),
7. I often dream that I'm not only flying, but doing aerial acrobatics
as well,
8. I think owning a Burmese cat can increase one's quality of life.

I've just tagged Roxy Marj, Freedomwig, Axid and Floating World. More to come. xxxx

Op Shopping, a Cacharel bag & Carrie Bradshaw

The other day I got another cute item at a garage sale - a Cacharel bag and wallet for the cheap price of $30 (that's 17.83 EUR or 23.95 USD). They're hot pink, as you can see above, which is not normally my thing, but I've decided to embrace it in a Carrie Bradshaw kind of way. I drew this terrible picci of her to wrap my head around the concept. Speaking of which, I can't wait for the Sex and the City movie. xxxx

Folk art animal illustration competition

I just did this drawing for a competition run by Monster Children magazine and judged by Beci Orpin, of whom I'm a huge fan. Anyway, the breif was: 'send your best folk art animal illustration to the magazine'. So I pulled out a recent drawing I did of a Swedish Dala horse, and made a Dala mountain goat as well. The background is an artwork I did for a show last year.

Text based artworks

When I'm back at work during my hilariously short 4 hour shift at the newspaper (due to breastfeeding), we get some down time either while the stories are being written or the images processed. One of my favourite past-times is looking at the Art Forum website and reading reviews or looking at recent exhibitions. It was in one of these moments that I stumbled across the artist Monique Prieto, (see above) who shows at Cheim & Read gallery New York. Cheim & Read also shows one of my old time favourites Jenny Holzer (far below), and I'm not sure if the gallery has a particular slant towards text-based art but I also found this cool work by Jonathan Lasker there too (below). All images are from the Cheim & Reid website. xxxx

More stuff to get made in Thailand

Here's a couple of patterns I made earlier that I want to get made up into yardage in Thailand as well. I'd like to do mix and match pants and t-shirt sets for kids. I'm not sure if the the design is appropriate for screen printing. I'm hoping to find a digital fabric printer there. Anyway - once again I thought it would be good to post them now before they're made, and re-post them later when they're actually fabric. It may be a while though. I'm imagining there'll be lots of samples sent back and fourth before we get it right. Also if it has to be screen printed I may have to reverse the red and yellow colours. Anyway, we'll see............xxxx

Getting samples made in Thailand

My dad lives in Thailand, and we've been wanting to do some production there for quite a while, but our last attempts to get t-shirts made didn't go so well. All the print samples came back too acrylic. So we're set to try again with a different round of stuff - and I'm sending him off to the Thai Fashion Trade Fair in late August (he knows nothing about fashion or fabric!). Anyway, we have yet to solve the screen-printing problems, but I've made some stuff that requires no printing in the meantime. The first item is a stuffed alien - except everyone thinks it's a frog. And I also made some shapes to be appliqued onto t-shirts. I thought it would be good to post the sample ideas before they go - and then post them again after they get made so I can compare them, and see what kind of craftsmanship they do over there. Let's hope we have better luck this time. xxxx Oh, and I forgot to mention (although it may be obvious) that this round of stuff is all for kids.