'I'm Quite pleased with the result of this, it looks brilliant'.

I was sent this by Chris, art director at Sight and Sound magazine, who'd discovered what looks like several A Level schoolkids having a go at their version of a cover for the mag. Interesting that they're posting their work on a blog, presumably because they work 'at home' such a lot these days (but with class sizes becoming enormous, this is less of a surprise than it should be.) Year 12, let's see...that makes them what we would have called 'Sixth Formers'.

My favourite is Jana's, the hand-drawn type version, but look closely...a font? Or several? I rather like the jaunty angle of the model pretending to be 'unknown director'. I also love Jana's ballsy confidence - 'I'm quite pleased with the result of this, it looks brilliant'. Bless the lad - keep that up, it'll be useful later on in life! I like to think this is influenced by Sigh and Sound's recent experiments with hand-drawn covers (ahem).


Chris on the other hand cheerfully goes for one of the cheesiest fonts known to man, and Charlotte does a nice job of saturating a photo rather creepily and remembers to put 'An' before Historic too - extra points for grammatical correctness!





It all takes me back. But putting homework online, Photoshopping an entire creative solution and presumably receiving feedback from the teacher via wires and screens seems a little sad and lacking in something. Let's hope there was fierce classroom debate over fonts and layouts with print-outs waved sweatily in animated palms. Interesting though - give it a few years and they might well be cover stars themselves - though perhaps as directors rather than designers!

A nice oxymoron

I love the title 'working holiday'. When I was younger I couldn't figure out what one was (surely you were doing one or the other), but as an adult I've had plenty of examples.

For instance, New York. We spent the last three weeks there, on a trip based round a couple of work commitments which quickly became 2-5 work commitments a day.

Along with all the meetings and stuff, and despite my feeble protestations (I'd already had three projects to finish), a couple of illustration jobs came in which were too nice to pass up, so I did them one weekend with sketchbook perched on a borrowed cupboard in front of the window, to get enough light to draw - and an incredibly ropey wireless connection. The files got there against the odds in the small hours, and here they are. A couple of nice new bits for the folio, with both clients a joy to work with (and extremely tolerant of my tech issues!).

For the Guardian newspaper, to encourage ethically and environmentally-driven companies to advertise with them. Entirely hand-drawn in felt tip pens and ink.

'Gangsters Special' - cover for the British Film Institute's Sight & Sound magazine. This one follows 'Tarantino', and is hopefully the second in a series