Also, I’m not too old to realise that a lot of the design that’s aimed at people in their late teens that attempts to be cool is toe-curling. It tries real hard but it ain’t quite hip, as the song goes.

So what this 32-year-old graphic designer in Cardiff, c/o The Provinces decided to do for the urban youth in London was just to keep it simple. Careful arrangement of the images and text (using Trade Gothic Condensed, a typeface which is ineffably cool already), gracefully contained in some inked lines. I love them. I hope they do, too…

The billboards present tomograms to the public – sound-wave generated images which show how rotten the trees are. The public are asked to contribute their ideas about what should happen to the trees.

I brush-and-inked the tree illustration and transferred it to Illustrator, where I added the copy, the Ealing Council and Heritage Lottery Fund logos, and the tomogram images. I did most of the work yesterday until late last night, making final amends today. All gone off to print now – and they should be up under the trees on Saturday. Phew!

I’ve got another project for Sara and Ealing in the pipeline which I’ll probably be able to post up tomorrow.

That rambling aside, I’ve been commissioned to do a few paintings recently. Some I can’t show you, as the commissioner wants to keep them private for now, but this one I have permission to display. It’s for a friend of mine who provides massage therapy – he gave me a specific brief with the tree and the animals, as these things are important to him in the way he massages. The painting will be hung in his therapy room to inspire him as he works. I’m pleased to say he loves it.

A little note about my style – it isn’t something I really choose – it came to me when painting for a friend a couple of years back and has stuck. I guess it’s quite naïve and not entirely figurative. There’s something there about shapes that fit together and the way everything is connected. I’m not really interested in paintings that represent accurately – they don’t tell me anything.

My motivation is always to keep it looking clean, fresh and professional, and never dull. Editor Mark Samuels is always pushing me to be creative & appreciates the importance of brilliant photography in making a magazine look as good as it can – making my job much easier, too.

A little plugin called Blogger Importer doesn’t appear to be working, so at present I can’t import my old posts. If you’d like to see them, they’re still here.

Wordpress is great for several reasons – it’s w3 compatible and very search-engine friendly. Disparity of appearance between various browsers is limited, and this and the fact it’s prettified using Cascading Style Sheets mean that, provided they know their CSS, designers have maximum control over how a site looks.

This is the first site I’ve designed using WP, but I have a few more in the pipeline – watch this space.