OK Stupid

Anyone who reads this blog semi-regularly will be aware of my contributions to Alex's Unstruck project. Every day, he gets asked a question, answers it in under 500 words, and then an illustrator illustrates that answer. I do a weekly illustration for him, but unusually this week I was also asking the questions.

Alex answered the questions in a random order so I wouldn't know which one I was going to get to illustrate. I reckon I got one of the most difficult, but then I always think that.

In the end I quite enjoyed it though. Here it is...

As some of you may know, I've been on OK Cupid for quite a white. That 'quite a while' kind of says it all - it's clearly not proved successful at it's intended purpose, and to be honest, I don't ever expect it to be. All I know is, going on dates with complete strangers from the internet is a very special kind of scary fun, and I've enjoyed the whole experience a lot.

I've also, strangely, enjoyed all the inevitable not so fun bits... Creepy messages propositioning marriage and 'make many babies together', 5 star ratings from thoroughly strange/disturbing men, and some charmingly awkward meetings of not-very-like minds.

So I decided to create some kind of summary of my (and presumably, most other people's) experiences on OK Cupid, and this is it. Click to embiggen.

Oh, and if you're a charming man who thinks we might get along, let's go on a date! :)

(I don't consider this one of my finer graphic design/illustration/artistic moments. But it was fun. So I'm sharing it here...)

More festivity

Well this is the THIRD christmas card I've designed this year! I guess I've got into the swing of things now. This one is for the company I work for (Kings Colleges), to be sent out to various people.

I ended up doing a whole lot of variations because I couldn't decide which one to go for! So I figured I might as well share them all with you here. I'm still not sure which one we'll choose...

Wellness

Another one for Alex's Unstruck project...

Retrospectively, I think I prefer the circle to the heart (which you can see if you click the link)... but I do too many circles. I enjoyed the texture making, even if I'm not pleased with how it relates to the text of the piece. It's always an experiment.

I'm sorry. More early festive creativity.

I'm not actually feeling particularly christmassy, but as I'm trying to have a thrifty christmas, it makes sense to try and use some creativity to save money.
So no nasty plastic ribbons for me this year, oh no! I'm going to print out these and stick them on presents instead. I'll wrap the presents in simple brown parcel wrap and hopefully these will jazz them up a bit. I might even print them off onto some slightly thicker card and use them as tags to write names on.

I'm sorry. I know it's too early for Christmas

But this is for a competition!
The excellent Stack Magazines are running a competition to design a Christmas card - the only criteria is that it had to be A6 and include magazines in some way.
So here's my entry.

Gosh I hope I win. £250 would come in very handy right now, and I would LOVE a subscription for next year.

I'm being super selfish and not even linking to the competition because I'm worried one of you will go over there, enter it, and do something better than me. (Ok, that is selfish. Go on then.)

Quiet time

Here's something I've been meaning to do for a while...
I go to church, and have been going to this particular church for a few years. It's a beautiful building, and every Wednesday it's open for the general public to go in and have a look. Importantly (to me, anyway), there's no pressure from whoever is supervising the church - it's not a evangelical 'COME JOIN US!' sort of atmosphere - it's just a friendly welcome for whatever that person might need... Be that prayer, quiet time for thought, or just a place away from the rush of the city centre for a few minutes.

There's been talk for a while about getting an A-board to stand outside, so that people know the church is open. Now, let's be honest... churches are not renowned for their amazing graphic design. In fairness, my church does a fairly good job as keeping things simple and understated, so I'm not about to storm in there and start insisting we use Helvetica for all the orders of service.

But I thought it might be a nice thing to design a big, bold message for the A-board. I don't expect this will be used. And even if they are interested, I will probably work on something more than this. This is a first draft, I guess.

I've done two colour schemes, and I'm not sure which is most appropriate, although I definitely prefer the second one :)

No sleep