Si Scott is an illustrator best known for his amazingly detailed and elaborate typography and decorative hand-drawn renderings of animals. His work has a unique style of it’s own and his reputation has earned him an impressive client list including Nike, Coca-Cola, Adidas, Channel 4, Converse, GAP, Hugo Boss, Vogue, Wallpaper Magazine… The list goes on. He’s also a visiting lecturer at Leeds College of Art & Design and has exhibited his work at various institutions around the world including Tokyo, New York, Brazil and Sydney.

We’ve been big fans of his work for some time now and are very pleased to have him on board as part of our Ten Questions series.

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“Sometimes it simply doesn’t matter how good the brief is, how good your idea is or how well the project seems to be going. Design is a creative pursuit and definitively ‘right’ answers simply don’t exist. To design – or do anything creative – is a practice in asking questions, trying things out and exploring uncharted territory. Attempting new approaches and new ways of thinking are a part of being a creative person. This experimentation can lead to brilliant, maybe even groundbreaking results. But not always. Unfortunately, sometimes you just have to concede that what you’re trying to do, simply doesn’t work. By no means an easy thing to accept, the fact is that attempting new things won’t always result in success. Saul Bass knew this… Keep reading…

Steven Bonner is a designer and illustrator based in sunny sunny Scotland. His work is largely focused on beautiful illustrative typography and we’ve been big fans of what he does for some time now. He has worked for a range of clients including Audi, The British Heart Foundation, Cadbury, Coca-Cola, Diesel, Nike, The Scottish Government, William Hill and many others. Refusing to stick to a single style, each brief is approached from a completely different angle, the only common factor being that everything he does looks bloody amazing.

He kindly agreed to give us an insight into his world by answering our Ten Questions.

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At Mat Dolphin, we mess about. We work hard on client work, day-to-day admin, finances, quoting, invoicing and endlessly hunting for new business, but an important part of the way we work involves playing, experimenting and trying out things we find interesting for the sake of trying them. The process is often as important as the final result and the fact that these experiments have no real ‘point’ (in terms of financial gain), is the thing that makes them worth doing.

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Thank you to each and every one of you who took the time to pen romantic verses for our Valentines poster giveaway. We had a huge number of submissions to choose from – some beautiful and creative, some ridiculous and funny, quite a few creepy and vaguely worrying, but all very much appreciated.

We’ve gone through the lot and are pleased to announce the following lucky winners. Our judging process was pretty simple and based on one simple question; which ones did we like the most? Apologies to those who contributed work and weren’t chosen – we would love for all of you to be winners but there could only be a lucky few, and (in no particular order) here they are…

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** UPDATE ** The competition has now closed, we’ve been overwhelmed with a huge number of brilliant entries, and will be announcing the winners soon!

The time has finally come to announce the details of our Valentines poster giveaway! Let’s get it on…

If you’d like the chance to receive a copy of our A2 Valentines print delivered your door anywhere in the world, all you need to do is get in the mood for romance and follow these three simple steps:

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This week see’s the annual return of the corporate, manufactured and over-priced celebration of all things love – St. Valentines day has arrived!

We decided to get involved with the romance and produced some posters, which we’re planning to give away as a token of selfless love. If you keep an eye on our Twitter feed on 14th February 2013, you’ll witness the grand unveiling and be in with a chance of having one of the beautiful, love-themed A2 prints sent directly to your door. Free of charge. Don’t say we never do anything for you.

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Since long before starting Mat Dolphin we’ve been hugely inspired by Non-Format. The two man studio is run by Jon Forss and Kjell Ekhorn and the work they produce is beautiful, interesting, boundary pushing and, at times, a bit weird. The pair have created a style that is both completely unique and instantly recognisable for a pretty impressive client list. Since establishing the company in London in 2000, the pair have gone on to work with the likes of Nike, Coca-Cola, K-Swiss, Gap, Sony, Adobe, EMI, Orange, Rick Owens, Nokia and The Economist as well as a number of small independent record labels – music packaging being one of the things for which they’re best known. Now based in Minneapolis (Jon) and his native Norway (Kjell), their incredible typography, design and art direction has spawned a host of imitators but by the time most people have caught on, they’re already two steps ahead.

They were kind enough to spend some time answering our Ten Questions. Here’s what they had to say.

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On this blog (and elsewhere to anyone else who will listen) we constantly bang on about the importance of solving a brief. We highly value the need to communicate the message of client to their target audience. We feel it’s a vital part of the design process and a key part of being a designer. However, as with all creative pursuits, there is always room for adding a small part of ourselves into our work. Authorship is a huge part of what we do and making the work ours is part of what makes it a passion, rather than a bog standard job. Solving the problem in an appropriate, thoughtful and creative way is obviously essential and should be the primary focus, but a designer injecting some of their own personality into the work can go a long way. The esteemed Mr Wim Crouwel knows the deal…

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Our Ten Questions series has been absent for a long time. Too long, baby.

With this in mind, we wanted to make sure the first of 2013 was an absolute belter, so we got in touch with Marta Cerdà Alimbau. A Barcelona-based illustrator and designer, her work is largely focused on illustrative lettering and her eye-catching, highly decorative work has attracted clients such as Nike, Coca-Cola, Ray Ban, Penguin Books, Zoo York, Panasonic, Virgin and many others.

Since setting up her own studio in 2008, she has developed a visually rich and distinctive style of her own. We’re huge fans of her work and are delighted to get her involved in the series. See what she had to say below.

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It’s that time again…

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What Jonathan Zawada does is difficult to define as his work blurs the lines between design, art and illustration. The one thing we’re sure of is he’s a uniquely talented guy and we’re big fans of his. Alongside a number of exhibitions showing his personal work, he has been commissioned by clients such as The New York Times, The Type Directors Club, Nike, Sixpack and Commonwealth Stacks.

Based in Los Angeles by way of Sydney, he works in a way which creates wildly varied and always visually stunning results. Effortlessly moving between commercial client work and experimental personal projects, Jonathan seems to approach each piece from a completely different perspective resulting in a body of work which is both amazing to look at and truly original (the latter of which is a rare thing to see these days).

Mr. Zawada kindly agreed to take the hot seat and answer our Ten Questions. Here’s what he had to say…

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If you’ve read this blog before, you may have already guessed that we like graphic design. A lot. It’s what we love doing, looking at and talking about. There are a huge number of designers and design agencies that we admire, look up to and take inspiration from – some of them are well known greats from the past, some of them are a bit more obscure, some of them are our peers and some of we’re lucky enough to count as friends. There are a small handful of designers we admire, however, that are simple legendary. Josef Müller Brockmann is one of those designers.

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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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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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Hello World.

Our blog has been comparatively quiet over the last couple of weeks, mainly due to ridiculous amounts of client work (which we’re not complaining about), looming deadlines and a couple of well deserved holidays in the sun. Feeble excuses aside, we’re back in your face like a plate full of shaving foam with another Five Things that have caught our interest this week.

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Recently we were surprised and delighted to be asked to become regular contributors to Typetoken, a new blog showcasing the best typography from around the world. The site is a collaboration between graphic designers Mike Sullivan of Mister and Mark Millic of Modularlab, and web developer David Cole of Mayfield Digital. The three have joined forces and created a beautiful looking site, which will be a constant source of typo-inspiration and other design related goodness. With contributors from all over the UK as well as Paris, Los Angeles, New York and Tokyo, you can guarantee there’ll be plenty of good stuff to check out.

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A while back we told you about some of the design blogs we look to for inspiration. The sites we check out on a regular basis barely skim the tip of the tip of the iceberg in terms of what’s out there and with this in mind we thought we’d share some more bloggy treats with you. The last set we looked at focused on specific design-related disciplines – this time we’re going to have a look at sites which, whilst covering a broad spectrum, are aimed squarely at the purist design geeks like us. All of these sites are quite different in what and how they blog, but all of them are a constant source of interest, inspiration and entertainment.

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Shoreditch based design and branding agency SomeOne are passionate about what they do. A quick nose around their brand new (pardon the pun) website is proof that they actually care deeply about their work. ‘Launching, re-launching and protecting brands’ is at the heart of their work and they’ve been doing plenty of it. Along with sterling work for Sky Sports, O2, Betfair and New Look, SomeOne have re-created the iconic crest for The Royal Opera House, designed the sports pictograms for the London 2012 Olympics and most recently, created new branding for Eurostar. A huge project which covered practilcally everything including the advertising, print work, pictograms, moving image, a new typeface, signage – even a series of 3D sculptures!

Suffice to say, they know what they’re doing. Simon Manchipp is the creative director and co-founder of SomeOne – he was generous enough to take the time out to get involved in our Ten Questions series.

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An Aberdeenshire fish farm is not necessarily the typical breeding ground you’d expect for developing young creative talent, but the flora and fauna surrounding Johanna Basford in her early years had a lasting impact on her work. Her intricate and beautiful illustration style is organic and free-flowing, and she uses the highly futuristic medium of pen and paper — with Photoshop coming to the rescue to remove any tea stains. We’re big fans of her work and it seems we’re not alone — clients such as DKNY, Channel 4, H&M, Creative Review, Heals, The Tate Modern, The Body Shop and Johnson & Johnson have formed an orderly queue to commission her work. And no doubt you know already know about her love affair with Starbucks?

Johanna put the fineliner down for two minutes to answer our Ten Questions.

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