Artsfest Photos and more news...

Here are some photos I took at Artsfest 2 weeks ago. Sorry for the late update, but I will fill you in with an explanation further down the page...

My space at Art on the Railings:


The Hall of Memory in Centenery Square on the gloriously sunny Saturday:























The fireworks display on Saturday night:


Now for the explanation...

I am going to be leaving the UK for 3 months from the 3rd October, to do some travelling around South America. I'll be visiting Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina and Brazil, all on a big yellow truck with a group of people whom I've never met, but hope will become good friends.

In that time, I hope to pick up some good inspiration for future work and will have my camera at the ready at all times!

I will have a sale on in my etsy shop next week to celebrate my leaving. While I'm away a friend will fulfill any etsy orders, but the stock may be limited so if you're looking for anything specific, please get in there quick!

I'll also be at Moseley Market this Saturday so hope to see a few of you there.

Bye for now!

Great first day at Artsfest

Wow, it's been a pretty hectic day.

The arts on the railings went pretty well, the sun was shining and lots of people came out to say hello. My pitch was directly in the sunlight for 5 hours so it's safe to say I'm now looking a bit crispy and feeling a little bit of a glow. Met some great people though and sold a decent amount of work.

Packed up at 6pm and then was back in centenery square for the classical fantasia.

Off to bed now as am pretty exhausted and am going to do it all over again tomorrow!

Full report and photos to come after the recovery preiod...

Framed up and ready to go!

Here's a sneak preview of what delights will be on sale at Artsfest tomorrow:

All of the framed prints:


A new square format print of Emmylou Harris, one of my idols. There will only be one of these so be quick if you want to snap it up!


I'll also have the usual cards and unframed prints on offer.

See you tomorrow!

Artfest is upon us!

Artsfest kicks off tonight. Hope those of you that are coming are looking forward to an excellent weekend of entertainment!

I set up my area on the railings of Centenery Square tomorrow, opening at 12 o'clock. I popped down today to check out the site being set up and take a quick photo of the railings so I can plan my space. Here are the photos I took:

Special Offers on Etsy

A fellow member of the Etsy Midlanders, Phillisb, will be leaving the UK for Zambia soon and so is adding special offers to her site over the next 2 weeks. She has some great cards and modern cross stitch designs on the site so go over and check them out:

http://phyllisb78.etsy.com

New Commission!

Lavenderwool, the company that I produced 3 bumper stickers for through Etsy have commissioned me to design 2 more. I shall post the new designs when they're finished.

I've also sold 2 more prints through etsy this week to Seattle in the US. Beckyismyname is going stateside!

Artsfest this weekend

I will have a space on the railings in Centenery Square at Birmingham's Artsfest this weekend. Come and see me between 12 and 6 on either Saturday or Sunday. I'll have prints of different sizes available, framed and unframed. There will be lots of other entertainment going on in the square with live music and dance so well worth a day out!

In other news, I will be leaving the UK for South America on the 3rd October and won't be back in the country until the 4th January. Artsfest and the September 22nd Moseley Arts Market will be your last chance to see my work before I go, so if you are thinking of buying anything from me, please try and make it to one of these.

My etsy shop will be run by a friend while I'm away but stocks may be limited. I shall post further details closer to the time.

Hasta luego amigos!

Bank Holiday Study Trip

I took a trip to Ikea yesterday (I know, bank holiday horror!) to buy lots of new frames in preparation for Artsfest, to sell to the Cherry Tree in Bearwood and to put up some photographs in the Warley Woods Cafe.

On the way there I got a tip off that Ikea has recently changed it's display font from the elegant simplicity of Futura to Verdana, mostly used as a screen font. So a seemingly simple trip turned into a reconnaissance mission, a typographic study trip...

Ikea Coventry hasn't yet completely finished the branding excercise, most of the display material was still written in Futura, but there was the odd hint at the rebrand. I took a photo of one of the offending posters:



The supposed reason behind the rebrand is that Ikea want to use the same font throughout it's branding, from web to print material. To me, this seems like lazy typography. You need to choose a font based on it's end purpose, and Verdana just doesn't cut it when used at a large scale. I'm a bit confused as to why Ikea would spend the extra expense licensing the new font when the old one worked so much better. If it aint broke, don't bother fixing it.

I'm assuming they will be using the font on their instruction manuals too, items that are meant to make the headache-inducing process of putting their furniture together as simple as possible. Keeping the typography simple is key to a document like that.

The type debate is hotting up on the typophile forum, check it out here if you're interested in hearing more type geekery:

http://typophile.com/node/61222

I ended up buying far too many frames than I could carry yesterday; 19 to be exact, and when I came out of Ikea it was raining and had to carry them back to the train station and back home to Brum. My shoulders actually have dents in them this morning. Who says I don't suffer for my art!

In other news, I sold a Moseley Dovecote print to a lady in Sacramento, CA through Etsy. Very exciting.

There are lots of other exciting things happening in the world of becky at the moment but I shall drip feed these to you over the next few days.

Hope everyone's having a fabulous bank holiday!

Today's inspiration

I've been designing some report covers for work today and was searching for inspiration in classic book covers, when I came accross Olly Moss, and his videogame covers, which use the same grid as the classic penguin book covers. The typography and simple imagery is great. I'm also designing a brochure cover for a project at work and only hope I can go some way to capture the simplicity that Moss does in his illustrations.

Here are some of Moss's covers:



and some other covers I swooned at today:







You can see more of Olly Moss's work here:
http://www.ollymoss.com/

Etsy commission is finished!

I was commissioned through Etsy's alchemy tool to create 3 magnetic bumper stickers for a rug hooking company in the US. I've thoroughly enjoyed the process of working with a company so far away and feel we worked really well together to reach an outcome that we are all pleased with. Here are the final designs. Look out for them in a car window near you!