Dan Mountford

I came across Dan Mountford's work just browsing and I think his work is really inspiring and amazing. I like how he uses photography to create what looks like pictures montaged together, when really he has used all in-camera techniques (double exposure) and simply removed parts and edited colours using Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.

Mountford's Flickr account showing all of his work.

The Butterfly Lion is one of my favourites from his work. There are no Photoshop overlays, the only thing edited in Photoshop is the colours, the actually images were created in-camera by double exposure. I think is very creative and talented as he is able to capturing beautiful images and create amazing piece of work. It is unique and his style has soft colours most of the time, following a similar colour scheme, or using black and white. Also, my favourite out of his black and white work is Vall // Old Brighton Pier. It looks simple, but at a close look you can see the time and effort that has been put into these shots and getting them precise. It gives off a peaceful sentimental looks, and all of his work looks welcoming and interesting to look at because of how visually unique and unusual it is.

He also does hand made illustrations.

I love this illustration. He created the antlers by using coffee which made the brown stained look. As for the body, they are made using simple individual straight lines, showing the effort put into it. I think that the use of colours are effective and I like the fact that they aren't the typical deer colours, they're bold and the mixed media of coffee and ink makes a great effect. Also, the fact that there are only two colours make it much more effective than if there was lots of other colours mixed in with it. I would like to try and incorporate some of his style into my own work and experiment with some of the the things he has as they're individual and really do create some wonderful effects.

Website Review

I'm going to critically review four different websites, depicting their downsides and what is good about them. The Computer Arts magazine, Creative Review, Boneshaker magazine and Vasava.

The first one I have chosen is the Computer Arts magazine website, I like this website because I think it is well designed and set out in a way that is appealing to the eye. There is good colour usage, the same colour scheme follows throughout the website and it gives it a clean look with a simple white background. When you open an article, the theme is similar to the homepage, following a simple design with text and images in a uniform down the page. Image, text, image, text. I like how simple the toolbar is at the top of the page, it has good positioning and easy for the users to find.

Next, I looked at the Creative Review website. There is much less colour to this website, it is much more formal. The images on the website are the only things that bring colour to the page, the design is made up of greys, blacks and white. There is simple easy to read font that is friendly to the user however, I am not so keen on this website and I was the previous. Personally, I don't think that it is that interesting. It lacks colour, and it doesn't match what the company is promoting. 'Creative' is meant to involve the imagination or original ideas, and as far as I can see this website does not show anything creative in it's design. Also, I do not like how when you hover an image or an article, it turns yellow. It doesn't really look aesthetically nice to block things out with yellow.

Boneshaker magazine website is well designed. It is simple yet effective and easy for a user to access and get around. It uses simple soft colours with cute illustrations at the top relating to cycling, this gives the website a welcoming feel and relevance to what the site it about.. The shop page has it's own different illustration and I think this is effective, it shows the different design ideas put into the website, andnot just a plain layout on every single plage. I think that this is a successful website, it is appealing to look at, it is easy to get around and it is welcoming for their target audience, cyclists.

Vasava is my favourite website out of the four I have researched. It's design is unique and fits to the side of the browser, making good use of the space provided for websites. I like the fact that at first, all of the images appear to be black and white but when you scroll over them with the cursor, their colours return, highlighting the image you are on, giving appreciation to itself before you scroll over to another. The tool bar to the left of the page is useful, allowing you to pick a topic of what you would like to look at, it then refines your search into the catergory that you chose. Also when you scroll down, a small arrow apears to the right hand side that will take you back to the top of the website, it is a hand tool for websites that use endless scroll. I think that this website is the most effective, it is striking in design and is a great idea to show all of the images together.

Stanley Donwood

Stanley Donwood is the pen name for the English artist, Dan Rickwood. He is well known for his close association with the British rock group Radiohead having created all of their album and poster art.

He graduated from the University of Exeter and went on to work as a freelance artist in Plymouth. Alongside all of his work for Radiohead, he also maintains his own website where he publishes short stories and other writings. 

His work is dark, mysterious and strange however, interesting. There is depth to his work in which his personality is shown. Not only is he a skilled drawer and painter, he has skills in printing. A lot of his work is black and white. This makes his work unique to his style, it keeps it simple and effective and appealing to look at. His more coloured pieces are also interesting, I especially like his oil paintings/graphite drawings of trees and forests, they are unique in style and use a wonderful range of colours that really make the pieces work. I already liked this style of work as I think that they make beautiful pieces of artwork, as they can be bare and simple, or full of life and detailed. It can be what you want it to be and there is an endless amount of options and outcomes that you can create just from this style and the choice of subject. He is talented when it comes to drawing and painting, he knows how to get correctly proportioned shapes and has a skill in shading appropriately and realistically. He can put in a lot of detail but also, he can use a little and make it still look as effective. I took these images from his personal blog. 

He has also worked on last years Glastonbury Festival 2011, as he has since 2002. I like the 2011 design, there is a lot of attention to detail and a rainbow of colour. I love the aspect of it; the way in which it was designed is clever and very eye catching. There is even detail that probably wouldn't be seen unless you looked closely into the design and that's what I like about it. Donwood himself said, 'as usual it was difficult to get it right and some of the pictures I made whilst trying to get it right were so bad they suprised even me, and I'm used to the sorts of horror that I'm capable of.' I like how he admits that it was difficult to think of an appropriate idea for the design and that even he, a well known designer can mess up. Overall I think that his work is very good, I love his style and how he can flexibly create different designs and how he likes to experiment, he is unique, successful and a very talented designer.