J's blog type place for design and randomness

Glass Jaw And My Mitch Buchanan Impression

So you Ages ago... infact it was my last blog before my 2 year Gap I said i was going to see Glassjaw in Dublin.. well as usual that didnt happen. The signer Darrel has very bad Crones disease and for the last 3 times they have Toured the Uk they have always had to pull out because he has been unwell.. although his side project (who are GUFF!) head automatica have toured countless times and he has been fine.

So heres hopping this time they will manage to actually play, Ive seen them b4, 8 or so years ago and thats who long i have been waiting to see them again. and I CANNY WAIT!

So whats the Mitch Buchanan bit about?

whlle i was leaving work and old man - who was called Tom - slipped and fell on the ice near the train station, anyway i ran across a busy road (like a tool) too see if he was ok i helped him up and at first he seemed ok then his nose started to bleed and he had alot of pain in leg, Anyway I phoned an ambulance and waited with him, he was such a nice old man, bit of a shame anyway the paramedics came, it turns out he had a broken shin bone and mabey a fractured rib or two :(.

Anyway i got home an hour later than i usually would, but im not mad about it at all, infact i feel strangely quite happy... must be Karma or something lol.

Tomorrow is another day.. BUSY BUSY BSUY! Amir Khan has a fight on Sat so we have been mobbed with Sky and Rebock calls all day. Its good to be busy though.

New Studio .. A New start

So first day in the new studio today, and i got lost, infact i dont think ive i even tried i could have got at lost as I did today, it looked something like this.

Please note: this is not my usual face, thank you

Not very good, I ended up getting the completely wrong train and ended up on the other side of Glasgow, an easy mistake to make, I took the train to Pollockshaws East instead of Pollockshields East.... A mistake believe it or not I have made before. I did it when i went to see Mogwai, And I can now honetsly say that my lesson has been learned.

I went here instead of work and I had to get my boss to come pick me up. lol was a funny start to the day but it was all taken with a smile.

The new studio is really!!! really! nice. we have our own room and the sales and events team also have there own room, its all good

It was business as usual, although we have to now go through all our stuff and change the address and phone number details etc.

I hot home ok, and managed to get my connecting train just as teh doors were closing, takes 1 hr 15 min to get home. Which sucks, im going to look into taking the car i think, theres loads of spaces although I still hate heavy stop start traffic. Plus it was freeeezing tonight

ACDC DIgital Art piece

Hey! so Im aiming to blog everyday for at least 2 weeks. if all goes well. So I've been working on some new stuff, trying to get a bit better at digital art, mainly brushes and overlayer colour dodges etc, So ive been getting allot of help from Ricco Chapman, Great digital artist and my junior at work, great guy, his stuff great, just hope it rubbs of on me.

(click above for larger image)

Anyway heres my stab at Angus Young (ledgend!) from AC/DC

see what you think

Got Bored Today... and came up with what i call 4 years of Photobooth

So here it is this is pretty much photos from the last 4 years of my life From Phat Smoker to Now lol, they are all taken in Photobooth on 5 different Macs... its about 10 Mb its 134 of the best one, because there was thousands ... so it may take a while.. God my bandwidth going to be through the roof.. anyway you can pause it by rolling over it.

Im about to do a Tutorial from my Boy Ricco at 80eight design, shoudl be fun ill let you know how it goes.

GM Training.. And rough as.

Not feeling great today .. a good friday night was had and much alcohol was conumed.

Anyway ive been working on GM Trainig today, a close friend of mines new company, I am trying to get it finished out the way asap so i can work on my own stuff. I came up with a few logo concepts and they were wittled down to three,

My Fav was this one....

but they ended going with the hand written one.

So ive been working on there site its online and being tested at the minute

Click above image to get a better view (its a pop up so unblock the page first)

Im quite happy with it, the flash header animates nice, and the client is happy too, just wee bugs to iron out but shouldn't be long till its finished.

Im working on new biz . contact cards for myself, there not really for business, i just want to try and get my name out there and become a better known designer.

The design i have in my head is really nice but ill need to work out costing as it may be a tad expensive :S.

I also found some biz cards that i designed a few years ago when i was tidying up, there nice design, i forgot all about them, ill try and take a few pictures and stick them up here soon.

Last Day in the old office, 111 Union st is no more :(

So its the last day in town, i feel a bit sad about it, its been 3 years, 3 years of ausome lunches from chopstixx and gregs... man ill miss though guys..(sob)

So were moving officially to the south....not the one with red necks and hicks, the other one, lol im looking forward to having my own studio now though space to do what i want and our own unique space for the design team to flourish... IE play loud music.

The office is a bit of a mess at the moment, everything packed up, although im still working away on stuff atthe same time which is a bit mad as the network is almost gone.

The mini called Guertie

theres a funny story behind this picture...

basically myself and a few of Coatbridge's finest went on a road trip to download festival in Donington, I only had the car a few months and the clucth blew out just outside stoke, it cost a shed load of money to fix. The irony is that the main band I went to see that weekend are from Tennessee who are called clutch, they were simply fantastic and made up for the bad luck.

Also Faith No More and Deff Leopard were amaizing!

what an ausome weekend!!! and what a fantasic car, wouldn't trade it for anything :)

J

Its been a while!

All righty!!

Wow its been far two long (see what i did there? almost 2 years ...) since Jan 2008 in fact (ill double check that)

So what's been happening. Loads! far to much to mention in a one off. So what's changed.. well Im now the lead designer at CO, i have an ausome Junior called Ricco, who as well as being a great designer is sound as... what a great guy! chuffed to bits.

Works been mental over the last year but things are now stable, things have been crazy! weve just launched 2 magazines, inspire and Love curry. we have had 2 new out door events Hungama at the Quay and Diwali at the square, which all went really well, We also still have the IRN-BRU scottish Curry awards and the SABAS, along with our second YSME awards which will take place next month; so as you can imagine we have beeen very very busy.

Me in charge of the AV pit at the SABA's

so what elese have i been working on externally, well ive been once again commissioned by the director os CMI training to work with the,. they are re branding as GM training with all new art work and website. i will keep you up to date with the work.

what else did i do today then..... well I've had a bizzar week my iphone stopped working which was gutting... after a few appointments at apple they discovered that i had "fluff" stuck in my headphone jack. SO today i set the official Glasgow apple store record for the most amount of "fluff" removed from an apple iphone.... slightly embarrassing as a small group of Apple staff gathered round in disbelief as they removed ball after ball of ooz.

Excuse the picture, its an old one from the day iphone was launched. I waited out in the snow for 9 hours...sad i know... ANYWAY

Also Ive rebranded all my jdigital stuff, the whole freelance thing is no over for me for a good while, im no longer looking for solo projects, just stuff for people I know. I want to focus more on official work related content only.

im going to keep this up todate from now on also.. I hope.

ALSO I CAN NOW DRIVE! i got my passed my test a year ago and have a first gen new mini cooper in silk (mint metallic) green. im so happy with her, (thats right her!) shes my pride an joy. I got a new macbook too the week before teh new macbook pro came out lol gutted but Im still happy.

Anyway i will be on here alot more. although i do keep my photo iPhone blog more up to date as its easyer lol which can be found at http://www.jdigital.co.uk/iphone/

Oh and Ive also lost 5 stone and have changed my life dramatically lol

cool

Take it easy and ill speak soon

Glassjaw 12th May 08 Dublin

Im going to see F@&*KIN GLASSJAW YASSS!!!!!!!!!

Anyone who wants to come is welcome, even just for the weekend and the banter.

So far it looks like me and Lou and possibly Lous Pal Omarah and her Bf Neill, But I iwll brake it to the group tonight.

Avimore is Minus 8 just snow and snowing, hope we get ther eok, and hope the fresh snow isnt to fast.

PEACE!!

J

And on the 13th day god created J, and his epic blogs

Work

Although it has been a while. Right I have an hours lunch break to kill, I�m fuelled up and ready to go. What�s been happening as of late? My last blog was back in September, the last 5 months have been pretty full on, I�ve been really busy both in and outside of work. I took my old job back at CO where things have been amaizing � until recently . We�ve been very very busy though and as we lost our final graphic designer I have now taken on rolls of both web and graphics.

--- (Do You know how bloody hard it was to find a tie that matched the same colour of green as this Colour Scheme!!!!!... and dont even mention trying to get a pair of converse in this colour. Gutted) ---

I�ve been learning CMS Joomla for the last few months and I�m now pretty good with It, although we are still not at the stage where we can legally sell it, as its still a open source program, but we are tailoring it as we speak.

I have had a few new websites to do, our own which isn�t up yet and http://www.oceanicconsulting.co.uk along with a new hair studios one, this and another few are all still in our beta testing stage so I will post links when these are finished.

Home

Things have been great the past few months, my routine has massively changed I�ve, stopped smoking (that�s 6 months now) I�ve stopped eating shite � well most of the time, I�ve started going to the Gym and Swimming with my friend mal (I�ve lost 3 and a half stone) things are pretty good man.
Probably the most significant change has been my circle of friends, old friendships rekindled (and all that bollocks) along with new ones forged. Feels like old times again, seeing Gems, Bren and Mal. Along with their consecutive other half�s. Then there�s Paul and Karen, They both went their separate ways, a bit gutted really. But things have sort of gone the reverse of what you would expect (considering he�s my boy n all that). We see Karen now more (which is awesome) than Paul (which isn�t so awesome), it�s a bit strange, not too sure what�s going on with him. Still miss Lauren�.who knows when all that will sort its self out, which it was sooner rather than later. Oh yeah and there�s John as well, Liam�s (Gema�s other half) best friend, sound guy, good guy. All good friends.

And then of course there is the mighty Andrew Nicholson, need I say anymore ? Were hanging out more regularly , I missed the big (and getting bigger) bastard. Ive been up to his new gaff in leith, its sweet as.. We�ve lunched a few times in the last week as he�s now working in Calley as a lecturer. Its wicked (running out of positive pronouns)

I gave up driving again lol, but I�m going back soon, there was loads of reasons for it, I spend about 5 hours a week on a train, and would have no use for a car, and I don�t really earn enough to by the car I want, but the money I do earn now gets sucked in to my bank loan repayments. Bank Loan eh?? Yeah my heating finally broke, after 25 years of pounding away in the corner it finally kicked the bucket. Gutted, It was a very cold and damp Christmas and new year for me, so much so I ended up in Monkland�s finest B&B establishment. But that�s all fixed now, heating and health (although it took a while to get over it)

That�s it, Were going to Avimoure this weekend all of us, that�s 14 in total. Big cabin (house not sure) for hopefully some snow and fondue. Ill take loads of picks as I got a new camera (pentax SLR k10 � it�s fucking beast). I will update my blog more regularly. Its one of my new-years resolutions along with recycling , which I have already begun.

PS I GOT PORTISHEAD TICKETS!!!!! YES!!!!

Random Stuff

I went to knockhill all last weekend with my Cousin. while we were there we got the News That Colin McCray had died. Was crazy because it was also a subaru racing day on the track. One thing lead to another and everyone eventually drove to Colins house and drove by. at least 100 cars, and then on to donington then silverstone. Crazzy stuff man.

The largest (Subaru) racing team in the world, was it was titled.

So having fannied about for a week, i came to realize that i really miss my old work, I miss the guys and girls and also the workload. I dunno if i just miss working full stop, but every interview Ive been to since leaving has always had this kind of cold shoulder feeling, not the interviewers but the actual studio. Things just don't seem as much fun.

Anyway i got back in touch with creative and Im going in for a meeting with them either monday or tuesday. Id love to go back to work with them but i need a stable wage.

Lou got a job as a psychology teacher in the new school, its only temp for two weeks but the woman she is replacing might have to go on long term sick leave, so it might become a permanent position. So that gives me a bit more scope to go back to CO with. anyway ill get back to this when i know what's happening.

I am pure loaded with the cold just now, its horrible. i haven't been able to go out running or anything. i lost two stone but Ive managed to put half a stone back on in a week!!! Really annoyed with my self. So Im off out to a session at the gym, try and shift some of it.

Ocean70 Web designer job

All righty.

I got an interesting email today from a guy at ocean70. There an ausome Media/ graphics/advertising .... etc etc they do it all, company. The email was titled "job: web design ninja" which made me chuckle. They seem a really cool company with a huge list of clients.

its the first time anyone has contacted me about a job without me applying for it. I hate to use the phraze headhunted, i initially thought this untill I was telling my buddy drew about it. Drew has worked with them before�, I recently joined a design and media contact group called "dotdotdot".

ANYWAY Drew tells me that one of the guys who runs dotdotdot also works for ocean70. mystery maby solved.

So I hope things pan out, exciting stuff. ill let you know how thigs go.