Travel, man

I just got back from a trip to South Africa! Yeah, it was pretty great! Especially sweetened by the UK having terrible cold and snow while I was in the sun…
However, this isn’t a travelog blog, so instead of tales about safaris and speedboats, you get to read about the suitcase I took with me(!)

This grey fella is the Tripp suitcase that my parents take on holidays. I borrow it from them for my own hols, seeing as I go away way less than they do. It’s utterly indistinct, so to identify it as ours we apply stickers to it, tie coloured fabric around the handles, that sort of thing.

A few weeks before the big trip, Mum brought the tired-looking thing over to my place, saying that I could tart it up a bit.

I chose a Springbok for my design. It’s South Africa’s national animal, the symbol of their national Rugby Union team, and the symbol of the Friendships Association: They helped us visit my expat family over many years. I’d layer it over a green background, like below.

Cheque please!

My company has giant cheques. You know the ones; when there’s a donation to charity, or someone wins a cash prize, you see a photo in the paper of a happy chappy holding an oversized rectangle.

We had a number of big paper cheques, supplied by our chosen bank, rolled up in a fat parcel tube. It was decided that we needed something better, ideally personalised with our own branding, and more hard-wearing.
This is what we came up with.

big-cheque-hero

Taking shape

The basic layout of all cheques is the same, so I took a lot of measurements of the big paper ones we had, with both tape measure and ruler…

Who’s Got the Time: The Poster

This time next week, the 24 Hour Show will kick off.

At the Bradford Playhouse on Friday night, Bradford Uni’s musicals society (BUSOM) will learn what show they’re performing for the paying public exactly 24 hours later. Everyone stays up all night, learning songs and lines, building set (safely!), painting, rigging, sewing… and eagerly anticipating the breakfast butty run.

I thought the show poster had featured on this blog already, but my post about the 2014 event pre-dates it. Let’s rectify that right now. Behold, the 24 Hour Show 2016 poster:

24 Hour Show 2016 Poster
Audition Friday – Perform Saturday – Sleep Sunday.

The Caravan Christmas Switch On

This Christmastime we flipped the big switch: The new Caravan Guard website is now live!
My previous post was prompted by the building of this all-new, responsive domain, which I can now talk about a bit here.

To be clear, I didn’t code the company site. It’s a sprawling, multi-functional, many-legged beast that our experienced resident web developer got to build from the ground up! No, my weight went into creating and renovating images for the frontend (and lots of testing on desktop, tablet and smartphone)… the baubles for the tree, as it were.

caravanguard.co.uk (for desktop, tablet and mobile)

A Whale Of A Tale, Act 2

Part 1, talking about making the posters for this show, can be read here.

A couple of months after the posters were completed, I sat down with the show’s producer to work on the programme. Having made the programme for Maskerade last year, and doing a bunch of layout work at my job, I had more experience at it this time around.

For a start, I asked the producer how many pages it was going to be, and what the basic layout was. This is the very very first draft:

Folded paper with "Director", "Plot" and "Song List" written on it

Don’t laugh, it’s useful!

Take Any Heart

This year’s Valentine’s Day celebration / penance wasn’t cards for selected individuals: It was a benevolent lucky dip for everyone at work. Here’s how it came together…

The first task was learning to make an origami heart – these are the instructions I followed.
I bought a roll of red paper, cutting it into 7cm squares.
Why a roll of paper? There needed to be one heart for every member of staff present that day, plus a few spares.
I assembled 121 of the things.

Oh Boy!

A couple of friends had their first child this week – a baby boy – and there was much rejoicing.

This card came together around Easter-time, hence the theme. The main decoration is felt, with pen for the eyes and mouths. Kids love felt. Lightly concerned that kids love to eat everything too, considering UHU binds it together. I rounded the corners at least.

The process of construction was roundabout…