Hello 2012! We’ve hit the ground running this new year and are very excited by the projects we’ve got coming up. We’ve got plenty of exciting things in the pipeline and, as always, lots of lovely things to share with you. Which brings me nicely onto the latest post in our Five Things series. A mixed bag as always, we’ve got some great student work, some brilliant filmmaking, a lovely bit of branding, something music-related and some foodie stuff. Hopefully something to keep everyone happy.

Without further ado, click below to check out what’s been catching our beady little eyes recently.

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2011. It’s been busy, it’s been stupidly quick and most importantly, it’s been good. Along with the constant stresses and pressures that go along with doing what we do, this year has been a decidedly positive one here at Dolphin Heights. We thought a good way to round off the year was to take a quick look back at what we’ve been up to in the last 12 months. What’s been keeping us busy in and out of work, where we’ve been, what we’ve been doing and who we’ve been doing it with.

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We realised recently that it’s been AGES since we last posted a Five Things. For the uninitiated, it’s a regular series in our blog in which we share five interesting, creative things that we’ve spotted on the world wide internet over the course of the last week or so. It’s always a mixed bag, and this post in no different. Jelly hand grenades, flying dogs, sitting on Hercules’ face and festive booze are just a few of the things you can expect to see this time round. Take two minutes out of your day, put your feet up and have a look at what we’ve found for you.

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Born and based in Illinois, Chad Wys is a ‘visual conceptual artist, designer and writer’. His work covers a number of mediums including digital manipulation, painting, sculpture and mixed media, and his interest is largely focused around the deconstruction and appropriation of pre-existing images and objects. His work explores ways of finding a new meaning within the art he finds by altering and playing with what’s already there. After coming across his work on sites such as Ffffound and Behance, we got in touch with Chad to see if he’d be interested in answering our Ten Questions. Luckily for us, he was.

Read on for an insight into the thought process, concepts and inspirations that go into Chad’s work.

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Glug London is an event for people from the creative industries to come together, have a few drinks and hear talks from some of the most creative designers and studios around. Each event has seen a steady growth with bigger names talking, bigger venues selling out and more people scrambling to get tickets. Needless to say, they’ve been busy. With this in mind, we thought it was time to catch up with founders Ian Hambleton and Nick Clement to have a chat about the event and see what they’ve got in the pipeline.

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Welcome to Blog post number 100! Since July 2009 we’ve been updating this little blog on a fairly regular basis with our random musings, showcasing the work of those we admire and letting you know what we’ve been up to. We wanted to do something a bit special for the hundredth post and the perfect opportunity came up just at the right moment. Iconic UK music mag, the one and only NME, got in touch after seeing the first two posts in our Sound & Vision series, asking if we’d be interested in writing a bit of a ‘Special Edition’ post for their blog. Being long time fans, we immediately agreed and are now pleased to present Sound & Vision 03 – The NME edition.

See it live on their site here or read on below…

There are so many amazing album covers out there that choosing favourites seems like an unachievable task. Like the albums themselves, the way I feel about the artwork they’re wrapped in changes on a regular basis. That said, there are some which, for various reasons, I’ve always loved. Some of them are considered classic and some of them are barely known but all of them are, in my eyes, brilliant examples of what an album cover should be. A visual partner to the music on the record, something that can encapsulate the sounds in a way that you can’t always put your finger on but somehow just works…

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A while ago we received an email out of the blue asking if we’d like to be involved with an upcoming typography exhibition. Imaginary Menagerie is being held at Text/Gallery in Holborn and features work from a number of designers exploring ‘language’s difficult, tongue-tripping, unpronounceable labyrinths typographically and in their own language’. Using typography to visually communicate a difficult to say phrase or sentence sounded like an interesting brief, so we promptly agreed. Well up for it.

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The second installment of our regular Sound and Vision feature has arrived! In these posts we’re going to be dissecting some classic album covers as well as offering up actual tunes to listen to – something that can often be overlooked when discussing graphic design for music.

Music is a massively important aspect of our work and working environment. Like many designers, it’s a big part of the reason we wanted to become designers in the first place. This series aims to feature some of our favourite covers and the songs which feature within the albums. All of which are on constant rotation in the Mat Dolphin daily playlist. So, without further ado, click below to read (and hear) plenty more of the same.

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In 1991, after being told by his tutors at Chelsea College of Art and Design that he ‘wasn’t good enough’ to become an artist, John Dowling realised he needed a change of direction. When someone encouraged him to pursue Graphic Design, he went for it although does admit to not knowing exactly what it was at the time. In the years since then he’s learnt in no uncertain terms what it means to be a graphic designer and has honed his skills at some of the most prestigious agencies around.

Starting his employment at the now defunct Area (a studio established by two former designers from Peter Saville Associates) John went on to stints at the almighty Pentagram, SEA and Frost before setting up Dowling Duncan alongside his former Pentagram colleague Rob Duncan. They’ve used their wealth of experience to produce a great body of work for clients such as AIGA, Apple, The British Museum, Google, John Lewis, Microsoft, The Serpentine Gallery… This list goes on.

John kindly agreed to get involved with our regular Ten Questions series. Here’s what he had to say…

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There has been some internet chatter of late debating whether it’s necessary for designers to learn back-end coding, much of it around Frank Chimero’s Designers vs Coding post which is currently doing the rounds. Being the all-knowing opinion formers that we are, we couldn’t help but let our thoughts be known on the matter.

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