September 2008
25 posts
Moo Cow Music
I bought band for the iPhone. I’m glad I didn’t pay £6 for it. It’s naf.
I’ve bought a few bad apps which has made me come up with a theory. If of has a bad logo or more importantly, terrible typography; it will be a crap app.
The drive of my life
I was up at 0800 and I got in at 0130. Long day. I did the wedding photography job I’ve talked about before and then gigged on the night.
The drive home however, I dreaded. I was so tired and my feet were on fire, yet it was the best drive of my life.
I always tend to enjoy driving home from a gig. I don’t know what it is. Maybe the isolation after the hustle and bustle or just the...
The Wedding Photographer
Today I have been “Nathan Monk: Wedding Photographer”.
It was for a friend, and it’s made up my mind; I’m not a fan.
It’s lovely being appreciated for your creative ability, but in a way it’s why I’m not too keen. It’s all very structured. In actual fact, it’s not creative. The stress is unbelievable and dealing with people is a nightmare....
Teenage patients enjoy new artwork →
Congratulations to Alex Bermingham!
Posterous falls at the first hurdle
Nope, I still love tumblr. Posterous means well but lacks crucial features. No embed for my website, puts email signatures on the end of posts and puts horrible posted by posterous text into my blog. LEARN THIS WEB STARTUPS* - The best web services are the ones that you dont notice. Comments are nice though ...
Posterous
Just discovering a new service to maybe even take over my tumblr account. Check out www.posterous.com ————————————————— Nathan Monk 07722931808 hello@nathanmonk.com www.nathanmonk.comPosted by email from nathansmonk’s posterous | Comment »
WatchFinished the Brit Hits title sequence.
Web Design for BIAD Students
General Information
I offer the chance to get your very own portfolio website up and running. The service includes a half-day tutorial on a content-management-system that will allow you to update and create content on your website, and a basic run through of CSS and editing tools that will allow you to re-style the look of your site in endless ways.
You don’t have to worry about installing...
FAMFAMFAM →
DropBox only gets better! The icon is from this site… A birmingham guy! Mark James is now something of a hero to me. Finally some local success.
Digital Workflow
How do you work? I find myself with my mac or iPhone most of the day and because of this I always have a connection to the cloud. My workflow pretty much reflects this, with the exception of my moleskine notebooks; sometimes there is no substitute for pencil (or a biro) and paper. When I say workflow, I guess I mean general organisation and staying up-to-date rather than my graphic design stuff...
Wire & Twine : Here to Make Friends →
I want one!
Ridiculous Design Rules →
YAWN YAWN YAWN - Ultimately flawed.
FF Meta Serif - Mini site →
Cool site for FF Meta Serif.
“Basically, there’s nothing going on the city, was my conclusion at this point....”
– Stef Lewandowski » A Creative Director for Birmingham?
A thorough account whilst raising important points with a witty twist.
Self branding is inevitable →
I do hope I haven’t started some sort of hate campaign against me at BIAD…
Nice to see a good conversation on the issue though.
Good BIAD blog too. Check Sarah out.
Alex Bermingham on Self-Branding
Alex Bermingham: Nath hows it going, just keeping some more healthy discussion going! Just read your tumblr attack on personal branding - I know what you mean about letting your own work show for itself. and you are def onto something with the trap of over doing it with extensive idents and whatnot. But largely I don't really agree! Everything, including people, are branded every day - in our daily lives, in the media, and especially in design. Branding's rarely just a logo or an ident, it's a whole visual identity and the associations that go with it. I think whether you left the Monk logo on your site or not would probably not have made a massive difference - your brand qualities of clean swiss styles and eternal love for helvetica are still very strong on there without it! I have been playing around with personal branding over the summer, but they are all still just ideas that will have most probably changed radically by graduation. My philosophy on design is that uni is the best time to experiment, take risks and have fun too. Clearly one should be far more careful when it comes to exit plans and the final year show, but ultimately you're always gonna be branding yourself. HA sorry for the rant! Keep up the good work
Nathan Monk: Interesting slant and you raise some valid points that I hadn't thought about. Personally I still stand by my decision; I think as art students, giving yourself a second identity that purposely sets out to sell one person as an ambiguous entity will inevitably fail. I agree that in other avenues the pay-off can be a very different affair. Your point about people being branded is correct. I believe that I may have been a bit vague with my post (I tend to rush them out). There is a difference between purposely branding yourself as a wholesome body, and letting your beliefs, outlook, attitudes, work and educational attributes etc. mould the way that you are perceived. However, I was only aiming my post at art-students. A brand requires the user to create a personal, emotional and/or value-based bond. I believe that this takes time. I see loads of art-students try to create a constructed identity via websites and social communities. I remember very few. By saying this, inherently I admit that a handful of these brands do work and I remember them, but at the same time this would suggest that it is based on the amount of time that I am exposed to them for. I would assume that the amount of time spent at ones portfolio would be founded on how good their work is. Perhaps we could create some sort of mathematical equation for brand effectiveness? ;-D I guess it comes down to a calculated risk. Do you brand yourself and play statistical roulette with isolating your audience or base your career/portfolio on content and you as a person and risk boring your audience to sleep? I agree with your philosophy, university is a sandbox, and if we mess up now, it essentially has little consequence. One thing I would say is that brands will come and go, but your work is a much more permanent fixture. I've also remembered that you go by the pseudonym of Royal. I do hope I haven't caused any offence as this wasn't my intention in any way. As I mentioned, I have completely different opinion on branding yourself in other areas as the end game is almost always more successful. I hope that it didn't come across as an attack, it was only meant to be a spur-of-the-moment thought and it bears no personal ties in any way, shape or form. Im liking the design discourse we have here. PS My love for Helvetica is SO eternal! PPS Have slightly redesigned my site again this week. I think its slightly better now. Have a butchers.
“Will it not allow me to turn off cookies (like Google Apps) or talk to the...”
– Google OS Is Actually a Browser: Google Chrome
Some guy on chrome. Love the way he likened the central cloud to the death star.