Monthly Archives: March 2010

food art, Held Design

My tummy’s rumbling…

Hi All,

I haven’t much time at the moment to blog but while watching telly last night a friend of mine said “why don’t you write about something different, like food”. So I whisked up a few of these this morning.

So for breakfast I had…


Then I was feeling a bit peckish, grabbed a watermelon and before eating it, did a little sculpting…


For dinner I’m going to have this, prepared it last night, it’s my tribute to spring…


While whipping up my dinner last night, I thought I’d also have a stab at my tea, never had frogs legs before, found this little fella in the garden, you might think that’s cruel but i rescued him from the snow…


The good thing about making this stuff is, although it’s a lot of food to eat in one day, it takes a lot of energy to make them so in theory it’s a diet!!!

I’ll get back to blogging about design soon, unless anyone has any other suggestions.

Design, Johnny Kelly, Matthew Cooper

Animation made easy…



Johnny Kelly (artist from Dublin but living in London) and Matthew Cooper were commissioned by agency Soon In Tokyo to create 56 animated gifs for a new campaign advertising the Barcelona-based design college Elisava. Using 56 animations, the agency created an interactive website, where visitors can add their own gifs to the website by either uploading their own files or creating a gif using their webcam.

Visit the website by clicking here.

They also made promotional materials such as the poster above from the frames of the gifs. It’s really brilliant idea, I love the simplicity of the animations and 70’s kind of feel to them, the muted colours also work really. I’ll have to try some gif animations out myself.

A Load of Rubbish, authonomy, Helena Duggan, POD Self Publishing and Independent Publishing

POD Publishing…

This is a blog, about a blog, about me.

I just picked this up today on google alerts, Mick Rooney of POD Self Publishing and Independent Publishing has written a lovely blog about my story and its plight on Authonomy. I’m really happy about the article, reads really well and I want to thank Mick, which he’ll see if he happens to stumble past this post.

Here’s the link

Dublin, Ireland, Leprechaun Museum

Leprechaun Museum

In celebration of St Paddy’s Day I have a post with an Irish feel.

The Leprechaun Museum, is a celebration of all that is Irish in tales and folklore. I haven’t been there, intend too but will have to wait for my next visit to the “Big Smoke”, apparently it’s pretty cool affair, good design and nothing cheesy, so it’s worth a visit. Its on Jervis Street, the website is pretty sparse and can’t seem to find an exact address but here’s a link to have a search for it yourself.

Let me know if anyone visits

A Load of Rubbish, Authonomy.com, Harper Collins

A Load of Rubbish, No.4 on Authonomy.com

Hi All,

“A Load of Rubbish” (yes I know this name can cause confusion but that’s what it’s called) is now no.4 on Authonomy.com, its a site run by Harper Collins to spot new writing talent. Anyway if I stay in this position until the end of the month, my story gets passed onto the editors in Harper Collins and they review it. It’s not a definite nod to publication but it’s step in the right direction and has helped a lot of authors get launched.

Please click here authonomy.com
You’ll see it sitting there no. 4 on the “Editors Desk”, click on the book and you’ll be lead into the blurb, click read the book button on the right and you can have a read.

If you like it, I’d really appreciate a backing, this involves registering with the site. I’ve blogged on exactly how to do it on one of my recent blogs here

Anyway thanks to everyone who has already,
Helena

David Maisel, Photography

The colour of death…

I couldn’t believe what I was reading about these images when I came across them. First, I was struck by the colours, they are amazing, then I read the story behind these strange objects and I was stunned. The images, as far as I could see, are all separate but I thought they would have better impact in a group and so I made a grouping of them for this blog. Read the story of these canisters below…

From 1913 to 1971 five thousand one hundred and twenty one mentally ill patients were cremated on the grounds of the Oregon State Hospital. Their remains were sealed in copper canisters. The canisters were stored in the hospital’s basement until the 1970s when they were moved to a memorial vault underground. The vault was subjected to periodic floods. In 2000 they were removed from their institutional crypt, placed on plain pine shelves in a storeroom, and were left virtually forgotten until David Masiel heard of their existence and photographed them.

They had been soldered shut with seams of lead. Leaked traces of the human remains, a mixture of phosphates, calcium (from the bones) and sulfates, with smaller percentages of potassium, sodium and chloride (the chemistry that makes up from ashes to ashes, dust to dust) combined with the corroding acid in the groundwater to form secondary mineral deposits. From the over five thousand of these unclaimed canisters, Maisel selected one hundred and ten to photograph. He worked on site, in a temporary studio using only natural light.

Branding Design, Heart Month, Illustration, Tom Gauld

I “Heart” Tom Gauld


Found this work lately and thought it was a cool idea…

Tom Gauld, a well known illustrator, has paired up with Diet Coke and produced artwork for cans to celebrate “Heart” month in the US. As far as I understand it’s a month to make people aware of heart disease. Anyway, the new cans are really striking and I don’t drink coke but if they were on the shelves over here, I’d buy a few to look at…could make really nice pyramids or just squash them down and make a deadly collage…or could just get out the sketchbook and draw a few hearts of my own, lots of options, so little time, my heart bleeds and that definitely goes against the idea of US heart month, I’m confused…Anyway you can check out his work on tomgauld.com.