Mark Coleran

Mark Coleran's visual, screen and interface designs appear in The Bourne Ultimatum, Children of Men, Mission Impossible 3, The Island, The Bourne Identity, Tomb Raider, and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

There is an interview with Mark here . Mark talks about his working methods which is interesting, as I am always keen to know how these folks go about thier work.

The "cool' trap

Is being 'cool' too restrictive?

I have been mulling this one over for some time, but never really had a clear opinion until recently. I started college a year ago without too much knowledge, and promptly subscribed to Creative Review, Eye Magazine, and started looking at a number of 'cool' blogs. It is not too difficult to work out what's happening out there, what is 'cool', and whilst at college it is very easy to overstate its importance.

I have realised over the summer that there is a lot more out there, loads of good design work. It can be seen on things like kids TV che=anells such as CBeebies

To Ber Contd.

More music design - King Unique

I still pay the bills by making dance music (when i get chance), running a record label and DJ'ing. The music thing is a joint venture with Matt Thomas under the name "King Unique", and we release the records on our own label Curfew.

This is a graphic for our next release "Yohkoh" (Japanese for 'Sunbeam'). It's still not up to the the kind of standard I'd like to be able to get to, but it is very encouraging to have improved so much and learnt many new techniques.

Airside's Virgin Trains

On a trip to London I saw a poster campaign everywhere for Virgin Trains by Airside. The same design is also used on an animated advert. The style used is typically Airside, whilst fully utilizing Virgin's colour-scheme and in house type style. All these elements are brought together very well, and is set to groovy music for the movie spots. Watch them here.

Intro

Intro are a big established design firm whose clients are TV channels such as the BBC, BBC kids channel Cbeebies and MTV, plus many of the UK's major record labels. Their work includes pop promos for Elton John, Primal Scream, LP covers and idents. Julian House works there.

Their ability to work across different media means they can do whole campaigns from print to TV, which appeals to me very much, as do companies like Airside.

Kanye West - The Good Life Video

New school music promo. This has it it all, great hand-drawn lettering, lots of spangly colours (this season's design 'must-have') and some big-knockers too. Fantastic!

After Effects Tutorials

Very handy set of films from Adobe about broadcast graphics and their package After Effects. Check it here

Curfew Records 005

Having had a month off after Australia to look after my kids in the summer holidays and go to France on a holiday I am back at the graphics for my label (We spent time earlier in the summer making a new DJ mix and a new single called "yohkoh").

I'd worked on this a couple of months back, but wasn't really happy with it, so i spent a couple of days trying new ideas out (which is the bottom blue banner). This in itself isn't right and isn't going to get used, however i enjoyed working out how to make all the parts used. I think if I'd had an idea how the pieces were going to fit together it would have worked better, but I suppose i was fixed on making the graphic parts used within. This waas a little frustrating but a learning experience.

I decided to look at the earlier monochrome idea and just fine tune it, and mock up where it was to go 'in situ', and I am now pretty happy.

Brain Gossett

I have pretty much decided that the next 12 months needs to be mainly about learning how to design and illustrate. At the moment these skills are a million miles from where I'd like them to be, and the only way to get work is to get good.

I am not so concerned about the motion until my artwork improves, as there isn't much point if it looks shit. I think it is important to get some ideas together then just work out the techniques needed to make it happen. I can only imagine this is in itself more then enough to fill the next 12 months.

This Guy is awesome - and his site shows his pitch boards and also some of the pieces that were animated later by other people.