That wasn't chicken!

2008-06-09T05:48:00.000-07:00

New Job!!!

Well it's finally happened. I have a job. In Northampton, beat that! Get out of jail free card and a new location.

It's taken almost two years of looking, so I guess its a testament to sticking with it, facing adversity etc... Seriously though, sticking at it works, it's been a hard graft, worked for some fantastic agencies, worked on some fantastic projects, made some great friends, basically had a great two years being an intern and doing bits and bobs of freelands on the side, and now I'm employed by these guys.

Any graduates reading this, yeah it's a hard graft, but it's completley worth it, stick with it and you'll get a job eventually :)

2008-04-09T03:00:00.000-07:00

Ok some new work. This is for 'That Art of Football'.

Background :
Nike have instigated a new creative initiative which is being curated by Nick Knight at SHOWstudio (http://www.showstudio.com/)

It’s to do with artists expressing themselves through football – and producing football inspired artwork. Nick Knight has put together a team of 11 associate artists who will all themselves produce a piece of football inspired artwork – these include AREA3 ( http://www.area3.net), Joel Tettamanti (http://www.tettamanti.ch/) and Dominic Wilcox (http://www.dominicwilcox.com/).

The project will be based around a website where such artwork will be showcased, and where emerging designers, illustrators and visual artists from across Europe will be invited to create their own piece of work inspired by football and upload it to the site. Nick Knight and his 11 associates will then select a shortlist of artists who have created football inspired artwork to have their work showcased at the Art Basel event in Switzerland (http://www.artbasel.com) later this year and as part of a related book. An overall selected creative will then be invited to collaborate with Nick Knight on a limited edition pair of Nike Dunks.

So if you want to have a go, headc over to Nike website : www.nike1-1.co.uk

Anyway, here's my attempt. It's about the polarization of views surrounding football. And yes, I did ask alot of people. Since I know nothing of football!

2008-02-25T05:27:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time coming, but I've finally got off my arse and done some personal work. OK, so it's not going to set the world on fire, and I like it. So that's all that counts,... Isn't it!? Anyway, it's just a fictional gig poster for an american band called The Cougars, check 'em out, they're quite cool! Hopefully more of these things soon, I've missed doing all the collage/screen printey esq stuff that I love so much!

2008-02-09T14:33:00.000-08:00

Commercial work.

Altenergy -

Logo design for a new eco-friendly power company. Done while working freelance at The Thought Works in 2008.

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Champagne Classic Cars -

Logo design for a classic car rental agency. Done while on a work placement at Suburb North in 2007.

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GL14 -

Illustration for a valentines day offer at GL14 Health Club. Done while working freelance at The Thought Works in 2008.

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Latitude Law -

Flyer for the ethical law firm. Done while working freelance at The Thought Works in 2008.

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Lowa -

Press add for Lowa hiking shoes. Done while on working freelance for The Thought Works in 2008.

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MCS -

Business card design for MCS the outdoor and leisure marketing company. Done while working freelance at The Thought Works

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2008-01-06T09:29:00.000-08:00

Two new lovely pieces of work for you all to stare at now. It has been almost two months since the last update, and as this is a blog I seem to have cheated the internet.

This is from my few weeks at a placement with Bubble. JD have a winter campaign going on, the main visual element is the Pixel, (if you have seen any of the bus stop adverts you'll know what I mean)Basically as we were throwing ideas around I came up with turing the 'Best of the Best' logo into a tetris block. Bubble liked the idea, so I played on After Effects. So for a quick idea, not only do I have a piece of internwork that's all of my own, and part of a massive campaign (You can see it at : Manchester Arndale+Trafford Crentre, London Oxford Road, and Heathrow Terminal 5) It's also my very first piece of moving image... What a score!

And now on to the second piece.

It's my new Business Card. I can't look at the same one for so long, drives me bonkers. Basically, it's my CV, but it also acts as a folding business card. Little piece of my work too.

Anyway hope people who actually read this are having a good 2008 so far! Merry New Year various people.

2007-11-20T08:23:00.000-08:00

It's a poster for Don't Panic.
It's about change,.. explanation? Good friends are a constant through change. Sort of maps my friends through the various education, extra curricula and work activities. showing my best mates through out. Although you'll have to find them :).

2007-07-15T05:04:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I last updated. Been a bit slack on the work front!
Got a call from the YCN asking me to help out of a pitch, there are a few other guys doing the same too. It's for Capital FM down in the depths of Londn. They wanted to brighten up their office with a mural, relating to London, but not actually showing landmarks. More centering around the feel and the emotion London has.
My idea was to use a map of london, but make it so you don't know what it is a first but still keeping a vibe of london about it, the buzz, the diversity (and that's just through the colours!).

2nd pitch. This was for a charity, they wanted to make some thing that isnt positive, into something that is positive. Basically, they wanted us to make rejection letters, sexy!
Here are mine, I didn't get chosen (maybe because I'm not an illustrator, I missed the point a bit, or they just didn't liket he sytle... the list is endless) But I like them anyway :)

Shot at 2007-07-17

L-Jxx

2007-03-03T05:35:00.000-08:00

New work! Well NEW personal work!

Hopefully more soon, but you never quite know.
L~Jxx

2006-11-29T01:23:00.000-08:00

Here it is at long last. My Business card, Sort of designed my CV, then this around it - Using the font, and imagery from my last major project. Mainly choosing to use bodini 'cause I'm sick of seeing Swiss and Avant Garde everywhere. Oh and below the bc is a little project I started last night. I made an illustration with yours truly in the middle (It's on my myspace page), and used a little sticker with one of my favourite quotes to cover my face to give me some aninimity. Anyway I thought to myself I would resserect my sticker fetish I had about a summer or two ago, but this time using quotes instead of imagery. This is an animated gif of 6 of said stickers. If you see them stuck round Manchester, they're mine :)Just need to print them out now!!

L~Jxx

2006-11-22T01:38:00.000-08:00

Oh man, the new section seven website is beautiful! Now I wish I'd spent my lunch times at uni leanring flash instead of in the Nelson. Well.. I made some stationary, well finally got round to designing it so it all links up. Done and dusted. And later today, or tomorrow those HUGE CV's will be posted to 8 lucky (or unlucky) companies. (And pictuires of that stationary will be up soon, just as soon as I get some decent card to make the business cards out of :S)

L~Jxx

2006-11-16T04:31:00.000-08:00

Well well, It's been 1 hour in the making and my HUGE cv's are finished. The size is a bit dodgy I'll get a photo when it's not actually cut out. The base Idea was to a get my CV and make it look like a swiss poster. Since a large number of the CV's I've sent out are in Swiss type. And besides I wanted to see if I could make something look Swiss, does it?! It was originally square, but then it wasn't - I did want my name and the CV handdrawn like old school design was, but I didn't have the time nor the patience to actually do it. There are 8 of them, I wanted 10 but didn't have the cash on me when I was at Sigma getting them blow up. 8 is a nice rounded number though. Anyways, the idea behind them was 'the bigger they are, the more people would notice them, and therefor the quicker someone would employe me' Wishful thinking I know but hey, it might work out :). The scalpel there is for size reasons, to give you something to compare it to. I havent donethe measurements, but the original one was 30cm x 25 cm, and that was blown up from an a3 sheet to an a0 sheet. enjoy

L~Jxx

2006-11-07T02:44:00.000-08:00

Portfolio.

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MP2 (Spraydeck)
Idea: To create a magazine based around my main passion (besides design). That will appeal to a younger audience and jump off the shelve.
Media: Handmade, photography, Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign.

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PP1 (HMatchbooks)
Idea: To use all my previous sketchbook work and use it in a new format. Ended up being used as busniess cards due to the size.
Media : SKetchbook, pen, pencil, ducttape, glue, scalpel. Screen print, Photoshop, Quark.

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Rebrand a Highstreet Retailer : (F.Hinds)
Set by The Partners in London. The brief was to choose one of four high street retailers, and increase thier fictional market share through rebrand.
Media: Illustrator.

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Gazette
We were given a double page spread to redesign from a 1933 College Gazette/Newsletter. We could use any style/method we wished, just aslong as all the information and the imagery stayed the same.
Media: Handmade, collage, glue, scalpel, marker. Berthold Type encyclopedia circa 1986.

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YCN (Howies)
This was set by Howies and run in conjunction with YCN. The brief set by Howies was to design a T-shirt design around the theme of 'HOPE'. Idea 1: For a t-shirt to hope to be worn, used and abused in everyday life. Idea 2: Wear your mistakes with pride - You have to know where your coming from to know where your going. Basically, colour in the little characters where you have made a mistake (Injury, cut, breakup, passed out etc)
Media: Paint, Photoshop.

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PP2 (Heroes and Villians)
Idea: To represent my influences (good and bad) through my life using mapping. End result, a binary opposition of good and bad. Forged into a wedding scenario (Ceremony and Reception) seating plan decided by impartial random lottery to negate favouritism.
Media : Cyanotype, Illustrator, Photoshop.

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Two Men and a Wardrobe.
Breif: To create a 2 colour screenprint poster in a 'Polish' style for the Roman Polanski short.
Media: Handmade, scalpel cut type. Screenprint. Photocopier.

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Major Poject 1
Idea: To create a series of film posters for my favourite contemporary films. I chose not to base the posters on the film plots.But to base them around the characters.
Fight Club : Anarchy and thefight between good and evil (used the lightsaber colours from Star Wars for that!)
Battle Royale : Used the characters weapons in the film to create a marketing campaign that brought a bit of light to a bleak film.
Media : Handmade, Photoshop, Illustrator.

2006-10-30T06:21:00.000-08:00

B-O-R-E-D. So more business cards, I'm doing 1 off runs of 8-12, because simply, I get bored easily. Same with the CV'S :) These ones are all designed to look screen printed, all found type, again with my fondness of using found material in my work. The photo's really donot show off the contrast between the cyan prtin and the pearly texture tauro offset 270gsm board, beautiful. The info is just simple typography, ITC Lubalin Graph, up there as a favourite font, great for stand alone text. Anyway emjoy.

L~Jxx

2006-10-18T12:55:00.000-07:00

As promised, here are some, well TWO of my '1 of 1 CV poster series' (I had to cross out my info, because let's face it, stalkers and prank phone calls are bad, mmmkay?!
At the top, that's my iBook and what I'm working on. Below is an a3 print out of the piece, with extra leaked ink, because thepaper decided to fold and tickle the ink cartridges, which made them leak, looks cool doesn't it. Makes more sense to keep iot because mistakes really are part of my work. Below, well this is slightly different. I didn;t have enough paper for another a3 print out. and realised you could read the info from the back of the paper, so reversed the type, so on thin right side, or ptinted side, everything is reversed, and when you flip it over you'll be able to read. Unbeknown was the texture the pink and the paper would produce - I;ve added a close up to it below (Pic No. 6). And finally to round off this, There was another poster, but i've not quite finsihed it all. So I just took a pick of a small bit of copy (type) and tried to make it look dramitic. You might ask, but why are they light blue and pink. Is he trying to tell me something? Well, no. What I;m using are pure shades of Cyan(the blue), and Magenta(The pink). Personally I prefer 4 straight colours to merged colours, a product of loving silk screening. Well yeah, bye
(Oh yeah, what the fuck it it with not being able to get rid of widdows (Single words on a single line at the end of a paragraph) Grr does my head it. Ass!!!

L~Jxx

2006-10-15T03:34:00.000-07:00

Well well. The weekend is here, a week without work ahead. So it's time to play games, and create. I was doing both last night, the latter till about 2 in the morning. WELL anyway.. Below are some pictures of my work. Crap quality I know, but hey. The bottom one, is where the name for this blog came from (see, I keep my promises) the other one with planes on is another version of the same piece of work -They were for a brief in the first year of Uni, in which we had to redesign a spread of a 1937 college gazette. We could do anything we wanted - as long as original pistures and information stayed, I sort of went off on a tangant, and ripped apart magazines, favouring the hand made apporach to everyone else's computer made pieces. I still love these, they're framed on my wall right now. The top one is an illustration for my last uni project. Unlike my other collages, it was made Predominantly on the computer, so it looked cleaner, not much more different than the other illustrations in the magazine, (I gave myself 10 minutes to make this) It tells a story of a kayakling trip to the Kodiak Islands,home of the largest land preditor in modern times (The Kodiak Bear) The only thing that has actually changed was I lost the background, favouting for more white space in the magazine artical spread, just to make it look more dramatic, as are the views on the islands. The rest od the magazine spread MIGHT appear at a later date. Anyway, hope you enjoy this small glimpse into my work, and at some point this week there will be some photo's of my 1 of 1 CV poster series, and hopefully a mock up of my book I'm making with the work and experience's I had while interning at Walsh Simmons.

L~Jxx

2006-10-10T11:33:00.000-07:00

CV.

Jonathan Sumner Aldridge 23.01.1985

Personal Profile.
I'm willing to learn, committed and work well with others. I'm capable of being an important team member and have good time management skills. I'm creative and feel my work communicates well with the audience. I'm a confident speaker and do noy shy away from presentations. At the end of third year, I was chosen to exhibit my work at the D&AD New Blood exhibition in London.

Education
Stockport College 2003-2006 BA (Hons) Graphic Design : 2:1
Stockport College 2001-2003 BTEC ND Graphic Design : Distinction
Bramhall High School 1996-2001 7 GCSE's (Incliding English and Maths)

Skills
Adobe Photoshop CS2, Illustrator, Indesign, Acrobat, Aftereffects (Basic CS3).
Quark Xpress. Microsoft Office. Tea and Coffe.
Mac and PC literate.

Employment History.
2006/2007 I spent 1 year in work placements at: Walsh Simmons, Suburb North, Judge Gill, Vivid and most recently Bubble in Manchester. From time to time I have done a bit of freelancing, mainly on pitches for YCN. My duties during these work placements include: making the morning coffee, getting lunch, ideas and concepts for client presentations + design of presentation packs, designing banners and posters. Amending errors, branding, designing logo’s and taking calls. Editorial, brochures flyers, moving image and interior design (wallpaper and murals).

Interests.
Art, graphic design, advertising and poster design. I'm a keen sportsman, I kayak, mountain bike and swim in my spare. I have kayaked to a high competition level, and from time to time I help out at my local canoe club as a qualified coach.

References.
Contact me for them.