Play | Long, flat shadow-ish logo design

Just a quick making-of for the title banner of this blog, or logo if you like. It is of course heavily inspired by the long, flat shadow trend (which incidentally seems to be petering out). Not everyone is a fan but if the shadow isn't too overpowering I find it can be quite tasteful. Long, flat shadows (there has to be a better, shorter name) is an off-shoot of the flat design trend, visible in for example iPhone's iOS 7 and Windows 8. I believe the general consensus is that the UIs of smart phones and tablets have been instrumental in the increasing popularity of flat design.

Work | An example of what I am looking for in my project

I have just finished working through some 5-6,000 historical letters to/from Irish emigrants. It took me a good few months and it feels great being done. Now remains analysing the results. And writing. I need to continue writing. I know. And I am. In the meantime, I thought I'd share with you some examples of what a letter might look like and what kind of features I'm after.


Letter example

The letters in the Corpus of Irish English Correspondence (CORIECOR) have all been digitised and appear for instance like this:

Play | Poster design: De selektive

On Thursday, Teaterterminalen, a Norwegian theatre group fronted by artistic director Mari Sofie Andreassen and producer Charlotte Prydz Ottesen,  won the prestigious Natt & Dag's yearly Bergen Award for best theatrical performance with 'De selektive.' The play discusses the theme of selective abortion, i.e. whether to undergo an abortion if the foetus turns out to have a serious (or less serious) disability and the implications this has for society. It does so with guts, humour, and intelligence and has received very positive reviews.

Having worked with both Mari and Charlotte before, I was asked to create promotional material for 'De selektive,' including posters (it has been staged in a number of locations) and flyers. I decided to take this opportunity to show a few steps in the creation of the poster.

Welcome!

Well then! Welcome to this here blog. The intention here is twofold: to write about the PhD thesis I'm working on (or rather, on the topic of my thesis), and to write about the graphic design I occasionally do. These are two very different things, of course, but they are the two things that (actively) occupy most of my time. So the thesis is the 'work' part, and the graphic design is the 'play' bit. Sometimes one feels like the other and vice versa, but there you go.