Thanks to Simon and all the peeps at STATE for asking me to do their cover for their christmas edition featuring the “50 Best Albums of the Year!” Lots of hand-drawn type, of course, and a nice bronze spot colour thang.

And congrats to Simon for winning ‘Designer of the Year’ at last weeks PPAI Mag Awards.

As curator of this show it might go some way to explaining why I’ve not been updating the blog too often lately but I have to say it’s been a brilliant experience. Keeping a project of this size (70 contributing artists) moving along has been more of a pleasure than a pain. Here is the blurb and some info…

In a time where digital music sales have outstripped physical formats like cd or vinyl, thereby shifting the focus from browsing cover art in your local record shop to high budget videos and clever marketing, CandyCollective wanted to celebrate the ever declining art of sleeve art.

‘CandyKaraoke’ sees us collaborate for the first, of hopefully many, times with Monster Truck Gallery on Francis Street and RHA to invite over 70 of Ireland’s leading designers, artists, photographers, illustrators, musicians and original creative minds to reimagine their favourite album covers. All artworks produced will be original 1-off 12” square works which will be sold for only 300 euro each. (more…)

So got to hang out with Ben Drury AGAIN last night before, during and after SweetTalk 32 ! What a great guy, his design work for Mo Wax Records is Amazing! For a long time in the 90’s I was buying every record Mo Wax released for the music and the design. I was a bit of a fan boy at the start of the night as I had brought along some record covers for him to sign. Like the above Money Mark EP - Don’t Cry.

I love being in the Candy Collective!

Some title board designs for designer and creative director Lisa Haran’s showreel. There are a couple more in Typography section.

I’ve recently finished the design and illustrations for an information booklet, Safer Injecting - Reducing the harm associated with injecting drug use. This was for Merchants Quay Ireland and all content was complied by Niamh Randall and Lynda Haran. (more…)