Design for Kells Comedy Festival 2010

The Kells Comedy Festival is back for another year.

Just finished the design and I'm really happy with it. This year I based it around the book of Kells. I redrew characters from it's many pages, emphasising how comical some of them are, those monks had brilliant imaginations, they were the designers of their time! Anyway I then got an old parchment background, to give a textured feel to the posters and tickets. Pretty happy with the result!

Anyway it promises to be another great festival, all down to the hard work of Fred Cooke, he's a comedy genius in his own right but turned organiser for this festive affair.

An interesting read on logos and branding...

Just found this really interesting blog on logos and branding on design sponge. There are some good points in it and all of them I would agree with. Get your branding right at the start and it should be with you for life. Have a read of the post here.

Angels in the Castle

There's a couple of angels hanging around the castle...

Read about this exhibition by Nollaig Fahy in the paper and decided to head down for a wander. I think they look great in front of Kilkenny castle and I'm delighted to see that the doors are being opened more to things like this, next step a concert I reckon although I'm not sure if the council would be up for that.

Here's the piece from the paper

"Neil Jordan, The Edge, Uma Thurman and other Irish and international celebrities bring messages of hope to Kilkenny this week with the ‘Angels – Beacons of Hope’exhibition currently taking over the grounds of Kilkenny Castle.

The spectacular exhibition is a showcase of more than 50 colourful, eight-foot tall angels individually designed by Irish and international musicians, celebrities and sports people.

Artist Nollaig Fahy transported his exhibition of the larger than life-size angels to Kilkenny in a bid to raise much-needed funds for charity but also to bring a message of hope to the Marble City."

Pop down for a look if your about, I think it's worth it.

TCK, the concept behind the design

Since the success of The Constant Knitter and with a little advice from a friend in the know, I decided I would add a bit of usefulness to my blog. Give back some info instead of using this as a space to randomly rant or throw up some unexplained work, so here it goes...

A little insight behind the thinking that went into The Constant Knitter.

I always start with a concept and this concept was brilliant. Rosemary wanted something a little quirky, maybe slightly off the wall, a bit out there, basically something different. She was totally and completely open to ideas and I LOVE THIS. The more open the better.

First things first, I took my influences from Rosemary, she loves colour, wears a lot of it and always looks bright, point in my notebook.

Secondly, wool!

The site is all about wool and knitting. The underground culture of knitting is mad, actually absolutely mental. With so many groups and hidden societies out there it's like an underground rebellion, so of course I had to investigate that. I took wool samples and played with them endlessly, making the letters, scanning the wools, basically having fun. It's fun with a purpose though and I found that the material itself combined with all the different types of stitches created really intriguing patterns upclose. I ran with this idea, asked Rosemary for some of her favourite pieces, took them home and put my scanner to work.

Thirdly, I took a selection of different typefaces or fonts (there seems to be an argument in the design world about what to call these so I'll call them letters) each letter was a different font (ah there I go again. Just confused myself!) as a wanted to create a zanny feel to the logo, to show the diversity of knitting and knitters. I placed the scanned wool pieces behind the letters and cut them out...the end result is the logo you see now plus a few little tweaks.

The images above are some of the research stages I went through, this is what I love about design. It's an open process, you may think your going one way with a piece and then a little bit of exploration leads you down a totally different path!

Hope you enjoyed this post, I may do more of these...um.

A Little Prudence for The Constant Knitter

The Constant Knitter gets a great mention in prudence magazine! After picking up Rosemary's leaflet in Cafe Notte, a journalist from Prudence asked her to take part in an article on entrepreneurial women. A full day of photos ensued and Rosemary and The Constant Knitter got great coverage in the recent Jan/Feb edition.

I'm delighted for Rosemary and (whispering) for myself.

A Little Recognition...

Just got a nice little present for a Monday morning. Have, this past hour, been informed that "The Constant Knitter" has made it onto the Irish House and Homes magazines top 100 list of funky design start ups. Held design did the full branding and web design and we are delighted that Rosemary has got some recognition. (A little happy for myself as well, just reaching around now and patting my back!).

Ruairi at Kro Solutions did an excellent job building the site and you can read his blog here. As you can see we're all pretty happy!

Irishbusinesstalk.com

Have a look at Irishbusinesstalk.com, going for a gander now! It's a new forum for people in business to share ideas and get a little help when required (which form my experience is always!)

Edu Think Toy's

Here's a beautiful little picture of Edu Think Toys. They opened just in December on John's street and I have to say my brother loved the Micano set I bought him. Hasn't stopped playing with it since and he's a bit on the old side (he won't know I said that he can't read yet)

Anyway they stock lots and lots and lots of toys all with an educational slant (they're not boring though far from it, I blew up my eye brows new years morning playing with their mini science set)

Stay in Kilkenny...

Go on you all know you want to!

Daly's B&B is based right smack bang in the middle of Kilkenny and if I was staying anywhere I'd stay there (apart from the fact that I live in Kilkenny and it really makes no sense!) Anyway Dalys has gorgeous rooms, loads of parking, are five seconds from anywhere and are right beside The Two Dames (you won't go hungry in this place in fact you may not fit back out the door).

So no excuses visit stayinkilkenny.ie and come visit me!

The Kro Team

Kro IT Solutions is a web development, custom software, IT consulting, e-commerce, and general website services business working across all sectors in Ireland.

Anyway, yes that does seem and sound a little random...so to continue from my stream of thought.

I have been working with Kro helping to design some of their sites for the last year and Ruairi has kindly written a little piece on Held in his blog, click here to have a read. If your looking for a bridal site you could just be in luck!

Visit the Kro website here (I'd highly recommend a look and if you have any questions give them a call, their really helpful and always up for a chat)