Sun and work

My bank holiday was filled with sunshine but mostly looking at it from my studio door! I've been busy preparing for Pulse next weekend. I have my usual endless lists and things to do. I'm still hoping to get a sneaky print finished and into my catalogue in the next two days!! Plus I've been packing my new social stationery packs ready to launch at the show. I've been planning these for ages so feel very excited to finally be showing them.
Even though I was working it wasn't so bad - I had the studio door open for the first time and worked in silence with the sun shining in and the moo-ing, baa-ing and tweeting for company. Very peaceful and just what I needed to be as productive as possible. I was quite tempted to take something outside to do.....! I settled for a picnic lunch in the garden with my husband and daughter and then a pub tea as reward for working hard!

Geo Graphic - A Book for Map Lovers

I meant to blog about this last week but didn't get around to it.
I received my copy of 'Geo Graphic - A book for Map Lovers' last week all the way fro Spain. It's published by as Spanish publisher - Index Books - who seem to specialise in creative and inspirational publications and they asked Angus at Snowhome and myself many months ago if they could feature the Word Maps. We of course said yes as it looked like it was going to be an interesting book to be a part of.
The book looks at cartography and the development of the map as an essential symbol of design. As I discovered when I did my talk for the BCS last month maps are increasingly used not only for their simple cartographic uses but in all sorts of different and fascinating creative uses and applications. Many people are turning to the map form and interpretations of the map to inspire new and exciting projects. Maps have always been used to categorise and catalogue the world around us and are a fantastic tool to categorise and catalogue information and ideas for design purposes also.

There are great examples of some maps in the books by fellow creative people and collectives.

The examples above are Armelle Caron & Nancy Goodman Lawrence.

Last week

Last week was one a bit out of the ordinary for us.
I was contacted back in January by a Belgian lady called Adeline. She wanted to improve her English and preferably in a creative environment. Last week she stayed with us for the week and helped me out in the studio. - And she was very helpful indeed. She packed cards and updated my website shops and generally helped me out and in return I showed her out to screen print.
It was lovely to have some creative company in the studio for the week and we talked about books, upcoming fairs/markets, websites, ideas and passive houses while we worked.... It was great to broaden my horizons a little for the week and have a refreshing change to the usual routines. It also made me realise how much I miss the chit-chat of a shared studio situation.
In short I'm very glad I said yes back in January and that I've met a new creatively like-minded friend.

Take a look at Adeline's website and keep checking back as she'll be launching her new crafting company Fleur de Champs website very soon.

A farmers wife

It's not very glamorous and not the most chic designer environment but this is the reality of my life out of work time. My husband is a farmer and although we don't live on the family farm ourselves we do spend a lot of time there especially on weekends. Whilst helping out with the lambs this Easter weekend I had a little wander around with my camera phone (hence not best quality - I'm getting lazy not taking my camera out as much these days - need to change this..) and snapped a few dusty corners and bits of interest. I concluded that the lambs are not very good subjects though - this was the least blurry of all the photos - too frenetic and lively for my amateur photographing!
Sometimes it takes looking through a lense to notice all those little nooks and crannys which you walk past so often and don't see.

Back in the studio I'll be spending this week shoe-horning as much work as possible into the few days (and evenings) at my desk that I can manage - Easter school holidays continue to cause me problems! One more week to go....

Friday snippets

It's been a creative week full of designing new things, planning for Pulse, creating press releases and generally trying to get a bit ahead in time for the Easter Holidays. As usual I'm still way behind where I hoped to be at this point in the year but I've got into a bit of a creative zone towards the end of the week so lets hope I can sustain it for a few weeks and get all the plans into action. The ideas have been flowing freely and spilling out onto paper it's just getting them drawn properly, inked, scanned and cleaned up and then made into the something special (and whittling down the good from the bad). I'm having a big focus on social stationery at the moment and hope to have some new packs to show at Pulse if all goes according to plan. I feel very excited about new possibilities and ideas. 

Above is a preview of my new 1-5 kids age cards. I have so many children to buy for (friends of my daughters) and I struggle to find simple cards which are not gender specific and in fruity bright colours rather than the traditional blues and pinks. 

The images in grey and orange are a bit cryptic. - Something I've been working on today which when I separated it into layers was almost as good as when whole. I liked the abstract versions. Can you figure out what it'll say when put together.....?

Another note - you can also now find me on twitter @AHardcastle2   - the world of twitter was beckoning and I could resist no longer!

You Are Here

I had a lovely fleeting trip to London yesterday to do my talk for the British Cartographic Society event at SteerDaviesGleeves. I wasn't sure what to expect but it was a very enjoyable day full of enthusiasm and inspiration for maps. I was one of 7 speakers who talked about a huge variety of map based topics and projects. My talk was entitled 'From Surfing to Porpoises: Typography as a Mapping Tool' and I talked about type and my relationship with and use of type, how the maps came about, how I worked on them, problems and challenges which arose and how the choice of hand drawn type affected the outcome of them (it went a little more in-depth than that but you get the idea...).
Other talks featured Smell Mapping by Kate Mclean, 'Multiple Maps of the Videogames' by Dr Alison Gazzard, Mapping the Community by Artist and Sculptor Anya Beaumont and Media Map Design by Prof. Peter Vujakovic. Such a variety of topics but with many common threads running through. At the end of the day we realised just how personal maps can be and the attachments which we have with all maps.
After a day in one room concentrating it was great to get some fresh air with a walk along the South Bank, late afternoon tea at the Tate Modern cafe and then a spot of book shopping in the Tate shop. Then back home to rural Yorkshire after my day in the city!

Apologies for the slightly blurry photos - I only had my phone with me and I don't seem to be very good at using it!

M-u-m-m-y

I've been inspired by my daughter who came home singing 'm-u-m-m-y, she's my mummy' - apparently they're learning Mother's Day related songs this week at pre-school (who knew there was such a thing - but I'm not complaining as it's very cute and not very often I get such attention!!) - so I thought I'd post my Mother's Day cards so all those other Mums out there can have a little bit of attention too!
They're all available in my shop.