Elephant Poo and Dinosaurs

I recently bought a note book made out of elephant dung. The paper is quite nice, and i decided to check out the company, The Tropical Paper Company, as I have been looking for recycled stock to use for the final printing of The Acoustic Coffee Shop stuff.

I ordered a random pack of 30 sheets of paper, I was disappointed that there wasn't
any board, and that a lot seemed for 'novel' than of any use, but some were still quite interesting.

Heres some scans from some of the good ones.

Recycled Bank Note Paper (I think)

Hair Paper (I think)

Really worth checking out if your after recycled, or just strange, paper.


I started putting together a website yesterday - kylebibby.co.uk Heres some screen grabs of what I've done so far.

Click to Enter

Main Page

I discovered the Fudge Studios website last night. They are a design studio in Bolton. I quite like their work, escpecially the logo design, some really simple but clever ideas.





I have also been working on a DVD interface (for college). Its a DVD about dinosaurs, by a fictional company called 'Fun Factory'.



I tried making the word 'fact' stand out from factory, and my target audience is 'snotty 10 year olds that like playing with worms'/'the type of kid that reads 'Horrible Histories''/Monkey Dave...(inside joke), so reversing out 'fact' in some kind of 'splat' seemed appropriate for the logo.

I have been trying to find images that represent what I'm aiming for, and who I'm aiming the DVD at. My cousin has this dinosaur/dragon thing that spits slime, but I couldn't find a picture of that, so I went on the Horrible Histories website, and took 2 screen grabs of the flash animation on their home page, and recreated it (poorly) as a GIFF... ME-ONE. THE SYSTEM-NIL...



The interface will be based around the pages of a book. Here is an experiment I did using After Effects (I've never used it before), to see how I could make the pages of a book turn.



Heres a screen grab of how the main menu will look.




So yeah, thats about it for now.

The Acoustic Coffee Shop

Me and Merlin went along to the networking night for musicians and design students before Christmas. Afterwards a girl called rachel got in touch with us asking if we could do some work for her. She is going on a course to help her set up a small business. She wants to start a coffee shop that would have live music as well, called The Acoustic Coffee Shop, so she needed a logo, menu , business cards etc. Merlin sent her a questionairre to try and establish what it is that she wanted (fun, organic, friendly) and put forward a few logo ideas. Merlin then went snowboarding and it was mostly left to me.

Here is the logo I did for The Acoustic Coffee Shop. I tried making it look friendly and organic. I made the 'a' swirly to represent coffee in a mug.

I decided to keep the menu and business card designs simple with the focus being on using nice, recycled board. I have put the board in the background to better represent the feel. For the initial print outsof the menu and business card I scanned in some nice recycled board and printed it out onto textured paper, then printed my designs over that. This seemed to work really well as a mock up, because it felt really nice to touch. It pretty much looked real.

Menu outside (back on left, front on right).



Menu inside



Business Card front



Business card back



So thats that. Hopefully everything will go well for her and she will get the business set up. So sometime in the near future ill have to do letter heads, refine the menu, change the business cards and get everything professionally printed.

New books!

Recently (the last couple of months) I seem to have aquired quite a few new books.

Here are some pages from my favorites:

Neasdon Control Centre - Lost Control

I got this while I was in Berlin. 45 euros. There is some really interesting, visually exciting, experimental illustrations and collages. I really like the NCC style but find it a bit 'samey', its hard to remember one page of this book to another. That said it is still a brilliant book, well worth investing in if you're interested in illustration.

Ideas Have Legs - Ian McMillan Vs. Andy Martin.

Cat got me this for Christmas (She remembered me saying I wanted it - good girl). Ian McMillan writes pros (mostly in the form of poetry) and Andy Martin 'visually interprets' the writing. This a really great piece of collaborate work. McMillan writes in such a simple, but absurd way that you cant help but like it (similar to Spike Milligan, or a David Shrigley illustration). The design/illustration/layout/'visual interpretation' reflects this sense of playfulness and simplicity. A really good book (even if you've no interest in art/design).




How To Be A Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul - Adrian Shaughnessy

I read about half of this book and am finding it extremely useful, as I have to start trying to sort out a work placement over the summer soon. It has straight forward advice about interviews, portfolios, self promotion from someone who has been in the industry for a long time. I really recommend this to any one in my position (my house mates have all read it and will say the same).

The Obituary Tango - A selection of writing from the Caine Prize for African Writing 2006.

My mum got me this from the Fair Trade Shop in the Isle of Man. It has some really good short stories that offer insight into the mind of other cultures, trying to make it in the western world. Here is the quote on the back that helped sell this book to me (with my mums money).

"We played by their rules, Ej Haj said. That was our mistake. Back when we had the chance the change things we played by their rules. We wanted what they had. We wanted Regents Street and Piccadilly Circus. We wanted Oxford and Cambridge. We wanted Westminister. instead of thinking for ourselves. Nowadays, he said, no one even remembers that there was much thing as a colonial period. The English today are tired of hearing what their forefathers did and besides, they say, look what happens when you are left to your own devices."

Dinosaurs - Robert Sabuda & Matthew Reinhart

I got 'Dinosaurs' and I bought Cat 'Prehistoric Sharks and Sea Monsters' (she was doing a brief on pop-up books). These pop-up books are absolutely stunning. As well as the main pop up in the middle there are other one that fold out from the corner. I think that anybody would find this books fantastic (even though they are kids books). Seriously, its amazing.

Thats it. Bye bye. X.