Category: Press.
First press blurb of 2010, in the 198th issue of .net magazine which discusses tips and trends for 2010:
“Don’t live in a vacuum — use available network tools to syndicate your content in a smart manner. One push of a button can send your blog’s content to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, MySpace and Ning”
— Tom Muller, Kleber
(And to find out where you can find me online, just look at the link list)
But don’t take my word for it: Complex Magazine ran down The 50 Best Comic Book Covers of 2009, and VIKING #3 made the grade:
Hell-lo, huge sword. This cover isn’t compensating for anything, though. Great action pose with the wolf and the sword, terrific color palette, and even a killer mustache. The cherry on top is the overall detailing, from the weathered logo to the blood drop behind the issue number. —LEONG
The cover art, of course, is by the German Wonder that is Nic Klein.
Personally I’m quite happy to see this cover has been chosen, as its one of my favourites of the whole series.
You can see all of the VIKING covers I’ve designed at my site, or have a look at the design process of the logo.
Looking forward, next year will see the release of the 1st VIKING collection, and with that, the brand new logo & trade dress of the series. Stay tuned for more!
This month’s issue, which is all about the workspaces and work environments of designers/studios, features a photo of my/our home studio in the Comment section, accompanying my response on the CR blog Question of the week “Where do you work” —
Since 2005 Kleber has converted to what you can call a “virtual” company — meaning we got rid of our office in London in favour of working remotely from our homes. Since we’re a small studio to begin with and have been working together for a long time it was a painless transition, and we’re in touch with each other every day via phone, IM and email.
As far as location is concerned… We’re currently spread out all over the UK with people in Sheffield, London (me) and the South-East — and have no problems whatsoever with being available for clients (we can easily meet them at their offices), and the luxury of working from home is second to none. Location these days is not important. With a proper internet connection and a phone you can work for anyone, anywhere at any time.
The theme of the CR issue was largely inspired by the excellent Studio Culture book from Unit Editions (Tony Brook+Adrian Shaughnessy). Its quite an interesting topic to discuss, partly because of the inherit voyeuristic tendency we have to have a peek into other people’s work place, but also to see how they actually work… and there seem to be largely 2 categories: the ultra-clean white Vitra/Vitsœ setup (Modernism by numbers?), or the Ikea/2nd hand/whatever works interior that kind of organically grows over the years.
Personally I’d love to one day have a wall covered in Vitsœ shelving — although Mrs M is an advocate for the democratic Billy book case. When reading about other studios and looking at photos of their work environment its always pretty obvious that the ones with all the high spec “design must-haves” impress you first time round, but on second thought they all look a bit soulless at times. And while I like some of that clinical minimalism, I personally prefer a bit of organized chaos. And Mrs M has a keen eye to combine Modern with Vintage or Ikea, to create an environment that looks alive. Even now, after more than 10 years of having worked at, and seen, different work space setups I still haven’t found my “perfect” work environment at home.
I’m pretty happy with how my work space has been for the past 3 years (constantly evolving), but there’s always that nagging “Hmm, how about a bigger desk? Should I get that extra shelving?”. But then I get rightly told of by Mrs M who has a more practical eye on things and keeps me in check while I try to convince her that maybe one Vitsœ unit in the office wouldn’t hurt ;).
Some of my work — I believe its the alternative Logan’s Run diagram poster — is included in Diagrams — Innovative Solutions for Graphic Designers, a new design compendium published by RotoVision.
The book even has my name on the cover next to some rather impressive names, which is nice.
The latest issue of Computer Arts (nº 167) is out on the stands and besides featuring a nice interview with Erik Spiekerman has an article entitled Launch your design career: Leading creatives recall how they mounted the ladder — where I amongst others tell you, in easy digestible blurb-form, how I got my start in design.
Just found out that a selection of logos I designed between 2006 — 2008 are featured in Taschen’s Logo Design Vol.2, the follow to the 2006 release of the same name, which also includes some of my work. Always fun to be featured in a Taschen book (this is the 4th or 5th time), mainly because they’re affordable and available everywhere, making design books very democratic — some of the first design related books I bought were published by Taschen.
Still, not too sure about that cover though…
You can read this and more, in the interview I did for siteInspire, where I talk about the recent work we did for DixonBaxi, Kleber, and working for the music industry.
I just received the news that Graphic Design, Referenced — a book on the language, applications, and history of graphic design — edited by Bryony Gomez-Palacio and Armin Vit (of Under Consideration fame), has been released.
Graphic Design, Referenced serves as a comprehensive source of information and inspiration by documenting and chronicling the scope of contemporary graphic design, stemming from the middle of the twentieth century to today.
I’m pleased to say that the alternate design of my Logan’s Run poster (the black one) has been included in the book for the chapter on Practice, which “highlights some of the most iconic work produced that not only serve as examples of best practices, but also illustrate its potential lasting legacy”.
This month’s issue of Computer Arts has a double amount of Kleber goodness for you. First there’s me saying things like —
“It’s going to be pretty much required from all agencies that content has to work on everything.”
— in an round-table discussion on new puritanism in (online) advertising, while a few pages down our own Ben Wise shows you some nifty CSS and JQuery tricks to spruce up your site.
Computer Arts published a countdown of their top 20 designers you should follow on Twitter, and included me (and a “dodgy” quote) in their list. Thanks guys!
