WELL PACKED

When I received this yesterday, it put a smile on my face. Firstly because the embrace that was inside it was in absolute perfect condition and secondly because it confirms my packaging is actually worth the whole £6 I spend on it. The image shows the box that took my embrace from the UK to Germany for the Red Dot awards where it was taken out, judged and then packed up and sent from Germany back to the UK.

Incase you were wondering.......no, I didn't win. But I did win free entry, you wouldn't catch me paying over a £100 to enter a competition.

LIVING ETC INDIA

Living Etc.. India. Nice! It's a great read as well.....who knew I would be reading Indian magazines when I don't even read the English ones.

EMBRACE OWNERS CLUB

Here's a great few snaps that were kindly sent to me by an Italian customer called 'Tomaso'. Tomaso looks to have a very cool house and it looks like he certainly reads the right books.

John Green D - SPACE

A few snaps of my timeline style exhibition at D-Space.

BATCH 02

Lots of packing and sending going on lately catching up on back orders as the first part of BATCH NO. 2 arrives in the studio. A quick snap of the B-E-A-UUUUUUUUUUTTTIIIFFFUUULL walnuts that have come with this batch, these are the best I've ever seen, i'd be proud to be the owner of one of these myself........one day......next to my walnut eames lounger and ottoman.

Also a quick snap of the results from the new debossing stamp on a birch embrace, (the old one was getting a bit worn).

OPEN EVENING

Man, it's been a hectic 48 hours getting a 'standard' made for the opening of my exhibition at D-Space in Barnsley. You may be wondering why I don't already have one, since i launched it at 100% design back in September. The original prototype is now out in Italy somewhere visiting various manufacturers for a good quote, as soon as I returned from 100% 'standard' had been signed off to an Italian design brand who plan to distribute it worldwide....a post to come on this soon.

Anyway, the open evening was a success I had every product I've ever done on show and they seemed to be enjoyed by everybody there. A few free glasses of wine were had and then Corin Mellor opened the exhibition with a nice lengthy speech, and then next thing I know I'm doing a small speech! Haha.

Above are a few pics of the opening event taken by: Gavin Joynt (www.gavinjoynt.co.uk). Thanks to everybody that came, I hope you enjoyed it. Also a massive thanks to Patrick Murphy for selecting me and making the exhibition happen.

D-SPACE

Ambiente and Frankfurt is finally over...........what a show! I've never ever been to an exhibtion so big, I can only describe it as disney world florida. A lot to take in..............Anyway as promised here is a little post about my current exhibition in Barnsley at the DMC, in the D-Space gallery.

I visited Barnsley for the first time a couple of weeks ago when I went to have a look at the exhibition space and was pleasantly suprised to see that the exhibition was going to be housed in the building below:

D-Space is a 12 month programme with various creatives exhibiting over the year each with a 6 week time slot. I was invited to open D-Space with the first 6 week slot.

Info:
D-Space is a contemporary gallery at the DMC in Barnsley. It is dedicated to showcasing digital innovation through the work of emerging and established regional, national and international artists, designers and makers. Our programme of exhibitions and events is designed to provide a platform for new ideas, collaboration, knowledge transfer and networking.

Opening Times:
10am - 4pm, Monday to Friday.
9th Feb - 18th March
Entry is FREE.

My exhibition will be officially opened on the 23rd of Feb by the inspirational designer Corin Mellor: (http://www.davidmellordesign.com/whoWeAre/cmBiography.php) I'm a fan of his plywood work.

The room is 12meter squared and the biggest space I've been allowed to fill, I think the results are great, I have laid out every single peice of work i have ever done since graduation in a timeline style, showcasing my portfolio from 2008 until Now.

Unfortunately the above image is the only one that i have, but as soon as i get a chance to get over there I will get some uploaded.

PRESS

It's busy here in the studio and my head is manic thinking about the arrival of the batch no.2 of embraces, the exhibition at the DMC and the fact that I still need to make a 'standard' for it, and to add to the pressures I have just had it confirmed that I will be exhibiting at both Grand Designs Live (LONDON) 30th April - 8th May and also ICFF (NEW YORK) 14-17 May.

Whilst I fill head is filling up with stress just thinking about the coming months I thought i'd off load a few recent press cuttings:
Ideal Home - Sept/10
Cabinet Maker - Oct/10
Concept for Living - Nov/10
Neo2 - Oct/10 (Spain)
Homestyle - May/10 (Philippines)
DDN Free - Dec/10 (Italy)
Evening Standard - Dec/10
The Sunday Times - Dec/10

Grand Designs - Jan/11

Azure - Jan/11 (Canada)

ARRIVED

Arrived in Frankfurt today after a manic Week. The week began with me moving house (always easier said than done) and then I had to set up a solo exhibition at the Barnsley DMC in a new area called D:Space. This exhibition runs for 6 weeks and opened it's door on Wednesday 9th of Feb! (more info and pics to come on this very soon). And finally I got the plane this morning to Frankfurt to go and view the Ambiente Exhibition.

Image above of the FREE inflight refreshments, it's been a while since I havn't taken a budget airline so as you can imagine I'm excited about the FREE beer and salami sandwich.

Auf Wiedersehen.

- Posted from my iPhone

Location:Düsseldorfer Straße,Frankfurt,Germany

LOVE DOVES MANUFACTURE

A quick snap of the laser in action. NICE!

PRODUCT TESTING

I thought I'd test the strength of embrace with a spot of indo-boarding. Test successful! Don't worry embrace has had a much more thorough testing than this and I know it's absolutely solid, well it takes my 15 stone weight jumping up and down on it! And it's a brilliant sledge!
PLEASE NOTE: This was an extremely scratched embrace that the delivery driver dropped from his fork lift, do not try this at home! :)

LOVE DOVES

(DELAYED POST) It was the begining of Decmeber and I was feeling christmasy and creative. Check this out, a quick product designed exclusivly for snowhome, laser cut baubles, flat packed so they can be sent to your loved ones anywhere in world. First exclusive batch sold out in a week! I plan to design a few more things down this line later in the year.

W O O D S K I N S

Here's the WOOD SKIN a collaboration with an old uni friend Rich. Rich works in a huge graphic design studio and his studio has just had a full re-furb of new iMacs. Rich decided he wanted his mac to stand out at work and turned up one night with some wood effect vinyl he wanted cutting for his screen. To be honest i'm not much of a fan of this as I love the mac as it is, but anyway I gave him a hand with the technical side of things and couldn't bare to see him wasting the HUGE square in the middle of the screen. Here I go again designing with waste. So anyway, I quickly measured my iphone and cut 20 iphone skins from the centre screen, instantly applied it to my phone thought to myself this would sell!

As I always do when the light bulb pings I do a quick google, only to find there are loads and loads of these out there, all different brands all different qualities. But as seen as though we had got 20 from the screen centre and rich had bought all this vinyl we decided to cut the rest of them and focus on some nice packaging!

So the WOODSKIN is not essential and hardly protects your iPhone (it doesn't do a bad job of protecting the back of the iPhone 4), but it's easy to apply and it leaves no trace when removed. We trialed the woodskins in snowhome over xmas and they have been successful.

If i'm totally honest I'm not sure how much I like them, I have one on my phone, and it looks nice, but I occasionally take it off and remember how nice a design the iphone is without it. Finally, I'm not claiming to have been original with this product, and I won't be adding it to my portfolio, but the one thing I will take ownership of is the packaging design. 110gsm tracing paper envelopes, printed in the studio with a nice veneer swatch stuck to the front, utilised from the waste vinyl cut out for the centre button.

For more info or to buy visit: www.woodskins.co.uk

M E R R Y C H R I S T M A S

I'm home.........well i've been back for around a week now and it's been great to take the rest! I went home with the following xmas to-do list:

1. see family and friends = check

2. go sledging = check

3. get drunk and eat lots of home cooked food = check

4. go on some big dog walks = check

5. do some work (develop a few designs) = NOPE!

When I return to the studio I will probably feel bad about this, but for now it feels good and well deserved! I've spent the majority of the time at my mums new house, she has only been in 2 weeks and they have NO INTERNET, I can't remember the last time I was somewhere without internet, I must say i have enjoyed it, but it's good to be back online!

So as you can see my mum lives at the top of a huge hill, and for the first couple of days there was lots of snow, so I got some good sledging action in. But then the weather got warmer and all the snow went, so I set about steeling my younger brother and sisters christmas presents to make up for the lack of sledging and internet. Below is a quick stop frame of my favourite, the RipStik (www.ripstik.com). Hours of fun! And nicely photographed by my little bro. Cheers Dom.

So apologies for the delayed Christmas post, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everybody!

I'd also like to to take this opportunity to say thank you to everybody who has supported me and been involved with my designs through 2010. It means alot to me, and I couldn't do what I do without your support.

Again thanks, Merry Christmas and I'll see you in what I plan to be a very creative 2011.

HANGERS

The results of a busy day cutting hangers that have been requested by various people over the last few months, although I have known about these for a while it has been hard to fit them in, I hope the royal mail don't let me down in getting them there on time. I presume they are for christmas presents. Being so responsible for getting the gifts out, is making me feel a bit like an elf!

I've also added a few close-up snaps of the hand screen printed boxes with some low sun on them as seen as though it's christmas :)

WOODSKIN*

Another late night in the studio and a quick collaboration with designer/friend Rich Storey. A bigger blog post to come in the new year!