Zombies seem to be all the rage these days, with the likes of 28 Days Later and The Walking Dead making ‘The Zombie’ the number one choice of Halloween outfit in recent years. There are now even books available to guide you through what to do if a Zombie Apocalypse should occur!
In reality, you probably wouldn’t have time to trawl through the numerous pages of print before you get bitten and end up being a walker yourself. The very first thing you should do in such an emergency is hit up this invaluable website.

Bearded Rob loves Pantones. He owns Pantone mugs, trays and I even discovered a Pantone branded oven glove today. So when browsing through the blogs today and found this collection of classic album covers recreated with Pantone swatches, I knew I had to post it up on here!

I know that both Rob and I here at Beard are big TV box set addicts. Watch the first episode of a TV series such as 24 and our social lives become non-existant until the last episode’s credits are rolling.
Stumbling upon this entry over at the reramble blog was not only a bit of fun, but also inspired me to check out a few of the other titles that are listed!

Has anyone ever been lost in New York City? This could be a god save on your next visit! Apparently it can be a bit of a struggle to find the shops you’re looking for when hunting for street names. Well the good folks at www.citymaps.com have come to the rescue with a special kind of map.

The maps show an overhead view of each business location in the city by brand logo, so you’ll never miss your favourite shops again! Ingenious. Citymaps have even released an app for the maps so that the user can rely on their phone as a guide!

Think you know your Simpsons, Disney and Wacky Races?

Towards the end of last year, Yoni Alter designed a print made up of famous cartoon character’s eyes. That’s right, just the eyes. Much of my time was spent trying to work out which character each set of eyes belonged to, without using the cheat sheet.

Well now, Yoni has turned his print into a game for you to test your toon knowledge on. Give it a go! It’s pretty tricky!

http://theeyeshaveitgame.com/

Finally, continuing, the cartoon theme… I’m a huge Pixar fan, so it was no surprise that the beautifully illustrated Pixar Playing Cards by Chris Anderson jumped out at me whilst browsing the ‘For Print Only’ blog. Designed for a University project, Chris proclaims that it was a platform to apply his “love of Pixar and illustrate the well known characters in a new and exciting way.”

For more information and images, check out For Print Only blog.

Thanks to Quipsology and For Print Only blogs.

Part of the brief for the new site was to build a site with the potential of it being used for e-commerce in the future. We also wanted to make sure that the focus of the site was on the photography. So we designed a homepage with a large main image which adjusts automatically dependent on the browser window size and changes every few seconds to show a different image.

We’ve also built it so that Alex can easily add pricing to each photograph listed on the site once she is ready, as a shopping cart has been built in to automatically sort a print order. We can’t wait to see the e-commerce side of things up and running!

The new site is clean, simple and easy to navigate – and its now really easy to preview the different stock options that are available. Very nice indeed. We used GF Smith for our own business cards, so can vouch for the quality of product that they produce! Now they have a website to match!

Anyway, during one of my recent meanders through the web, I was pleasantly surprised to find something I recognised. In the fashion pages of Hypebeast I came across an article featuring a business that I know called London Undercover. The company was founded by designer Jamie Milestone, who happens to be someone that I went to University with! It’s weird how the same course can lead you down so many different roads! London Undercover have firmly established themselves as a high end fashion brand, with their products placed in Liberty, Harvey Nichols, Selfridges and many more stores, not only in the UK, but across the globe.

Their brand buys into something quintessentially British, not only through their stylish umbrellas, but through the imagery used – from something as bold as baked beans or fish and chips through to more subtle references such as their Orange, Brown, Yellow & Black homage to 1970′s Buses seating patterns. Their most recent product is the Green Line umbrella – a shout back to the Green Line brand, first established in 1930, for coach services linking central London with country towns.

Transport plays a big part if many of the designs, which is unsurprising really, given the original ‘commuter’ nature of the product. Even the typeface used in their logo is a modernised version of Johnston, the typeface created for the London Underground in the early 1900′s. It is a carefully crafted brand, and one which works brilliantly. I’m so pleased for Jamie, as he has created something very special, and the company is going from strength to strength. You should definitely check them out.

It also goes to show that inspiration for design can come from almost anywhere!

R

The site is now used on a regular basis as part of a larger social media strategy and seems to be going down a storm with Tyndallwoods and clients alike.

We’re really glad we did too, as it has far more flexibility than our last site and looks far better too – well, we think so anyway! We’ve got plenty of new things to add to the portfolio, and are going to try and blog and tweet as often as possible – so make sure you keep checking back to see whats happening!

Catch y’all later

Captain Beard.