Girl with the dragon tattoo poster

I am a massive fan of the Steig Larsson Trilogy, and recently went to see the hollywood adaptation of the girl with the dragon tattoo. Visually, it was stunning, and on my way out of the cinema, I noticed the posters for the film, which were also beautifully designed, so I decided to look into the designs online.

I found this image, which I think is so simple, but is a striking use of a photography, depicting the two main characters from the film, but only using one photograph. I was very inspired by the film, and I'm sure I will refer back to it for interesting colour palettes, and composition inspiration. 

I'd love to work here

Researching into some top design agencies, I came across Hawaii, a london based design studio. The company was established in 2005 and is led by Paul McAnelly. They do a range of design based work, from branding, illustration, web design and interior. The work that Hawaii produce is outstanding, and and has recently been shortlisted for the impressive Design Museum/British Insurance Design of the Year Award.


Hawaii have such a wide range of work, that it was hard to choose some favourites, but I managed to make a short list of work that I loved.

My favourite project on the site had to be the Myspace rebrand. With the website being pushed into obscurity by Facebook, I think Hawaii totally revamped the brand, making it look much more modern, and personally, I think it looks more interesting than Facebook, but I doubt that will matter to many Facebook users. Either way, the branding is lovely!

I'd love to work for such a big company like Hawaii, their work is of such a high standard and I hope to able to get my work up to a similar level one day! 

Tyrsa

While browsing the net, I came across 'Tyrsa' which is the website of French designer Alexis Taieb. I found the site really inspiring, as a lot of the design was hand rendered based, which is the style that I like to do myself.

Here are some examples of Alexis' amazing work!

I hope to reach this level one day.

Kyle Steed

Stumbled across Kyle Steed's website while searching for inspiration for my own portfolio website. Kyle has some really interesting hand-drawn illustrations as well as a few font sets that he has created and sells. 
His style is very vector based, but I think it works really well, and some of his branding work, especially 'I live in dallas' works great with his style.

I'd recommend looking at his site if you get a moment!


http://kylesteed.com/

Mondo Blog

If, like me, you are interested in posters, especially film posters, then I would highly recommend going over to 'Mondo'. This site is dedicated the film poster work, and has some mind blowing illustrations from some of the best artists in the world. Being a collector of posters, I fell in love with most of the work on the Mondo blog instantly. Its a shame that they are an american company, because they offer limited edition prints of posters that go on sale for a limited time, but unfortunately the postage is a lot for a UK resident.


However, this website is still a huge source of inspiration for me personally, and I constantly check it to see if any new poster designs have been released!


Heres a link


http://blog.mondotees.com/


And here are some poster examples!

Personal T shirt

I recently had some spare time in which i got to work on a T-shirt design that i had in my head for a while. The design was based on a Radiohead song, but i changed the lyrics to make it a bit different. I also added a distressed texture to the text which i thought brought the whole design to life. I was really pleased with the way it turned out, and would love to do more next time i have a spare moment!

Some Lovely Posters

Since i spend most of my waking hours doing posters for different people, i always come across thousands of designs that i look at for inspiration. This one set of posters really caught my eye however. I love the white line illustration, i think it fits really well with the photography. It looks very elegant and the drawings are really detailed, making the posting stand out and look very unique. I'd love to try something like this with my posters, i wish i had more time to spend on them but hopefully i will soon and can try something more illustrative!

I also really like the hand drawn typography, it is simple yet very beautiful.