Whisky Recipe.

smugglers loading a skiff with brandy.“Aye! Weel may ye sing o’ the maut, the meikle black deil, an th’ Exciseman, but…” You can read the rest on Maut/Malt and see the full illustration here: where the boatman speaks on to alert the happy singing smugglers that Exciseman Robert Burns and his dragoons are on their way and mad as hell because the schooner Rosamond fired grapeshot at them.

And he hopes their tide comes in in time.

Also included are the lyrics of Burns’s ballad The Diel’s awa wi the Exciseman.

Illegal Hooch Production.

While working out the caption and illustration for the above word Maut I got carried away with researching how Continue reading Whisky Recipe.

Message in a Bottle.

What do you want to say? Who do you want to tell? Why at all? Hook your reader. Chop out the extraneous. Have you made a Dog’s breakfast of it in the end?

Tidying up my computer recently I found a wee set of web-pages I made in 1995 dedicated to helping people successfully communicate their message through the Internet.

I’ve now re-read them 25 years on and they seem OK to me so here’s a link.

Message in a Bottle.
Notice the revolutionary design of the all in one multi coloured iMac in the bottle.

Continue reading Message in a Bottle.

Visual Communications as a Visual.

Visual Communicators – An Asset to Any Business.

If you’re a visual communicator you have the qualities universities boast of and employers want; research, critical analysis, imagination, problem solving, independent thinking, people skills, meeting deadlines, communication, comprehension and listening.  And by taking words and numbers even further with visual literacy – more creativity. Perfectly suited to manage this moving image, visually rich, multi media, information heavy, networked world.

Visual Communications – The Process.

Visual Communications path from client through brief to target audience.

Continue reading Visual Communications as a Visual.

Advice for Design Students.

Go visit my Pinterest boards on design and illustration.
Go visit my Pinterest boards on Motion Graphics, Leaflets, Colour, Typography, Type and more…

The advice always given to young writers by professionals is to read – a lot. Then the advice is; learn to recognise good writing and then read consciously so as to understand what the writer is doing and why. And always the technical (grammar, spelling, structure, editing) go hand in hand with the artistic (word choice, plot, dialogue, setting, character).

And not surprisingly my advice to young visual designers is to do the same. Look at Continue reading Advice for Design Students.

Inktober 2019 Week Four.

Woohoo, final week completed. Still drawing using ink scientifically designed to flow through a metal tube measured in microns around a tungsten carbide ball almost as hard as diamond onto the Post-it note without leaking or clogging.

This scientific marvel is known as the Bic ballpoint pen.

Société Bic in France developed the ink and the ballpoint pen patent was licensed from László Bíró a Hungarian-Belgium inventor in Argentina and Bic began manufacture in the 1950s. My favourite pen for sketching since the 70s.

Inktober Prompt 23: Ancient.

Ancient Tortoise being attacked by ambulent lettuces with weapons.

Over the centuries ancient George never ceased to be mystified as to why the local ambulant lettuces hated vegetarians so much. Continue reading Inktober 2019 Week Four.