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!