Tales for Tadpoles: New Store on Drury Street

Tales for Tadpoles
Opens on Drury Street

Congrats to Tales for Tadpoles for their continued development!
Their latest store to officially open is on the popular location of Drury Street – ideally situated in Dublin 2, a key destination for Dublin city-centre shoppers. Once again, their store’s merchandise is displayed with great warmth and charm – the perfect way to house the lovely childhood stories and characters in their collection of classic children’s books, gifts and memorabilia.

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No doubt it will be a busy store in the run up to the Christmas season!

Find out more about Tales for Tadpoles and their wide range of unique gifts here: www.talesfortadpoles.com

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September 19, 2016 /  

Playful Poster Design

Playful Poster Design

“I love bad printing”

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If you follow my updates, you’ll know I love to attend design talks and events to stay updated with the latest goings-on in the design world and keep the inspirational juices flowing!

Recently I attended one of the IDI & Epsilon Bread & Butter talks and created this poster based on a tongue-in-cheek quote from one of the designers, Niall McCormack, who was speaking on the night – “I love bad printing”.

I had fun designing this poster, showcasing some of the different types of bad printing errors that can occur, in a light-hearted way. It’s nice to do something random without a brief sometimes for a bit of fun 🙂

 

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August 3, 2016 /  

CEAD Exhibition 2016

CEAD Exhibition 2016

This year’s CEAD exhibition brought a huge and diverse range of art out on display. I was delighted to be featured among all this talent. Here are a few highlights below:

Exploring Portraiture

Eyes are said to be a window to the soul. For this exhibition, I wanted to explore this further in the work through portraiture, to show how someone is painted in portraiture can depict an openness and innocence within a person or a contrasting darkness by painting in a more distorted manner and also a more voyeuristic view of painting someone who seems unaware, such as the male portrait below.

Artists I looked at who had explored similar themes and/or painting styles were Jenny Saville, Marcella Dumas, Frida Kahlo and Francis Bacon.

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A Piece of Me, Naomi Kelly

This piece is about the body with a focus on breast cancer – the process of chemotherapy, mastectomy, cancer cells and how it all affects the body all shown in a visual way. Naomi uses utensils from around the home in her art as a lot of women can be in the domestic home environment. I thought this piece was very well thought out and implemented and it connects the viewer to the sensation and intrusion to their body that women go through when dealing with breast cancer. I thought Naomi tackled this sensitive subject manner in a visually-interesting and powerful way.

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The Watchful Eye of CCTV

Camera City, Stuart Pearson
I found the subject matter of photographer Stuart Pearson quite interesting, a very popular topic at present – the level in which we are all, as a society, being monitored in our daily lives. Stuart explores how humans interact with the built environment and designed public spaces. He explores how security cameras are incorporated into our built environment where we are recorded hundreds of times per day, often without even realising, with facial recognition software utilised that can identify and even track us individually and our movements over time and concerns over it’s use on social media such as Facebook.

Through his work, he raise the question of if we still have a right to the freedom of privacy and anonymity in public places and online. There are a lot of uses of this level of tracking in terms of reducing crime, targeting specific audiences through monitoring online consumer activity and increased awareness of current happenings such as traffic incident coverage but there definitely does beg the question of – how much is too much – and are we ok with the current level of it? I found his work quite thought-provoking.

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Further Art on Show

There really was so much quality work on display that it would be difficult to run through them all but have a browse below and feast your eyes on some more of the talented artist’s work.

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July 10, 2016 /  

Farmleigh Portraits Exhibition

Portraits of a Nation Exhibition

Featuring a wide range of portraits, old and new.

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On a recent visit to the Farmleigh gallery in the Phoenix Park, the ‘Portraits of a Nation’ exhibition was on display and I was lucky enough to view it just before it finished up. It features 82 historic and contemporary portraits by 54 artists including paintings, photographs, original prints, sculpture and drawings.

I have always loved portraiture and the art of trying to capture the essence of someone’s character through drawing, painting or photography. This exhibition was unique in offering such a wide range of styles of portraiture between classic, traditional paintings and modern, contemporary drawings along with everything in between.

It’s amazing to see the level of detail that the artists capture, with some paintings being difficult to determine whether it’s a photograph or a painting as the quality is so good. I enjoy drawing and painting people myself, and can only aspire to someday reach even close to the talent these artists display.

Keep updated on current or future exhibitions at the Farmleigh gallery on their website.

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May 30, 2016 /  

Phoenix Park Fun Run Design

Community Response Fun Run Campaign

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Community Response approached Clare Lynch Creative to design posters and flyers to attract interest in their annual Fun Run. The Dublin-based charity provide help for people with substance abuse and this Fun Run helps raise awareness and funds for the charity.

The posters were designed to immediately have a feeling of energy and fun that the race itself is about. Using the lime green tone from their logo with a stampede of feet running haphazardly together across the poster, the message of the poster is clearly delivered.

The client loved the smiley face brought in to the race name lockup and went on to apply it to t-shirts, as seen below, along with other collateral to promote the run.

To sign up for the fun run on May 25th 2016 in Dublin’s Phoenix Park or read more about this charity, check out their website.

Have fun to all the runners!

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May 12, 2016 /  

SocialiseDUB Highlights

SocialiseDUB Design Talks

Check out some of things that stood out at this design event, held in the Dean Dublin:

Motherland

Motherland’s passion is researching and creating films that tell a story, create interest and evoke feelings within the viewer. ‘Becoming Men’ is a short video they shared where the narrator talks about own his experiences of growing up and how children jumping in the rivers and canals of Dublin is nothing new but is steeped in the history of childhood growing up in inner-city Dublin:

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Explaining Design to Children– Studio AAD were tasked with coming up with a video that explain why design is important and what it actually is to children. They were please to discover the children understood it after a Q&A session with the children after watching the final video.

Just Six Degrees

This new website launched by Michael McDermott plays on the idea that we are all within 6 degrees or 6 people away from each other – for example; how the phrase ‘small world’ is often used when discovering a close connection between two people that you know separately. The concept of the website is to get different designers and creatives to recommend 1-3 other people that are currently inspiring them, they then do a feature on these people and ask them to recommend 1-3 people who are inspiring them. And so the process continues. A great way to discover unique and possibly not well-known talent that’s currently out there.

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Love and Robots

Using 3D technology, Irish company Love and Robots create personalised and bespoke jewellery where the customer can be involved in the design process via their website, selecting from a range of options including colour, material and shape with even being able to twist a piece to create the exact shape you would like using their software. Each piece is custom-made and feels like a collaborative project between the customer and Love and Robots. The look and feel is quite edgy and contemporary and would appeal to graphic designers, architects, fashion designers in particular due to their geometric shapes.

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May 7, 2016 /  

Offset Dublin 2016

 

Offset Dublin 2016 Highlights

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Each year, the Offset creative festival seems to be getting better. With more and more linked events created around it, it’s an inspiring festival that stands out on every creative’s calendar.

This year, among the range of great talent speaking, some highlights were:

Tado

This creative duo are very lovable and seem to work so well together. They are so inspired with their creative projects, they live eat and breathe the work when they are in the midst of each project. They create a massive selection of characters, all shapes and sizes, for children’s and adult projects including cartoons, branding and advertisements. You can’t help but fall in love with their enthusiastic fun personalities when presenting and all their playful creations. I like the interior graphics that they did for Sheffield Children’s Hospital, click below to see more of it…

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Studio Dumbar

This Rotterdam-based branding company inspired the audience with some great projects. One that particularly stood out was the Alzheimer Netherland identity work. It was really interesting to see them show the process of a range of initial concepts that were discarded and their thought process with deciding this and then the chosen direction. The final identity is very cleverly created, whilst remaining very respectful to the Alzheimer community. It really demonstrated well the disease of alzheimers and how it can affect the memory and brain, with the sharpness and focus fading in and out, visually representing the condition accurately with great creative execution. View more about this campaign below…

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Úna Burke

It’s inspiring to see a Irish fashion designer Úna Burke do so well at such a young age. The London-based designer’s work is intricate and detailed and her passion for what she does is immediately apparent. She has designed leather pieces for the Hunger Games, along with costume accessories for famous models and performers and worked with many of the greats. Her sculptural work is unique and highly creative, with a feeling of being from a previous era combined with a modern twist.

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And finishing with the amazing Seb Lester

Seb Lester’s traditional hand-crafted calligraphy is a work of art, an art-form that is rare to see in modern times. It’s relaxing to watch the gentle swishes as his ink hits the paper and dances around from one point to another across the page to leave behind beautiful messages and artworks.

He talked about going back to his roots of what inspired him to follow a creative career path and advised any creatives in need of stimulation to do this. A quote he mentioned was ‘If you don’t ask, then you don’t get’ in relation to how he expressed interest in NASA in an interview online and he then got approached to design a logo for NASA space station which he would never have expected to become a reality! It’s a good motto to have when hesitating in anything in connection to following your dreams. His talk received a standing ovation at the end – a great roundup to 2016′ Offset event.

View a sample of Seb’s work and a video of him in action below…

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April 13, 2016 /  

Offsketch Exhibition

 

Offsketch Exhibition Dublin

 

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Offsketch is an Illustration Event held in connection with Offset and Illustrators Ireland:

A gathering of illustrators including myself joined up to sketch around various locations across Dublin city centre, led by well-known illustrators Steve Simpson and Steve Doogan. It was an enjoyable drawing day (despite some rain here and there!) and it was great to visit some new hidden-away places in Dublin to sketch.

The exhibition of work was held in Ogilvy Dublin. It was interesting and inspiring to see the range of different styles of drawing or subject point by each illustrator displayed in the exhibition, some samples can be viewed above.

A great build-up towards Offset 2016.

 

If you enjoy sketching, another good event to check out in Dublin is Melissa Doran’s drawing in the Botanic Gardens events. It’s a relaxing way to draw and connect with other illustrators amidst the colourful flowers and trees in the lovely gardens and greenhouses of the Botanics in Glasnevin. Find out more here.

March 20, 2016 /  

Tales for Tadpoles Beautiful Store

Tales for Tadpoles Store

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It was great to see Tales for Tadpoles store up and running successfully at a recent visit on Nassau Street, right in the heart of Dublin city centre near the busy Grafton Street and just next door to the House of Ireland gift store.

The visual display inside the store is a complete treat and the owner of Tales for Tadpoles, Caroline O’Sullivan, always offers a friendly face and the personal touch to all her visitors in helping them choose a gift or find out more information about a children’s book or print.

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It’s great to see a company we designed the logo for doing so well with their business.

They feature a great selection of classic treats for children from books, framed prints, notebooks, cushions, stationery and bookmarks. They feature classic illustrations and stories such as Le Petit Prince, The Princess and the Pea, Alice in Wonderland and many more of our childhood favourites.

See talesfortadpoles.ie for more 🙂

 

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January 19, 2016 /