SIMON FARMER

Swissted is an ongoing project by graphic designer Mike Joyce, owner of stereotype design in NYC. Joyce created these posters purely for the same reasons I’m drawn to them… Both his love of Swiss design and punk rock music. Some of these band names take me back to when I was 14, knocking about on my skateboard round various car parks. Ah, those were the days!

This collaboration of two contrasting design styles, takes both identities into totally different directions. The gritty feel that surrounds a band name such as the Dead Kennedys is completely abstracted by the slick modernism design.

Completely useless but I love it.

Also noticed a Creative Review blog post looking at British punk design, in aid of Jubilee. I really love this explosive, gritty effect. I mean, look at that Headache typeface… Awesome!

Anyway, I’m inspired. This has given me some fuel for a personal project over the summer. No idea what yet but keep posted!

http://www.swissted.com/

http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2012/may/sixty-punk-singles

ESPN poster campaign.

Within the competitors of UK sports satellite channels, Sky Sports has been dominant for a number of years. Many competitors have tried to rival Sky Sports, although have failed to do so for various reasons. However, in 2009 ESPN launched its UK channel, which hosted a vast selection of sports, such as Premier League football, Cricket and much more. As ESPN is such a well-established sports brand, due to its dominance in America, ESPN’s brand is clearly a worthy competitor to Sky Sports.

For this campaign I wanted to depict that ESPN has a well-established history of televised sporting coverage. To do this I wanted to focus on an aspect of sport that was always changing but was iconic to that period. Something that a younger audience could be made aware of and compare it to present day.

A suitable focus I found was iconic haircuts that were categorised to a specific decade. I chose six different sporting icons from both football and cricket, whose haircuts worked as a timeline through the decades to present day. I developed a concept that would erase the face of the sports star, so the viewer is required to work out who the icon is just by their haircut. Changing fashions is something that sporting icons are widely renowned for in the same way pop stars.

Inbhir, Scotch Whisky. (Whisky marketed at women)

The name Inbhir is Gaelic for “Mouth of the River” mixing with another water source. I felt this was a fitting name to emphasize this notion of mixing cocktails, whilst subtly linking to the importance of water in the process of distilling whisky.

As Scotch whisky has quite a strong, earthy taste, I felt it would be ineffective to market the drink to women to drink straight. To detach Inbhir from this area, I wanted to market the drink to be used in cocktails. Whisky based cocktails have a huge variety in flavours, so Inbhir is purely the foundation of a drink that is adapted to the consumers tastes. The bottle comes with its own cocktail recipe booklet, so people get an idea of what flavours work with whisky. The booklet encourages consumers to have fun mixing their own cocktails with friends in a home environment. However, I feel the bottle would not look out of place in a high-end cocktail bar.

I wanted to keep the bottle design quite minimal to portray a contemporary product, whilst visualising the bottle so it clearly shows it as whisky. The overall style to the bottle gives the impression of the whisky’s smooth crisp taste, which I felt was important to get across, as anything overly garish would take away from what the product actually is.

GBG brand identity.

The Kingsway paper

Birkenhead

Beck’s - Inspired By Words, bottle labels

Beck’s - Inspired By Words