In what teeters between being one of the most self indulgent loads of old crap that has ever gushed from my idiot brain to a masterstoke of highly commercial genre changing childrens writing, I have put pen to paper and started a childrens book.

It’s about my two cats; Chairman Miaow, who is called “The Grand Wizard” in the book and Sooty, who is called “His Very Charming Shadow”. It’s about co-dependence, how one part of someone else makes up the bits you don’t have and vice versa. It’s also about the hidden charms of cats (read people) and how sometimes the people who take the longest to get to know are the people who are really worth getting to know.

It’s also about Britain and the shocking state of the country.

Here is a quick snap of the cover, I will of course be illustrating it myself.

Straight outta Norway! Here’s the design I did for Ost & Kjex (cheese and crackers) and the mighty Mung’s cover of the little purple fellas filthy ditty Dirty Mind.

Released in a limited run of 10″ vinyl which was so limited I don’t even have a copy myself. If you don’t own a copy either you can download it from the information superhighway, put it on your mp3 player of choice and then jerk around your living room while gawping at this on your computer screen. A truly authentic musical experience.

Being from Rochdale co-operation is in my blood, so I joined Mill Community. Set up by Liz Birkbeck and Claire Martin, fellow Rochdalians who have been at large in the world (London & Manchester) being generally entrepreneurial and smart for some time now.

The model is simple – Mill works with the best freelance talent around and brings them together for projects thus keeping everything fresh and particular for whatever is in hand. Doing it this way avoids all the rubbish aspects of a full time employed team sitting around complaining about what they have to work on and getting squeezed into doing stuff not right for them and not right for the client. From my point of view having the high velocity networked powers of Liz and Claire doing the things I suck at means that potentially we are all gonna be happy campers.

Looking forward to future collabs Mill style.

www.millco.co.uk
http://pixeldisco.millco.co.uk/
http://www.creativetimes.co.uk/features/bubble-s-former-md-launches-new-venture

We built Frankenstory earlier this year, it’s an online writing game – you write the first part of a story in 40 words or less and send it on to your friend… the twist is they can only see the last few words you wrote! They write the next part and volley it back to you. End result is a weird and wonderful collaborative story.

So a few months after launch we realized Frankenstory was a hit and we wanted to find a way to showcase some of the stories people were writing. We tried a “Best Stories” list but decided the idea of a “best” or a “worst” story was nonsense, how can one surreal story be better than another? This game is about having fun regardless of how good a writer you are. We ditched the “Best Stories” list and invented the Frankenlab. The Frankenlab is written by the eminent Dr. Emelius Frankenstory, here he dissects the stories which catch his eye and showcases them in the Lab. He gives you advice and inspiration on writing your own story too.

Frankenstory and Frankenlab are bought to you by Mike Stenhouse, Antonio Gould, Nick Lockey and Suzie Webb (that’s me) and are open now for your writing and reading enjoyment.

My work for Mungolian Jetset gets an honourable mention in The London International Creative Competition http://licc.us/

This was a worldwide competition for artists working in sculpture, film, painting… you know “proper art”.

For some strange reason they have given me a certificate, no silverware for honourable mentions I’m afraid. However I am rather pleased to have FINALLY got the legend “Put your hands up for Detroit. Pull your pants down for Mungolia” on an officious looking bit of paper. See said certificate here:

Yes indeedy folks!

Back in the spring I went back to my old stomping ground of Liverpool to work with a startup business helping them define their idea for an iPhone app. They knew they wanted it to be about gift giving so I was asked to work with them to establish the name, brand and creative direction.

In a series of workshops I worked on what the app should actually do, gift giving yes but how exactly, what it should feel like and what might make it different. When we cracked the idea we moved on to naming it, we decided to call it Little World Gifts as the initial idea was about gifts being from specific locations, half postcard, half souvenir and ermmm half gift (I was not asked to do any maths). Gifts would be limited and exclusively gorgeous, non of your Facebook gift tat here.
I worked up the identity and the styling for the app plus some initial ideas on the gift design for the team there.

Fronted by the lovely Miss Katie Lipps and Paul Stringer with resident wit Jonathon Deamer and Simon Cocker leading the 3-d work. Look out for their app in the store and sign up for updates at http://www.littleworldgifts.com

Here’s some pics of the work I did.

And here’s one of their Christmas gifts done by Simon Cocker and his band of merry 3-dimensional artists.

Mungolian Jetset released an album earlier this year, with all the stuff they gave away on free download in the past reworked and generally more epicly Munged up. It was released on Smalltown Supersound. I did the cover and here it is, showing the Mung rampaging through the deadlands eating some blahs along the way. He chomps down on kebabs made of heads, as you do.

It came with a 20 page booklet too:

Here’s the cover art I have done for my new record “Get Mine”. Yes, I have decided to enter the world of Gansta Rap just as the whole sorry affair implodes. I think I will style myself very much on Lil Kim… I have watched Notorious five times now and it looks fairly easy.

Actually this is a much more middle class and mild mannered thing. It’s some identity and styling design I did for a 4iP project that crashed and burned in the financial meltdown, ironically it was about young folks making their own cash on their own terms.