Cup of Tea 0115

Let me get what I want, lord knows it would be the first time -Morrisey.

Namely my laptop. I need to do work / be able to post images here... Bah!

M x

Cups of Tea 0110 - 0114

Just a quick blog... Slide show done and little else... Need to get to sleep quickly so I can get up early to do more work... Bad times!

M x

Cups of Tea 0105 - 0109

Aloha Dear readers!

Today has been an ok work day all things considered, I made a wooden box for motives that will for now remain annonymous, did my slideshow for Monday and even some more ulterior logos! The second page is a bit of a struggle tbh, I've fitted so many on the first page that I'm scrapping the barrel with it. It's not even the focus of this brief, so reguardless tomorrow I need to move on, there's sites to be designed!

Speaking of sites, ive looked into several hosts and domain names today, it's the first To Do when I get my mac back ( other than work obviously...). We're moving on up kids!

M x

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Cups of Tea 0099 - 0104

Haha 100 cups of tea in 50 days, it's not bad going really... At least I'm not going to die of tea related illnesses!

Moving on, not the best day in terms of productivity (i didn't get to my parents until 5, so by the time I settled down and started working it was almost 6...) but my creativity is certainly back in full swing. I'm guessing it's either through the mark making I've been doing (next I'll be doing regular mandalas...) or if it's been a combination of eating/sleeping better, but i'm feeling more together as a designer again. Haza!

Other than mark making, I got a lot of research analyised and got some ulterior logos/developement down... Also cooking up something for my presentation on monday... It's going to be cool!

Bed time now!

M x

Cups of Tea 0094 - 0098

A day where both the tea and work have been bountiful! It's all been sketchbook stuff on my music interpritation project, but at least I've started it (12 pages of sketchbook reflection without even starting any design! Due due).

On a letting other people dream for me note, I've managed to tick a few films off my to see list/DVDs in the watch pile while working... daybreakers (6/10), resident evil apocolyspse (5/10), black snake moan (6/10) and now finishing the magnificent seven (8/10... I'm a sucker for a good western!)... Nothing amazing but hell, at least the end of dead space was good!

On that note I retire, good night all!

M x


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Cup of Tea 0093

Shoop Shoop planet earth... I.e. The 5 people who read this blog... One of which is sat beside me asking me what kind of drugs I'm on... Purely Ribeana my good friends!

Anyways, the inevitable spiral of work has begun... It's purely been a brainstorming and image board session but hopefully it's the snowball that causes the avalanche...

Anyways, for lack of being able to post any images, I'm going to retire to watching Ponyo, gawd I love Studio Ghibli!

Nos Da!

M x


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Cups of tea 0092-0093

Bloody hell, this feels strange! I'm acctually writing this off my iPod touch as my macbook pro died today... It's expected to take at least a week to get back to me which is pretty gash, too much to do mun!

Anyways... Because of this, no design nor cool links today... I'll get some sketchbook and Reading work done this week which'll be good, but next weeks when design'll strike again... Got some sick ideas in the pipeline and those interested may be able to help me out with the realisation of some of them soon .

I'll keep you posted!

M x

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Cups of Tea 0090 - 0091

Just a quick blog to summarize my day. - Good haha!

Started a bit weird (at 7 in the morning...) by starting to use an app called "Today To do", which is pretty much a checklist making software... and so far i've been good with it! Of all the 12 goals I set myself today, I achieved 9... not bad going for my first day of using it! It's helping me get some sense of organization!

Read alot about bees today and then watched a documentary about the death of bees... seems we're all fucked haha...

Anyways, sleepy time now! Want to get up bright and early too start work again!
COME ON!

M x

Cups of Tea 77 - 89

Oh dear. So where do I start?... Essay incoming!

On Wednesday I decided to go out. I thought what can be the harm in it? Having a few drinks, being a little social, cheer myself up (if you hadn't caught the subtle undertones, I've been a little down as of late.) and maybe stop being a dick about things.... Well it didn't quite work like that, I got uber drunk and threw up alot all night. I upset a few people and I was generally an arse.

This leads me to the surprising (sarcasm....) decision to stop drinking. I know what your thinking, man gets bad hang over, quits drinking, starts again next week. No. Fuck that. I didn't want to drink much anymore (as I'm sure I've mentioned in this blog...) and was going to save it for the odd night of celebration and special occasions. No. Not anymore, not happening. I've become a bit of a mess when I drink and as such, no longer wish to drink anymore.

Weirdly, my Thursday morning hang over was quite an epiphany moment. I've actually become a person I don't like and needed to take time to assess how I could get away from this. And it's simple. I need to start simply taking pleasure in things again.

I've started to worry about things outside of my control and that's annoying... I'm not a control freak but I've started to fear the unknown things in my life. Like some kind of Daily Mail reader I've actually started to fear the outside world, that I could get into a fight, that I could be killed and that those around me could suffer the same fate, and it's surely not healthy. I've always over thought things, so much so that some nights I don't sleep because of stressing over the finest details, but I just can't do it anymore, paying these things this amount of time is killing me.

I'm watching increasing amounts of films, playing millions of games and even reading to escape the prospect of doing work or other things. The weird thing is though I guess it is escapism, it's not even why I'm annoyed at myself for it. I have started to confuse the process of watching movies and playing games with being creative. I've looked to these films and games for stories and visual works sure, but (as Kevin Smith Put it) I'm letting people dream for me!

While I'm not completely riding them out of my life (as if I could lol...) I've decided that this time should and is going to be spent bettering myself, through not only designing stuff / learning coding etc. but by living. I may need to balance my commitments but I want too see new things (Norway kthnx.) and just live I guess... I want to enjoy each day within reason and not put myself into a pre-conceived box of what I am, what I should do and how this reflects on my relationships with other people.

In short, this week is going to be fun. I'm going to make a time table, that balances Uni, with the love of my life and with personal exploration in design / pissing about on the xbox. I also want to start writing again, I miss telling stories :)

M x

Cups of Tea 0071 - 0076

Lots of tea and lots of annotation. Busy, busy, busy... now sleep sleep sleep.
Some design tomorrow I promise!

M x

Cups of Tea 0066 - 0070

Its been a long day and not a lot's got done if I'm being honest. Finishing at 5, getting home by half past and then trying to start work is just a waste of a day tbh. It's been one full of nostalgia however. I watched a load of 80's cartoon intro's and reminisced on games I used to play as a kid on my brother's NES... those were the days... then I zomg'd... they've re-made one of my favorite games as as a kid and it looks AMAZING... I know what I'm doing for the rest of the week... My Wii's already in my bag, I'm tracking this sucker down tomorrow! It's lead me to want to do some kind of graphical tribute to all the things I loved as a kid... maybe I'll do it as a screen print of it for my elective :)

As design goes, today's literally consisted of a few sketches and one or two more pages annotated of the riveting "Beekeeping Self-Sufficiency" by Joanna Ryde... There's so much to learn... thank God I've got 4 months to research / design for it!

With that i'm off to bed, I've gotta get up early to run in the morning!

M x

Cups of Tea 0061 - 0065

Quick post. Words are a bit hard to conjure right now. I can't speak of the defeat and I've done nothing but work, annotate a book about beekeeping and then watch minority report. Time for sleeps, as that's what tired peoples dooo.

M x

Cups of Tea 0057 - 0060

Well you know what they say, Tea = Creativity!

I got back to my mums and there commenced my 3 hour trawl of the internet for bee keeping information for my project, pretty much dissected 18 pages of Wikipedia into 12, highlighted them and mostly annotated them all / wrote a written response. Got two books on the way on the subject and going to raid the library tomorrow to see if I can ind anything... I've seriously gotta cross reference half the wiki stuff, my web reading has given me about 5 or 6 conflicting points (for example, why bee keeping suits are usually white...) that I need to clear up.

I felt so good after that, I decided to design a flyer from scratch when I was asked to simply replace text on my monthly edit flyer for Cool For Cats. It's not official yet (as I haven't had the 100 percent it's going to be used) but its for the the single launch of a great English band called Club Smith. Check out Lament!

I kinda got inspired by one of our lecture's presentations earlier (even if it did go on abit for that time of morning)... it kicked my arse into thinking "Why the fuck don't I want to design it? It's a good opportunity! Stop being lazy Mr. Boyle!" so I did.



It's a mash up of two Jason Munn Death Cab Poster's I've seen / wanted to blanket my walls ever since I bought Fingerprint and some flyer I saw in freshers. I like it, hopefully you will too :) and with that, I'm off to bed... night night all!

M x


Vital Stats -

Tea :

Cup of Tea 0057 - 0060 = Teatleys, Milky, 4 Sugars.

Reading :

Teach Yourself Running - Sara Kirkham.

Viewing :

Little Miss Sunshine - Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris.

Hearing :

SModcasts 70 - 77.
Death Cab For Cutie - Transatlantacism.
Los Campesinos - Romance Is Boring.

Cups of Tea 0055 - 0056

Another uber short entry, Haven't done much and I've just got into my stride annotating this work... some girl in my dorm was knocking on the guy next door's room until around 4 in the morning so I got zero sleep... Bad Times >.<

Got my essay feedback back (lol). Got 65% (a 2-1) but apparently only one person got a higher percentage than me so I guess it's all good... Some little points on how to improve it (apparently if I'd formatted it better, I'd probably have got a first :/), but the next essay should be interesting... I'm going to do question 5 and write about blogging! Horray!

Pretty unproductive day up until now. Played monopoly, browsed for valentine's gifts and fully fixed my visual diary (6 months worth of stuff to glue into it ffs!) and then tried to annotate websites I've printed for the Beekeeping project, it's quite interesting!

Anyways, more work, then bed!

Night Night!

M x

Cup of Tea 0054

Quick post because I haven't... PDF's will be re-uploaded tomorrow and I will post some of my research ideas for bee keeping.

Until then... check out this! I WANT THESE!

M x

Cup of Tea 0053

Holy Cripes Batman! People have been commenting and i've been to retarded to notice!

Apologies to Rhys for his two comments, the site doesn't let me know when a comment is made! I will be checking every blog post for a week after it's updated and go through the comments once a month to double check no one's commented on the archives / so I can reply! As a result of a helpful comment from Rhys, I'm going to try and use Issuu tomorrow to upload my FULL sins and virtues and re-up my 20 Cameras so it can be viewed in decent quality / so you can read the content. PLEASE feel free to comment, it's kinda nice to know people are reading.

Anywho, new brief. We all got a random "activity" that were pretty much some of the most out dated and "Geeky" sports and hobbies known to man... I initially got Crown Green Bowls, to which I thought "fuuuuck". Luckily, one of the girls got rid of Bee Keeping and I grabbed it like a shot. It's got some nice associated images (bees, stripes, honey combs, bee hives / those bee keeping huts, as well as the bee keeping suits etc.) and I could really see it turning into a fun project. No idea what i'm going to do for it but we'll see where it goes... 4 months to do the brief after all...

After my whole WHAT DO I READ fiasco yesterday, ended up buying a new book anyways. Me and Tom went to Waterstone's to see if they had books on our topics (he got Trainspotting lol...) and ended up buying a book from the Teach Yourself range on Running. It's been pretty good so far. Pointing out the health benefits of running as well as things like the types of equipment available etc. It's pretty much like an "dummys" guide too, so it's not to hard a read.

And because I feel I should end on something design related, here's something I found about half an hour ago on one of the design blogs I visit, I lol'd because it reminds me of Gemma's 20... project!

The Lost Tribes of New York City from Carolyn London on Vimeo.

M x

Vital Stats -

Tea :

Cup of Tea 0053 = 1 Saga, Milky, 3 Sugars.

Reading :

Teach Yourself Running - Sara Kirkham.

Viewing :

How I met Your Mother, Season 5 - episode 14.

Hearing :

SModcasts 63 - 65.
Alexisonfire - Crisis.
Phil Collins - Greatest Hits.

Running :

3.43km - 20 minutes

Cups of Tea 0051 - 0052

Just a quick post today.

It's been quite a balanced day in terms or procrastination and productivity. I went to Uni, then I came home and played Dead Space. I started running again, then I played Dead Space. Then I felt guilty about it, so I turned the game off, started reading the notes at the back of No Logo while semi-watching The Spirit (Awful movie...), Then I browsed my daily design blogs, then I watched Park Chan Wook's Thirst (Ace Movie, especially in comparison too The Spirit haha...), then I read From Lascaux to Brooklyn by Paul Rand (pretty good point with some valid points) while finally getting upto date with How I Met Your Mother.

No uni work though, in all fairness we've just been given a new brief and I'm almost 100% where to go with it, just need to get some ideas onto paper.

I'm torn on what to read now though. No Logo's taken up all my reading time (it was initially a hard read and with Christmas / my wavering enthusiasm post-christmas, it sat gathering dust for a month). Much like the game's I haven't had chance to play, i've got books piled up on the side of my surround sound amp. They include (there's some fiction there I cba with...):-

Thinking Course - Edward De Bono (Stephen Sagmeister recommends it on his website along with A Year with Swollen Appendices: The Diary of Brian Eno ((which was a bitch to get a hold of and not really worth the effort / cash I had to shell out to acquire it)) ).

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - Haruki Murakami (recommended by about four people while reading different design related things, but if I remember correctly highly praised by Jamie Jarvis, who did this wonderful animation for Nike, he enjoys running / tri-athalons as a break from / focusing exercise for design).

The Shock Doctrine - Naomi Klein (Her follow up to No Logo, which if reviews are anything to go by is just as good if not better... though probably not as relevant to design as her previous work).

There's also a tone of stuff I've looked at on the reading list for theory that I either own (Stop Stealing Sheep, How to become a graphic design without losing your soul...) or like the look of (see most of the first two pages...) that I'd like to read given the chance... But the three above have been sitting there for awhile and feel I should give them a read, it's only fair... even if they're not necessarily about design, but more life inside and around it. It's probably going to be one of the first too... one's a guide to practical thinking / idea development. The other a guide to how an artist can use their hobby to escape the pressure of their working life but also to inform and better their craft. The other is simply about how fucked the world is.

Crikey, that turned out to be longer than expected haha. Anyways, time to finish my PG Tips and get some sleep! Up early tomorrow I think... the wonders of organization haha!

Vital Stats -

Tea :

Cup of Tea 0051 = 1 Saga, Extra Milky 2 Sugars.
Cup of Tea 0052 = 1 PG Tips Decaf, Normal, 2 Sugars.

Viewing :

Thirst - Park Chan Wook.
The Spirit - Frank Miller.
How I met Your Mother, Season 5 - episodes 8 - 13.

Hearing :

Fleetwood Mac - Greatest Hits.
Alexisonfire - Watch Out!
Bombay Bicycle Club - I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose.

Running :

2.85km - 20 minutes