USA

September was a month that I had been looking forward to for a long time, for years in fact, as this was the month that I finally got to live out one of my dreams and go to New York City. Not only that, but I was also lucky enough to experience both North and South Carolina along the way too.

I know this is generally a design and illustration blog and so I won’t bore you with a ‘Wish You Were Here’ style review on why you should travel to these States, but I did want to share just a few of my photos from this adventure.

Don’t worry, I won’t make you sit through the 700+ that I put my family and friends through, but I did just want to post a few.

I won’t show you any of North Carolina, as to be fair, I didn’t see a great deal of it. We were staying there with friends and despite seeing some of the area, we never got to experience a vast amount of it.

A lot of my favourite pictures were taken in South Carolina, in the Isle of Palms, where we were staying along the beach in a Condo. Every day, me and my girlfriend would get up early and walk along the beach to watch the sunrise and every morning we would be blown away by the beauty of it. It really was stunning and one of the most breathtaking moments in my life.

After spending the first week of our holiday in the Carolina’s, we then went to the complete opposite extreme by traveling on to New York for a few days.

In hind sight, having the beach holiday after New York would have made sense, but to be honest, the holiday was absolutely perfect and I wouldn’t have changed it for the world.

New York was everything I hoped it would be and more. There is this beautiful anticipation surrounding the City, as everyone around you has different expectations for their experience there. There is just so much versatility to New York and I truly cannot wait to go back, it is just such an inspiring environment to surrounded by.

I hope you enjoy these photos. I will be back uploading more of my art soon, but I do have some big and exciting projects to finish off before I get back to it and so you may have to be a little bit patient with me.

Wolf Blass Visuals

I know I have been promising this for a long time, but finally I have posted some of my more recent design projects I have been working on.

I know it seems that I favour my illustration, as I always seem to blog about that rather then design, but that really isn't the case. I tend not to post too much of my design work immediately online, as I generally like to wait until the product/promotion has been fully launched before I do so.

There are some people who like to work on a job and post samples of it immediately in their blogs etc, but it can be a risky thing to do. If I am honest, I don't think doing this is particularly fair on the client who has no doubt spent a lot of money on the project and would certainly not want to have anything leaked online before they launch the product/promotion for themselves. You could also find yourself in all kinds of trouble for doing so, which is why I like to wait.

The project I have posted below is something I worked on at a London agency earlier in the year for the wine brand Wolf Blass.

The brief for this project was simple, they wanted to create a new way of promoting offers on their bottles of wine, which go beyond the more conventional neck labels.

I have included a few of the early scamps I worked on before I went ahead and created the final Mac visuals.

Here are the mocked up Mac visuals for each of the concepts I created.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Some of the concepts were purposely based on the more conventional neck labels that are available, as it is a design that Wolf Blass do favour. I did try to make them a little more dynamic by adding die cut elements to the designs to help them standout in the what is already a very competitive market.

The final two designs shown above were something which were a little more adventurous. The first is a silicon collar that is placed on the neck of the bottle which changes colour depending on the temperature of the wine. The second design is a bottle wrap, which I feel could stand out quite well, as it is something rarely seen on a wine bottle.

I could go into further detail as to why I approached the brief in the way I did, or how I created certain parts of the design, but unfortunately time is of the essence for me tonight (and to be honest, I am sure you aren't really that bothered). I will be happy to answer any questions you may have on this project though.

I do hope to post some more of my design concepts and visuals on here soon, but in the mean time, why not check out my site by clicking here. 

All designs and concepts are strictly ©Dan Bailey 2011.

Doodle

I have just randomly found this scan of some doodles on my desktop and thought I would share it with you.

It isn't anything particularly exciting and is probably of no interest to you, but hey, if you like penguins then you may like this.

 

This is what I normally end up doing whilst I wait for Photoshop to finish saving some ridiculous 3gb file I am working on :)

Commission

I have recently been working with a client on a set of poses for a character I created for them a few years ago now.

I have been lucky enough to work with this client on quite a variety of their projects now and have created numerous characters for them.

Below is one of the latest illustration for their 'Mrs Sweepstake' character. I am currently working on various poses for two of their other characters and will upload those as soon as they are completed and have been launched.