Graphic designer Neil Kellerhouse is responsible for some of the most arresting and important movie posters in recent years. Based in Los Angeles, Kellerhouse has spent the last year working with directors such as Fincher and Soderbergh.

Graphic designer Neil Kellerhouse is responsible for some of the most arresting and important movie posters in recent years. Based in Los Angeles, Kellerhouse has spent the last year working with directors such as Fincher and Soderbergh.

In the last few years he has produced iconic poster work you will have seen for Casey Affleck’s ‘I’m Still Here’, McPherson’s ‘The Eclipse’ and some of the most enigmatic Criterion Collection covers to date.

His style is simple; uncluttered, uncompromising type over beautifully shot and composed photography, and it is in the type that his work clearly shines. Kellerhouse is as happy breaking up Didot’s elegant forms as he is obscuring protagonists (or antagonists) behind massive Futura.

Each poster carries the mood of the film with the smallest amount of fuss, adding more gravitas to the films as all the blocks of four and five stars you could possibly throw at any given blockbuster his work appears next to on the tube. A truly inspiring designer, if medium is the message then never has the message been so acutely communicated.

Take a look at his site.

I bought one of Feric’s red-crowned crane prints a couple of years ago; a whimsical and elegant take on using engineering drawing practice in a very original way. And since then Feric has been busy…

I bought one of Feric’s red-crowned crane prints a couple of years ago; a whimsical and elegant take on using engineering drawing practice in a very original way. And since then Feric has been busy, he’s founded a digital entertainment agency and is working on turning his unique character illustrations in to a series of illustrated stories.

From his site:

His highly acclaimed illustration style hovers between reality and fantasy and is a surreal blend of the East and West, the past and the future, and the natural and mechanical. Known to his team and friends as a kid at heart, Feric is never fresh out of kooky ideas and steam. Feric’s artwork has been featured in SJMA, AIGA, Graphis and American Illustration. His animation, “Inside Out”, a short that demonstrates the unity in all things (whereby a little component becomes one with a fish, a whale, a dingo, a gecko, a planet and more), has been screened at the Holland International Animation Festival, the Ottaway International Animation Festival and the NYEXPO, among others.

After graduating in film and animation at the School of Visual Arts (New York) and further earning a master’s degree in design from Yale, Feric went on to work as a conceptual designer for Square USA, Inc. for the film “Final Fantasy”. He has also worked as a motion graphic designer on “Animatrix.” Some of the clients Feric has collaborated with include the New York Times, Prada, Miu Miu, ESPN, Metropolis, IBM, NIKE and BP.

Take a look at his site
Visit his online shop for prints and works

Modelling digitally with reference to real-world materials like plastics and wood, German studio DepotVisuals build informational installations and imagine constructs that are just slightly too perfect and too whimsical to exist in the real world. Amazing stuff. Take a look at their work.

I really can’t say much about German studio DepotVisuals, I can only prompt you to take a look at their portfolio of incredible forms and structures.

Modelling digitally with reference to real-world materials like plastics and wood, building informational installations and imagining constructs that are just slightly too perfect and too whimsical to exist in the real world. Amazing stuff.

Take a look at their work.

For her birthday late last year i created this poster for Shon; it is the dialogue from my phone of the few text messages that went into arranging our first date, then the first month of our relationship afterward.

For her birthday late last year i created this poster for Shon; it is our dialogue from my phone of the few text messages that went into arranging our first date, then the first month of our relationship afterward. Arranged over 520 lines, the format is based on a radial convergence diagram with the calendar date arranged around the outside in white, then the timestamp of each message creates an inner-ring, with the text messages themselves reading inwards from the outside, all reading anti-clockwise. The centre (zero) ring is a series of dashed lines, one for every line of dialogue, hence why it looks darker than the five and two.

The process was considerably more complicated than originally anticipated and required a set of some 600 stepped radial splines, converted to text paths and hand-stitched together, which seemed to be the only way to allow text to run across lines without being interrupted.

The A0 piece was produced in InDesign and Illustrator and printed by large format printers Onward Display using a six-colour process.

American artist Carol Prusa works with acrylic globes and domes, illustrating incredibly detailed mathematical structures on a unique and subtly three-dimensional construct. Take a look at her portfolio of work.

American artist Carol Prusa works with acrylic globes and domes, illustrating incredibly detailed mathematical structures on a unique and subtly three-dimensional construct.

Carol introduces her work more succinctly than i can: “My constructed domes are provocative symbols that invoke the idea of the universe and physical objects that allude to real-life structures. In my “canopies,” I explore a number of mathematical models that physicists developed to explain our universe. The mathematics of my expressed geometries offer a spiritual force that organizes structures from the microsopic to the political. Here, geometry isn’t simply abstract but creates a real world, sustained by its own logic.”

The pieces are incredibly detailed and organic, all at once suggesting near-recognisable forms you might find in sub-marine life and allowing us glimpses into far more complex alien worlds. She is no stranger to peering into the abyss.

Take a look at her portfolio of work.

I had wanted to create a piece for a while that nods towards one of my favourite films; 2001, and the visual simplicity of the film’s Tycho monolith with its silent, constant presence is obviously a perfect starting point. This is the first of (hopefully) a set of three prints and illustrates the moment immediately following the tragic impact of a small body against the large, omnipresent object.

The first of (hopefully) a set of three prints; the base element of this image started life as a photo of my microwave. I’m not great with microwaves, infact i tend to blow them up, and this one was only three months old when it went.

The unit itself had a very nice unmarked, uncluttered mirror front, which, in its own right, was actually a great piece of produce design and something I didn’t want to commit to the dustbin without at least giving it an aesthetic eulogy. So, to cut a long story short, i took a hammer and smashed it up. Unexpectedly, the mirrored front was plastic and didn’t crack as i assumed it would, instead breaking like shatterproof glass into thousands of pieces all over my kitchen floor.

I had wanted to create a piece for a while that nods towards one of my favourite films; 2001, and the visual simplicity of the film’s Tycho monolith with its silent, constant presence is obviously a perfect starting point. The structure of the 2001 monolith is mathematically relevant with the three sides of the object following a strict ratio based on the squares of the first three integers (1, 2, 3). The monolith is officially described as having a ratio of 1:4:9 with the depth being the smallest of those integers, and the length being the largest. This is an expression of (1×1):(2×2):(3×3). However, researching around, opinion is divided and states that the monolith doesn’t actually conform to this ratio, but instead conforms to the ratio 1:4:13, which incidentally is the same ratio seen in the Montparnasse Tower in Paris. 2001 was released in 1968, construction on the Montparnasse Tower begun in 1969. However, i couldn’t validate that particular opinion over multiple sources, so my monolith follows the original 1:4:9 ratio (or at least, as a flat object, the 4:9 ratio).

My imitation of Kubrick’s Tycho monolith stops there though; it is glossy, has rounded corners and the piece itself illustrates the moment immediately following the tragic impact of a small body against the large, omnipresent object.

Loosely titled ‘The Only Conceivable Outcome of Two Unaligned Ideals’ the piece is an exercise in appreciating the fragility of small things, that no matter how insignificant the latter may appear to the former, every encounter leaves its mark.

The original piece is 75x100cm (9000x12000px), which is also the biggest digital canvas i’ve ever tried to work with, and unfortunately doesn’t show particularly well as a small grab on a site like this.

Back in 2004 whilst at Kleber I was asked to create a site for Italian composer and producer Ferdinand Arno, promoting his studio; Quiet, Please! The concept had a special pre-requisite – the site was to have no descriptive words at all, so we’d need to look at an alternative way of communicating the concept. What started with that concept then evolved a couple of times over the next few years!

Back in 2004 whilst at Kleber I was asked to create a site for Italian composer and producer Ferdinand Arno, promoting his studio; Quiet, Please! The concept had a special pre-requisite, and not a particularly SEO-friendly one either, but Ferdinand didn’t really need the positioning. The site was to have no descriptive words at all, infact the only words that appeared in the whole site were in the navigation and the listings within the music library. And a restrained few on the contact form.

In order to present the methodology of the studio we needed to come up with a set of visual assets to communicate what the site, and the studio were about. Tom (Muller) and I came up with a sort of pulse-based flash intro (yes this was still acceptable then) that illustrated the intro music through the use of varied circular elements, blurred and in a small gamut of colours. The gentle bloom and undulation of these assets across a letterbox canvas picked out the audio and shaped it into something we could then translate to other elements of the site.

Later i took these assets and worked them up for a series of flat poster graphics that comprised a Magnasoma mini-series called Fluorescent Dialogue with ideas foraged from research into radial interfaces.

When it came to producing a series of eight abstract elements to accompany our service areas for the first Profission website and in printed collateral the same underlying concepts worked equally as well. Expressed as a series of brightly coloured circle elements in arrangements over black, these distinctive assets proved themselves to be a crucial component of what made the original site quite special. Later Alex and I looked at producing a colour-inverted version of the site to make portfolio presentation a little easier but other projects intervened and there was never enough time to produce the site, so they lay in template unused. I’ve always been quite fond of them so its nice to see them again.

French agency Art Noble’s excellent Digital Temple magazine reaches its 11th issue and transcends from online publication to a fully realised print release – not an easy thing to achieve in the current climate. So, that is great news indeed. The magazine can be pre-ordered here.

French agency Art Noble’s excellent Digital Temple magazine reaches its 11th issue and transcends from online publication to a fully realised print release – not an easy thing to achieve in the current climate. So, that is great news indeed.

The magazine can be pre-ordered here.

Stephen Layfield updates his immaculate portfolio with 25 new projects. As ever, an awe-inspiring collection of print and packaging from this Sydney-based master of form. Take a look.

Stephen Layfield updates his immaculate portfolio with 25 new projects. As ever, an awe-inspiring collection of print and packaging from this Sydney-based master of form.

Take a look.

Recently at Profission we’ve been beavering away on a brand new site for emerging production music agency Cinephonix, and we’re very pleased with the result. The site features a unique track filtering system aimed at providing the user with the perfect track – the filters react to the choices the user makes, removing incompatible options and reducing the huge library of tracks down to the most relevant items.

Recently at Profission we’ve been beavering away on a brand new site for emerging production music agency Cinephonix, and we’re very pleased with the result. The site features a unique track filtering system aimed at providing the user with the perfect track – the filters react to the choices the user makes, removing incompatible options and reducing the huge library of tracks down to the most relevant items.

Backed by an instinctive search system and themed playlists prepared by the administrators at Cinephonix, the site is geared towards giving users searching for production music an opportunity to experience the library in their own way, at their own pace. With staff picks, features on composers and a very comprehensive knowledge base this young upstart is set to face its more-established rivals straight-on and bloody a few noses.

Visit Cinephonix.

Marc Praquin is responsible for the excellent Design & Design site and yearbooks; a beautiful resource for print, packaging and industrial design, updated daily. Whilst I’ve had work featured on Design & Design a few times I’ve never paid Marc back the recognition he and his studio so absolutely deserves.

Agence Marc Praquin features a portfolio of work across the disciplines Marc himself so adores; print, packaging and industrial design. His passion is as obvious as his minimalist, concise and restrained style – a truly incredible designer.

Marc Praquin is responsible for the excellent Design & Design site and yearbooks; a beautiful resource for print, packaging and industrial design, updated daily. Whilst I’ve had work featured on Design & Design a few times I’ve never paid Marc back the recognition he and his studio so absolutely deserves.

Agence Marc Praquin features a portfolio of work across the disciplines Marc himself so adores; print, packaging and industrial design. His passion is as obvious as his minimalist, concise and restrained style – a truly incredible designer.

Take a look.

Dear friend and talented fashion stylist Chi-San Wan launches a small portfolio site of her work. With a background in design, Chi-San works on a wide-range of projects including editorials, commercials, music videos and direction.

Dear friend and talented fashion stylist Chi-San Wan launches a small portfolio site of her work. With a background in design, Chi-San works on a wide-range of projects including editorials, commercials, music videos and direction.

Take a look.