Yes! Made it into a Rotovision book. Here’s a poster I did for a series of talks by some of New Zealand’s best modernist graphic designers. Hence the rigidly gridded design, which obviously worked also for the editorial team at Rotovision. This one they have put into their sumptous "Grids: Creative Solutions for Graphic Designers". The book shows the grid upon which each piece of design was built and even includes a CD-ROM with grid templates "to go". Thanks to Dr Noel Waite for the words on the poster. What I tried to do with the "L"s at the end of each line of the title was suggest open mouths with the words coming out: I thought it would be a bit of visual wit to loosen up the grid. Needless to say noone has yet picked up on that!

Paula Silbert has been a very good client for Lightship, so we were very pleased to have come up with something suitable for her that we were both really chuffed about. These graphics are intended to show Paula doing what she does best, ignoring barriers and doing her utmost to pack the punters into the galleries. A chance to draw some ‘art’ but the real trick is in the typography which is set up like a gallery caption, including a description of the medium ‘lithograph on board’ and ‘ink on paper’ and the ‘canvas’ sizes.

This is for one of the bands on the HSR roster, Beautiful Lunar Landscape, for a gig in Bordeaux, France, where they were ably supported by another HSR outfit, Colour Kane, who hail from Belgium.
I got inspired by the amazing French illustrator Michel Quarez who did, among other things, some very psychedelic ads for Citroen in the late ’60s. Thanks to our involvement with Hidden Shoal Recordings, Lightship Visual is becoming a small international concern and I can play at being a Reid Miles (the Bluenote sleeves guy) or whoever does those stunning ECM covers - Stu

Why have we been so busy? In addition to running the biz and working for all our fabulous clients, and me (claiming that I’m) writing my PhD, we’ve gotten mixed up with Hidden Shoal Recordings, a fab initiative of the wonderful Cam Merton (sometime Lightship collaborator, especially in the 3D department). You can go there to check out what it’s all about, but here are a couple of samples of my covers for some of the wonderful acts on the HSR roster.

This is the cover for an EP by the Japanese artist Cheekbone. Photo by Samantha.

This one is for my own project (with Wayne Harriss). The image is a camera throw, a chaotic means of taking a photograph that Samantha showed me. Hers are better, check out her ‘Serpent’s Sleep’ cover for CSR.

And an illustrative one. The title I took from Jorge Luis Borges’ story. A must read by the way
There are plenty more covers over at HSR but these are the ones I think are really working for me.
—Stu

It’s been a while, by garrh. We’ve been so flat out at Lightship that I haven’t had time to put any new posts up since, ooh, about half-past 2006. So, appropriately, here is something from the end of that year, an all singing, all dancing, interactive yearbook of graduate student work from the School of Communications and Contemporary Arts at ECU. Anyone truly interested in the project can contact stu@lightshipvisual.com and you can avail yourself of a copy of the CD (while stocks last!). Some new Flash skills were learned during the making and a big thanks must go to Malcolm Riddoch for his assistance in getting this over the line. Hmm … now it’s just about time for this year’s book. And stay tuned for the redesign and rebuild of the School’s website, very late 2007.

Remember, remember back in December we told you about a body of work we were operating on (with our favourite renewable energy bods, RISE)?
We can at last reveal the project, codenamed HEART, was a submission to the WA State Govt. to get funding for the very ambitious Murdoch Activity Centre and Fiona Stanley Hospital.
This project had so many wonderful aspects to it for us at Lightship Visual including the opportunity once again to animate and illustrate (and they call it work!) and for a very pleasant JV of clients (RISE and DPI) AND to assist with an undertaking that hopefully will benefit us all.
This project also made me feel good because I got to work with my good friend Cam Merton (of Shirticus and Hidden Shoal Recordings fame) and call on his sublime 3D skills.
I also got to dabble in architecture (any other frustrated architects out there?) made some very rough sketches and, hey presto, Cam made them come to (virtual) life.
It’s a shame my blogging software won’t allow the 3D movie to sit inside the Flash presentation here. I’ll see if I can get an update on the software but in the meantime, if you really want to see it, I can e-mail it to you. Just drop us a line at stu@lightshipvisual.com

Website design for a revolutionary technology to prevent waste in the oil & gas industries.

The images were made by Sam Landels from 3D models by Clive Williams built to the specs from design engineer/inventor Derek Hall at Testlok. Testlok and TestPup logos are from us here at Lightship Visual, as is the site design which is in Stu’s High Swiss style: lean and mean and hopefully functional.

This device was featured on the ABCs ‘New Inventors’ show and is currently being promoted with Sam Landels’ very slick DVD for which Lightship did the animation and music.

Click around to find the hidden presents … well, sound effects. And a happy and prosperous New Year!

Now, I know there’s only two colours in each of these logos but they run a figurative spectrum from one end of town to the other. It’s been a very interesting month at Lightship. Here’s two logos Stu designed in the same week. One for Warwich Resources, a mining company, and one for The Slowbeings, a local band featuring the amazing talents of … well go here and find out. All Perth musical aristocracy but very much at the other end of town. We’ll leave you to figure out which is which.

Lightship Visual’s good friend, Toby Gibson, recently got us to help out with the United Nation Asian Region’s ‘Disaster Management’ document. Toby landed the job just before jetting off on holiday. He had already broken the back of the design (i.e done all the hard work) and all we needed to do was get the rough typesetting out of the way. We were happy to help an old mate from uni and very fortunate to be involved. In fact, we were so excited about more-or-less having the UN as a client (twice removed) we couldn’t wait to post a sample page from it even though it has not yet hit the presses.