Category: Observed.
A few weeks ago it dawned upon me that it’s been 10 years since I graduated from college and started my professional career as a graphic designer.
10 Years is quite a considerable time, and although it sounds like a lot, strangely it doesn’t always feel that way – time flies when you’re busy, as they say.
Out of curiosity I started digging through my archives (yes, I’ve kept practically everything on disk) and started looking through all the work I’ve done so far. It was interesting to discover that - even though I think my work has massively changed over the years - some sort of common thread has been running through my work: a love for comics and science fiction.
At the same time I’ve been flipping through my copy of the excellent How To Be A Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul by Adrian Shaughnessy, and this all spurred me on to - over a series of blog posts - write about my education and experiences in design, the ups and downs, and how I learned from my mistakes along the way (never do 3D rotating logos or use lens flares “as a joke”).
Of course every story needs a proper setup. So instead of jumping right into the action, let’s rewind the clock a little.
Continue reading…
My brother Tim has just relaunched his site. Lots of brand new, mostly 3d, projects on show
– all very slickly rendered!
Go check out his work at timmuller.com
Yes, it’s June, and that can only mean one thing: college graduation. Last weekend we were out and about at Brick Lane and decided to hop in and see some graduation projects on display at the annual Free Range exhibit at the Truman Brewery, anticipating to see some interesting work from this year’s fresh batch of designers unleashed into the wild.
My wife Liz almost immediately commented how depressing the atmosphere was and I had to agree… The floor space was pretty much abandoned in places (maybe because everyone was outside soaking up the sun) and overall the work was pretty average. My immediate reaction was that I could only see maybe half of the people getting a job, if even that. I don’t want to sound overly pessimistic, but out of all the work there were maybe 1 or 2 people that impressed me enough to inspect their work up close. Maybe I was expecting too much and maybe I’d forgotten what it was like when it was my work on show – and I remembered what a thankless effort these graduation shows are. You have your allocated space, and try your best with the limited means available to present your work in an interesting way. You have your business cards next to your work and then for the next 2 weeks or so you hope that someone that is in any position to maybe give you a job might pop in to look at the fruit of your labour.
Continue reading…
Yes, it’s that time of year again – this weekend we’ll be at the annual Bristol Comic Expo flogging our wares and depleting the hotel bar of all liquids.
I’ll be most likely parting with my hard earned cash and returning home with too many comics.
Smashing Magazine has an impressive list of great book covers including some all time classics. Quite a nice surprise to see the St. Cyborg’s cover I designed last year among the list!
Petronas Towers, originally uploaded by helloMuller.
Yes, I’m still alive and well! Spent the past 3 weeks in Malaysia with my wife and my brother, stayed at her parents and had a lovely time.
It wasn’t a honeymoon - rather a ‘2nd wedding’ holiday - this time with all of Liz’s relatives there (all 200+ of them!) and the traditional Chinese Tea ceremony to welcome me in the family (yes, you can call me a made man now).
Of course, no holiday is complete without something going wrong… When we arrived in Malaysia we discovered that Liz’s passport had expired and had thus overstayed in the UK… Something the Malaysian authorities don’t take lightly! A lot of time during the vacation was spent frantically trying to convince the immigration department that it was a stupid mistake on our part and hope they would give her a new passport in time before we had to return to the UK. Threatened with the penalty of withholding her passport for 3 years, I was contemplating setting up a Kleber office in Kuala Lumpur and eat noodles and steamboat for the coming 3 years - but luckily everything worked out and we’re back in London. With valid passports!
Here are some travel pics, enjoy.
Technorati Tags: kuala lumpur, malaysia
Back in my college days I was (and actually still am) really into my comics. So much so that I was planning since I was a teenager to become a *real* comic book artist. Back then I didn’t have a computer yet (that would only happen in 1998) so I was hunched over my drawing table drawing comics if I wasn’t reading them.
In 1996 I was in my 2nd year of graphic design at college when my old high school teacher (and fellow comic lover) got in touch with a bunch of us to put together a one-off indie comic featuring all his students past & present who were involved in one shape or another with the indie comic scene in Antwerp at the time. Too cool to decline of course. So I set about to cram as much of the things I loved into the 3 pages you see below: cyborgs, silly tech, aliens,.. anything with textures. Old school fans will probably recognize that I wore my influences on my sleeve - and I spend a couple of sleepless nights rendering the hell out of my drawings (remember, these were the 90s).
Of course, by the time I graduated graphic design had completely taken over. And although I still read comics as much as I did back then, I’m not drawing them… but have been lucky enough to design a couple of them.
A big thanks to my old high school teach Peter Coen to send me scans of my pages!
comcore-tom-96-01, originally uploaded by helloMuller.
Continue reading…
I spotted this article 2 days ago: in 20 to 40 million years a gas cloud will collide with our galaxy and is promising to be a stellar (see what I did there) event even visible on our planet (if there’s people left to see it that is).
What struck me was the false-color radio telescope image of the cloud that accompanies the article. The cloud is made of cold gas, and emits only in radio wavelengths. It does not generate any visible light:
Image: Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF
And it reminded me of an image I made around 2 years ago for my SF story Oneironaut:
I can see just like everyone else that both images aren’t similar… but there was just something… I don’t know - maybe its the atmosphere of the cloud image that struck a cord… One image is of something that exists somewhere out there, the other one is something I made up. I find that eerie (and also pretty cool that I made up something that actually exists!).
I didn’t think this would be the subject of my first post of 2008, but this guy really steals the cake.
Meet Eric Albers, a Dutch Communication and Multimedia (keep this in mind for later) student who thinks its okay to blatantly copy the design from this site for his own as you can see here.
I spotted his site by pure coincidence a few days ago going through my site stats. Its not the first time someone has tried to copy my work and get away with it, but after a friend of mine left a comment on his blog and Eric replied to it I thought it was time to put this guy on the spot and call him out for the lazy schmuck he is.