Have you ever got fed up listening to news that is mainly doom and gloom? Have you ever wished that tuning in didn’t leave you feeling so depressed about the world?

Well we have a vision of a news that isn’t like this, we have a dream that more and more stories of hope would begin to emerge, we believe it’s time to tell it in colour…

These stories are all around us, they are a living and breathing part of the fabric that makes up our communities here in Northern Ireland. They are happening around us, despite us, because of us. We want to hear these stories. We want to tell these stories.

My sister and I came up with this idea of involving the public in art , each fingerprint represents a story…

I created this animation for a Christmas Day service in First Ballymena Presbyterian Church. It tells the story of the magi bringing gifts to baby Jesus.

‘Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem. Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.’
Matthew 2 v 1 – 2

I attended the ISTD (International Society of Typographic Designers) Student Awards on Friday night. It was a long, tough journey but I made it and was able to celebrate my success at the awards night in London. I had a great time and would like to thank the whole ISTD team, especially John McMillan who has been a huge encouragement!

More ISTD photographs on Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/49961348@N08/sets/72157624304962095/

The End of Year Show! It really is an end of an era!

A short sequence showing some of my motion graphic work.

The United Nations recognizes literacy as a basic human right and basic education, of which literacy is key, was recognised as a human right over 50 years ago in Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In regions of Africa where war and poverty are a part of everyday life, children are eager to learn, but do not have the means to do so. They are in towns and villages that are without schools or libraries, without electricity, without safe drinking water, with little or no access to education and little hope for a real future. As an example, illiteracy rates amongst 15-24 year olds in Chad is 44.7%, rising to 62% in Niger and a massive 74.5% in Burkina Faso (Source: UN Indicators on Illiteracy)

I designed these Block Stories to encourage children in rural Africa with their reading. The idea is that the children can play with these blocks to create endless visual stories. These blocks can be manufactured locally and are designed for schools with limited funds that cannot afford to engage a designer in the United Kingdom to create the Block Stories. It was important for me to create something that can be reproduced in Africa by the Africans themselves.

The brief was to take a metaphorical journey on the theme of connections. I decided to interpret the story behind the film ‘Closing the Ring’. It takes a journey and follows the connections between Ruth and Lawrence’s relationship, between America and Ireland and between the Second World War and modern day. It is a true story that connects half a century and two continents.

The Brief

You are the designer chosen to be part of the Planning Committee for an International Sustainability Event to be hosted in Belfast in June 2010. You are required to provide a rigorous strategy and appropriate outcomes to plan the event and to raise awareness and inform the chosen audience outlined in your strategy.

As this project was to plan a sustainability event I wanted my design to reflect that.  Everything I have designed for this project has been created using waste materials.  The animation and game images are made up from scans of textures, scrap pieces of fabric, leather, tin foil and papers.  The book itself I found sitting in a box gathering dust and waiting for the next spring clean when it would no doubt end up in a landfill somewhere.  I wanted to play on the fact that all the images were created from found materials by giving it a collage look and feel.