In some ways it all begins here. Art school, industrial design, then graphic, then effectively shining it all to go straight into industry, via a couple of extended surfing trips, working briefly as an illustrator before becoming an art director, then an art director who wrote, and then just someone who could do a lot of things. Good graphic design I've alway loved though, and as a career it's like architecture in that it has longevity. Some of my favourite people are graphic designers.
MCTCRV - The Reverse Vee Project
A cover concept for a book and commemorative board project now in production for Maurice Cole, the disruptive, maddening and brilliant surfboard designer/shaper, in collaboration with Tom Curren, for whom disruptive, maddening and brilliant also apply. It looks back to the development of a subtle, though revolutionary board design that took Tom to a World Title in the early 90's.
I passed the project on to my friend and fellow arty type Richard Cooke because of time constraints, while I remain involved as consulting art director. Its new iteration will be released this year
Great Ocean Quarterly
Great Ocean Quarterly is well represented within this site. Here I repeat a spread, and detail some feature work within. The Voyages dinkus, for our feature section in every issue on ocean adventures, looks to, and honours, the Nina, a vessel lost with all hands in the Tasman Sea not long ago.
Merrick and the T-Street Shorebreak was our cover for GOQ Volume 1:1. Shot by Kristianne Koch-Riddle of San Clemente in California, the image at left was a shoe in for a cover when we saw it. The spread at right, with a monochrome image by Ray Collins, turned in to a collaboration of sorts with colour and calligraphy by yours truly to form a backdrop to Ron Petty's fascinating poem Kiss.
Photograph of Sam Dubois at the helm of the Tecla, by Jeff Herriot with toning by Richard Goodwin
Concept sketch for cover of GOQ. Photographer Ed Sloane was in Tahiti shooting a pro surfing contest. I asked him to have a try at shooting a swimmer hanging in the wave face at Teahupoo - from the inside of the wave. No laughing matter at the best of times, but they did it. Aaron Rich is the swimmer.
My concept sketch overlapping the final art by Dean Gorissen illustrating prize winning author Favel Parret's trip to Macquarie Island.
Our business cards for GOQ incorporated our favourite sea creatures. Jock elected a Seadragon, my choice was the Flying Fish, Mark wasn't about to choose so he got a Stonefish as it looked a little like him, and our IT whizz Tim went with a Flounder, though he doesn't.
Lisa Jacobson's Stella Prize winning novel length poem The Sunlit Zone also featured, as an extract in GOQ 1:1. Using New York photographer Tommy Colla's stunning images to illustrate a world in turmoil in the near future, I was stumped in finding some decent fish scales to illustrate the transgenic nature of the poem's key protagonist. Until I bought some atlantic salmon one night. Shot on the dining room table, it did the trick.
STRAITWATER
Straitwater are bottlers of rainwater from Flinders Island in Bass Strait, between the Australian mainland and our island state of Tasmania. In a region on record as having some of the world's cleanest air, it makes sense that the rainwater is just as pure. Mick Grimshaw runs Straitwater, and it was fun working with him as we developed both the logo and the beginnings of his brand.
Logos and their like
Logo design, and the conception of those graphic images that both infuriate and inspire, are a combination of eureka moments and hard graft. It is fun though when things appear fully formed in the middle of the night. You hope you remember them in the morning.
Above is an idea for a T-shirt graphic, inspired by both Barry Cornwall's poem, and a soap box. I did indulge in a bit of poetic license, as his words are 'open sea', but while you can't have your plates open, you can sure have them shining.
Some of the logos below are self explanatory. Others more cryptic, but each is a solution to a problem that has been teased out, a problem with infinite solutions. My digging revealed these.
Click is an agency representing advertising photographers, Flyingg Pigg an ambitious project beginning right now, and the little red swirl is the logo for Great Ocean Quarterly, reminiscent of both a wave and a cyclone. Us Phoques (pronounced 'us folks') was the production company for Musica Surfica (a play on words as the french word for seal is phoque), while the 'join the dots' logo is for Leverington and Partners, a financial planning company.
The strange linear things, the eyes looking back... they are of the 'idea in the middle of the night' variety. Sumatran Surfariis are exactly what they say, and a more brilliant two weeks you will never spend, cruising the Indian Ocean chasing the perfect wave. And the yellow and black of Tad Shallow, part of a body of work for a brand in development.
PHARE, late middle english for lighthouse, from the Greek pharos, is a defence technology consulting company, while Longboard SUP Revolution was a response to a requestfor an old school surfboard decal applied to the new world of stand up paddle boarding.
The Custom Plates logo is a re-design for the Victorian Government agency, Vicroads.
Last but not least, a little bit of fun for Freestyle Home Stays, a place for surfers to visit the coast and learn to surf, or be guided to the best spots... by a couple of salty old sea dogs.
