Lexus CT-200h

GTA: No Mean City

We've got our second semester briefs out for Graphics & Illustration. Most of them were as dull as ditchwater, but one did stand out from the rest. It's a character and environment design brief for a prospective computer game from Rockstar North in much the same vein as the Grand Theft Auto series.

We've to design three characters - one black, late 20's male, one white late 20's male, and one white early 20's female. There are no limitations on the format of the game, as long as its set in a European style city, and is somewhat in keeping with GTA. To that end, I've made the decision to base the backstory for my characters in Glasgow, and the location designs on the city's iconic Victorian architecture. I've also decided to make it an additional entry into the Grand Theft Auto series of games, and have given it the working title of Grand Theft Auto: No Mean City, a reference to a well known book about Glasgow gang culture.

In keeping with the frequently over the top, nigh on idiotic storylines of the GTA series, this game focuses on the life of the unlikely named FiFi La Shay, a professional car thief from Possil, who steals Skoda Octavia's which she then sells to the lead black character, the similarly stupidly named LaFayette "Thuggs" Velvet, a former gangbanger from NYC who got out of dodge when Rudy Giuliani started cleaning that city up, he's since relocated to Glasgow, and set up a chopshop near the Barras.

As you can tell from the description above, I'm not taking this entirely seriously, mainly because I'm no illustrator, but I'm trying to bring a bit of fun and perhaps even some satirical cheek to the style of the game, instead of playing it straight.

The Briggait

Poster Design




Brochure Layouts




Website Layouts




Wayfinding.

Logos, Logos, Logos

To celebrate the Fiat 500's less than stellar showing in recent reliability and customer satisfaction surveys. Undoing all the good work done by the Panda and Bravo - shame on you Fiat!

MINI Crossman. Vile.

New Peugeot Logo

Hot on the heels of sister company Citroen, and just in time for its 200th anniversary, French carmaker Peugeot has revealed a "refreshed" corporate identity, featuring new typography and an updated rendering of the famed Lion. It's the first change since 1995, and easily the biggest change in the company's corporate identity since the 1970s. Previous updates of the logo design left the basic shape of the Lion pretty much untouched, and mainly involved the simple filling in of the Lion's outline.

I'm unconvinced by the new logo design, as, to me anyway, it no longer looks much like a Lion. The paws could come from a teddy bear, the legs and feet are too blocky, and there's a strange, disjointed looking hump at the back of the Lion's head, which I presume is meant to be representative of its mane. I also have some trouble with the chromed, 3D effect they've applied to it because the shading looks a little bit off. I'm just not sure why.

On the upside, the new typography is pretty sharp looking, and definitely more distinctive than the previous typeface, although the P and O in PEUGEOT are perhaps a little bit too stretched out for their own good.

For better or worse, the new logo and typography will be making their debut sometime this year on the production version of the Peugeot RCZ, a 308-derived small coupé designed to serve as a cut-price rival to the Audi TT and Volkswagen Scirocco.

Alfa Romeo Giulietta

Just look at it! Isn't it gorgeous? After the mild misstep that was the MiTo, Alfa's styling is definitely back on track with the stunning new Giulietta. Now, I know I just referred to the MiTo as something of a mild misstep in aesthetic terms, but that is no fault of Alfa Romeo's stylists. It's simply that the somewhat stubby proportions dictated by the MiTo's Fiat Punto-derived mechanical layout didn't sit particularly well with Alfa's traditionally swoopy, curvaceous styling.

The Giulietta employs the very same styling themes with far more success thanks to its more elongated proportions and lower stance, and reaffirms my belief that the Italians are the only people still capable of styling a car attractively while remaining within the restrictions imposed by current crash and pedestrian safety legislation. See the Fiat Bravo for further evidence, and compare both to the bluff fronted, oddly proportioned new models coming from the likes of Peugeot and Renault.

Some more random pisstakes/parodies.

Sorry Seat, but nothing you can do will ever be able to convince me that the Leon is anything more than a Volkswagen Golf with a slightly slicker looking body and a substantially cheaper interior.

Let the Leyland bashing continue forever more...

I'm afraid I don't buy into this Scrap & Save idea. I know they've been trying to sell it as an "environmental" measure, but everyone knows it's really to stop the UK's new car market from disappearing down the toilet. Unfortunately, it hasn't really benefited carmakers who actually produce cars within the UK or even Europe, as most of them somewhat stupidly jacked their prices up by around £2,000 to nullify any customer savings/profit losses likely to be made from the scrappage deal. Is a Focus 1.6 Zetec really worth over £17,000? Is a 1.4 litre Vauxhall Astra with barely enough power to pull you out of bed worth an RRP of £15,680? I don't think so!

The Italians, and particularly the Koreans had the good sense to leave their prices largely alone, and as such, with an additional £2,000 off, Fiat's sales are up, while Hyundai and Kia have been challenging Ford for the top spot in the UK market for the past 3 months.

Citroen keep referring to the C3 Picasso as the "Spacebox", so I thought I'd encourage potential owners to get "out of their box".

Twingo RenaultSport

Twishite & New Moan

The Bankers' Playground

These are the layout visuals for my Digital Media project, whereby we've to produce a 3 scene flash animation on a subject of our choice. The only stipulations that we have to strictly adhere to is the use of collage and the use of "hybrid creatures" in our animations.

I've decided to do something based around the credit crunch, depicting the causes, effects, and our esteemed governments' £700 billion solution to the problem. As you can see, these images already take the form of digital collage, and the flying pigs pretty much fit the dictionary definition of a hybrid creature.

The first image shows the land of plenty, depicting the bankers greed that caused the credit crunch, and also their seeming belief that money grow on trees, something which is about as likely as pigs flying.

The second image shows the effects of the credit crunch, here in the form of a ravaged cityscape in flames, liberally strewn with the RBS, HBOS and Northern Rock logos, while Sir Fred Goodwin fiddles in the foreground.

Finally, the third image shows my interpretation of the governments' solution to the credit crunch by depicting Gordon Brown as a Fairy Godmother and Alistair Darling as Tinkerbell, busily dropping off £700 billion in public money to rescue the bankers from a trip to their nearest Jobcentre.

I don't really know where this piece came from. It's kinda meant to signify my belief that the world was a more peaceful place when there were two superpowers - the US and USSR - and back in the days when referring to Britain as a "major power" actually meant something.

St. Peter's Seminary, Cardross

I'll be using these photos of St. Peter's Seminary in Cardross as the basis of my Advanced Visual Creativity Personal Project, in conjunction with sketchwork and collage ideas. My aim is to use the photography to depict St. Peter's as it appears now, and the sketchwork to depict my interpretation of what it looked like before it descended into its current ruinous state. I then plan to throw together a large collage of images interspersing the two styles of artwork.

Now, to give you some bumph about St. Peter's:

• Despite it's apparent ruinous, collapsing state, it is actually one of the few modern Category A-listed buildings in West Central Scotland.

• Designed by world renowned architects Gillespie, Kidd & Coia, with one eye very firmly on the works of Le Corbusier.

• Has been described by various sources as "a modern building of world significance" and "the finest example of post-modern brutalist architecture in the United Kingdom".

• Was included on the World Monument Fund's '100 Most Endangered Sites' list in both 2007 and 2008.

The building was originally intended to be used as a training college for Catholic priests, but just as it was being completed, the practice of teaching priests in seclusion from their eventual congregations was beginning to lose sway within the Catholic Chuch in Scotland, and as such, the building never came close to achieving full occupancy after it's official opening in 1966. From the outset, the building was riddled with structural and maintenace problems, mostly caused by substandard engineering and cost cutting during the construction process. It closed as a Seminary in 1980, and was used for a while as a drug treatment and rehabilitation centre, but the maintenance and engineering problems it had experienced earlier in its existence continued to plague the building, and as such, it had been completely vacated, stripped and left to the elements by the early 1990s.