I'll be taking part in Poster Roast a poster exhibition with a handful of the top poster artists in the UK. Its the first weekend in May and part of the Camden Crawl festival. All the artists involved with have prints for sale at the show. I'll be unveiling 4 new prints. 4 live bands (Turbowolf, Pulled Apart By Horses, Silent Front, and That Fucking Tank) will play in our exhibitor space at the Black Heart. Should be AMAZING.

There will also be a poster available for the event itself which each artist has contributed artwork for. The poster will be silkscreened for you by hand while you watch. Hot shit, no?

Here is a list of all the artists with some pics over there of their work.

Drew Millward
Luke Drozd
3d Glasses
Thr33 Designs
Telegramme
David Bailey
Scrawled design
The Pinch
Two Ducks Disco
Adam Pobiak
Dan Mumford
Dan Reeves
Switchopen
Army of Cats Design
Michael Cowell

As the event is part of Camden Crawl you'll need a Crawl wristband to get in. If you're around please say hello!

here are the full details....
Camden Crawl, London
May 1st & 2nd 2010
12 till 6pm at The Black Heart Pub
NW1 0AP

For More info and more on the artists please visit the Poster Roast website!

At MySpace we have been working quite hard recently to rectify the shambles that is the MySpace brand. As I was spending a lot of time thinking about branding and the Internet I noticed this phenomenon quite early on.

I think it is actually more difficult to try to think of web brands that are not blue rather than ones that are. I really doubt there is any other industry in the world where all of the major players have brand colours so close to one another.

As far as I can tell there could be two possible explanations for this (if you come up with any others I'd be happy to hear them!) The first is that blue, Google's blue, is the default colour for links in HTML code. I am certain this is the reason for the colour being included in Google's branding, But it is also possible these other brands have used blue variations to insure their sites and brands look good with the standard blue links. However since CSS (the code and not the band) this argument is not particularly valid because of course you can change links to which ever colour you want. The other is simple copying. The Internet is relatively new and most of these brands were probably created within a year or two of one another by "techy" people with out much creative concern. So it is also possible that a start up would look to the bigger established brand and try to somewhat align their look with the known brand. For example pre 2007, when Facebook was being created MySpace had a darker greyer blue, so for a while these brands colours were virtually identical I'm sure this was not a coincidence. They are still the only two with gradient free logos. I might be wrong but I think AOL in the late 90's was black and yellow. If this is correct then it means sometime since then they have switched to the standard blues. Though I have not included them in the image Bebo has also added quite a bit of blue to their splash page. They didn't go so far as adding it to their main brand colours but it seems they didn't want to be left out.

In the last 10 years these brands and great creative agencies have put a lot of work and research into defining their brands and the blues continue to be added. Is it possible that an industry identity is forming and for a brand to be a force in that realm it needs to slot itself into the industry look? That would be a bit of a shock but the more I think about it the more it seems to be the case. Twitter has even spawned a sub-industry brand around the word tweet and its variants (of course all blue in colour). If you have any thoughts on the matter or have worked on the branding for any of these companies shoot me email, I'd love to hear what you have to say.

I'm off home to Pittsburgh. I'll be back in London the 26th of August. I wont have a functioning mobile phone but I will try to check e-mail as regularly as possible. If you're in the Burgh and want to meet, shoot me an e-mail or check the following places
in the order of probability I'll be there:

1. Gooski's
2. The Squirrel Cage
3. Vincent's Pizza
4. Tessaro's
5. Melon Park

If you're not in Pittsburgh
I'll talk to you when I get back.

Aloha,
A

This website has been a long time coming, since 2005 as a matter of fact. To celebrate the launch / to compensate for being so lax with publishing my work, I'm offering up a set of wallpapers to download. It's one of my favorite images . Enjoy.

Download wallpaper size:
Giant F-off Macs
1200 x 1024px
1024 x 768px

It was brought to my attention the other day that one of my prints is currently featured in the front window of TOPMAN right on Oxford circus. If you get a chance, go take a peek. Not sure about the yellow red and blue neckerchief though. You can buy the shirt online from TOPMAN online here.