The good folk at Word of Mouth Agency in Cork recently asked me to design a tour poster for their annual The Certain Three tour. This year’s bands are Nanu Nanu, Si Schroeder and Trumpets of Jericho. The tour starts January 17th and will be hitting Limerick, Cork, Clonakilty, Myrtleville, Dundalk, Sligo, Dublin, Galway, Athlone, Kilkenny and finally Belfast – a fair trek indeed!

The first in a series of “local spots” screenprints, Greystones is a 4 colour print (grey, aqua blue, navy blue and pea reeen), edition of only 30 prints on 200gsm white Canston paper. 11″ x 15.5″ signed, numbered and stamped. On sale here.

Tonight sees the opening the of Illustrator’s Ireland show “The Illustrated Beatles” at The Grand Social, Dublin. It’s a show that takes “40 classic (Beatles) songs visualised by 40 leading illustrators”. Though not officially a member of Illustrators Ireland, I was kindly asked by Peter Donnelly to contribute a piece for the show.

I was allocated “Good Day Sunshine” which was chosen by Chris Maher, Broadcaster, Dublin City FM. I wasn’t overly familiar with the song and did a bit of reading up about it. Apparently McCartney said the song was partly influenced by The Lovin’ Spoonful song “Daydream”. The cover of “Do You Believe in Magic” (below) conveniently featured 4 members, there are 4 members in The Beatles…

…so I basically morphed Beatles heads onto The Lovin Spoonful – I re-drew the type and changed the title. I then drew the figures in Illustrator, merged the new heads with the bodies and in Photoshop, filled in all the colour areas using various found textures.

Illustrated Beatles runs from October 23rd (8pm) until October 30th. The Grand Social is on 35 Lower Liffey Street, Dublin.

“PaperDolls meet Bram Stoker in a Victorian inspired exploration of the female and the monstrous…” This is my latest poster design, this time for aerial performance group Paper Dolls and their Bram Stoker-inspired production “A Letter to Mina”.

Combining elements of Gothic Dublin, the show’s set design and a Paper Dolls character or two, the resulting image hopefully gives a taster of the atmosphere of the live experience of “A Letter to Mina”. Starring Alabaster DePlume and live music by Dublin’s Estel. A Letter to Mina opens October 26th in D-Light Studios, 47 North Great Clarence Street, Dublin. Go see it!

Om played the Button Factory in Dublin last week and Al Cisneros kindly gave me permission to design and screenprint an edition of posters to mark the event.

Al plays a Rickenbacker bass through a pretty big and loud rig. The concept behind this poster was based both on this fact and also loosely on the lyrical content of Om’s songs. The idea is that the amp and head are acting as a vessel of sorts, channeling the lyrics. As a result the regular control knobs on the head have all changed from settings such as Volume, Shape and Gain to Serenity, Negation, Grace etc.

Final size is A2 (16.5″ x 23.5″), black and matte gold ink on cherry red, 250gsm card. Hand-numbered and signed edition of 59. For sale here.

Two colour, A4 (12″ x 8.5″) his or hers screenprint on 250gsm cream Cartalina card – edition of 55 signed, numbered and stamped. This print is aimed primarily at the fact that schools in Ireland, both national and secondary, are still legally allowed to have discriminatory admissions policies in place. These policies grant places to children based firstly on religious denomination, practical factors such as living in the catchment area come further on down the list. €10 p&p from here….

Newlock.ie is a local home security and lock upgrade company who needed a logo and branding programme. They wanted something simple that said what it did on the tin. As the vans are to be be their main point of contact with the public they need to stand out – so I covered them with bright orange key silhouettes.

As well as the logo and van design I drew up a suite of stationery and a small direct mail DL leaflet. I also got an impressive new, double-locking side gate on my house.

I recently completed a small branding and website design programme for www.ipadhire.ie – a Dublin based company that hires iPads to visitors from overseas.