Category: Design.
The first 3 covers for Ivan Brandon and Nic Klein’s VIKING are in the bag (issues 1 and 2 are available now, 3 will be in shops later this summer). Its great fun being involved in the creative process with Ivan and Nic — aiming to get the best possible product on the shelves. If anything, the production values on the comic are unlike anything in shops today. The slightly oversized format, thick paper stock, and spot varnish on the cover make it really pop.
When I designed the logo I had a clear idea of how it would be applied, but as with anything rules are meant to be broken, or bent at least. The cover art for the first issue largely dictated how the logo would appear on the book, and the way I had designed it made it adaptable enough for later issues.
But when I received the art for the issue 2, I inadvertently started to change the logo when I was working on the cover design: I made it larger, created a new texture, cropped it differently and so on.
Instead of having a formulaic approach I made the call right then that each cover treatment should be different and ‘meld’ together with the art. So now we have 3 covers. And all 3 look different — with 3 being the richest in texture so far. Its an ongoing experiment to integrate the logo with the art while not losing the bold graphic element.
Ivan sent me the cover art for issue 4 the other day — another beautiful piece by Nic thats completely different from the current covers — and it looks like the logo will be going through yet another permutation.
Large versions of the covers at my Flickr account.
Just added some new work to the site that my brother Tim and I completed for Diesel: Only The Brave.
I was invited by my friends over at Hellohikimori as one of a select group of designers to create an online art installation as part of the online campaign for Diesels new fragrance.
The project ended up being a collaboration between myself and Tim, who created all the 3D imagery you see in the piece, while I was responsible for the overall art direction, animation and graphics.
Cosmonaut, originally uploaded by helloMuller.
Space and astronaut imagery seem to be all the rage these days, with everyone re-purposing vintage NASA photos etc. I don’t mind that because I like space, and that whole era of the space race. Just as long as it doesn’t become over saturated, over used style quickly (which of course it will be — them’s the breaks).
Anyway — here’s a piece I did a little over 2 years ago which was going to end up in a short SF story and a collective project that ultimately never saw the light of day.
Omega Code Poster Exhibition, originally uploaded by XTRABOLD.
Shot of all the Omega Code posters on display at OFFF Portugal (no I’m not there).
My poster is shown bottom right.
Random (and by that I mean carefully selected so you have no idea what exactly it is you’re looking at) screenshot of something I’ve been working on the past few evenings and weekends, a collaboration between my brother Tim and myself. He is taking care of the 3D wizardry while I’m designing the whole thing whilst messing around with After Effects.
More soon.
In February last year one of the art directors at Wired Magazine got in touch, offering me the opportunity to work on the cover feature for an upcoming issue. The feature would focus on the human brain, and they wanted me to provide a set of 5-8 illustrations (including the opening spread), visualizing mini essays in the article. Cool! I’ve always held Wired in high esteem, fondly remembering their groundbreaking magazine designs in the 90s, and wouldn’t turn down an opportunity to a) work with them, and b) as a result have my work seen by a lot of people (I think they have a circulation of 500K/month).
The only problem was that it was due at the end of March, which meant I needed to work during my wedding holiday in Malaysia! Never one to shy away from a challenge, I gladly accepted the project…
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Almost forgot about this one until I was going through my backup drive…!
At the beginning of last year, my good friends Ash & Von who operate Umeric (if you’ve never heard of them, go check out their work) asked me during one of our IM chats (where we usually profess our knowledge of JC Van Damme flicks) if I wanted to help them out with a project they were doing for MTV Australia. They were in the process of designing a series of idents for them, and wondered if I could have a look at the design of the channel on-air graphics. MTV had just done an in-house overhaul, but were willing to change it if Umeric, as part of their project, could come up with something better.
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Late last year I completed a nice identity project for Volta, a Canadian-based visual development studio (which means they create concept art and IP for the games and entertainment industries).
A relatively young company, Volta already boasts an impressive client list and is doing some amazing work for the games industry, all they lacked was a coherent company identity. And that’s where I came in.
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Thanks everyone for suggesting topics! Very much appreciated. Some interesting (and unexpected) requests for Anatomy Of… subjects. I’ll start with the one that got the most “votes”: my own logo.
I launched this site in 2003, primarily to separate the client work from my more experimental projects.
To do so, I felt that I should put my own name to it instead of coming up with another obscure word, like ximeraLabs, as a domain name. I found out that muller.com was already taken, and not wanting to settle for anything less than a .com domain I realized I was forced to tack something on to “Muller” to be able to grab a suitable .com domain…
After some brainstorming I settled on hellomuller.com — I used to answer the phone like that (”Hello, Muller (speaking)”), so it sounded natural and above all, it was easy to remember. Right. Now that the name and domain were taken care of, it was time to focus my attention to designing a logo.
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Type (2) — Digits, originally uploaded by helloMuller.
Still working on the typeface. Finished work on the digits. I’m still deciding if I want to create an uppercase set as well, or keep it as a bespoke lowercase headline font…