You know how they say there’s a bullet somewhere with your name on it? In this case it was a giant arrow and it definitely had my name on it. Anyway, there I was minding my own business ambling to the shop when I hear an odd whooshing sound behind me getting swiftly louder. I stop for a second and am just turning around when something flashes behind me and lodges itself in the pavement with a concrete rending crunch. For a second I’m in disbelief. Then I realise that my old nemesis has broken the ceasefire and loosed a first salvo of their house busting giant arrows… THIS. MEANS. WAR!
A throwback to a 2015 street intervention where we got into a little altercation with our old nemesis.Seriously though, what else are you meant to do when you find a bit of street furniture that has been knocked over by a car?
So we’ve got the final part of our triptych up today. Like the other parts it’s detailing someone dealing with lockdown. Rachel here is in a different boat to the others however.
Rachel has a nice house, big garden, investment banker husband and has always been a high achiever. She’s been attempting to treat the lockdown like an opportunity and was doing magnificently for the first two weeks. She’s been acing home schooling and has even been teaching little Sebastian some basic Mandarin on the side but the cracks are beginning to show. She thought she heard Sebastian swear and almost burst into tears. She’s now eyeing the bottle of gin in the drawing room. It’s not even 11am.
So there you go. We all deal with lockdown differently. Just try not to be the guy in the second picture and we should all be fine.
In these highly charged times when we’re bombarded with negativity just about constantly it’s sometimes nice to let my cold and cynical mind warm up just a little in a small attempt to remind myself that the world isn’t entirely a terrible place.
After our series of Demotivational Posters I thought I’d dip my toe in the action on the other side. To that end I thought a simple message of positivity might cheer me up some. What I’m left with is an angry looking warrior woman and the legend ‘Dream big and aim high’. A slightly anarchic motivational poster for young feminists basically. I should probably just get ‘Smash the patriarchy’ on there and be done with it…
Anyway ‘Dream big’ is on A2 and comes available in 2 dashing colours. Drop us a line if you’d like to give either a new home.
So it’s that time of year when we pack the id-iomobile with just about everything we’ve got and head down to Bristol for UPfest. After discarding about a dozen designs we settled on ‘Bonum Iaculat Me Babber’ partly because we both thought it was an impactful design and we could include some 3D sculptural elements but also because it was Wednesday and we were running out of time.
On Saturday the weather was looking a little dicey so we were aiming to get finished by 4 when the rain was predicted. Luckily the rain didn’t come til 6 so despite the fact we actually finished about 5.30 all was well. The translated text says ‘Good shot me babber’ with the first bit being in Latin (as I thought it sounded mysterious and a bit classier) and ‘me babber’ being a Bristolian phrase meaning ‘my friend’ or similar. Adding the arrows, cigarette and monocle gave it that final id-iom touch and once we’d got a shot featuring the tree in the background looking like his hair we were free to quaff some ‘mission completed’ beers. Cheers to all the UPfest crew for having us and putting on such a sterling performance. as usual.
If you’ve been paying attention you’ll know that our ‘Phil Collins – No Context Required’ pieces have burgeoned into something of an ongoing series and they aren’t finished just yet. The initial aim was to present Phil Collins quotes in new and unusual ways in order to try and exorcise him from my thoughts but now it seems I simply can’t help myself.
Today’s piece juxtaposes a post-workout Darth Vader with Phil’s quote about a public separation and hiding in hotel lobbies. I like the way Darth seems like he’s a bit fed up with it all and the quote could be about him. The internet was not very forthcoming about who Phil was actually speaking about in this quote and as he’s been married a few times it’s tricky to be sure.
Once you’ve liberally sprinkled a few pilfered logos in and adorned it with a spanky blue & white background then you’re good to go with another successful ‘No context required’ piece. It’s laser engraved on wood then hand painted and stands proud at 39 x 26cm. Drop us a line if you’re interested…
With some new soundproofing being constructed to go over the windows in the back room of our local boozer they needed us to add a touch of id-iom design magic so it would also function as a sign to let people know a band night was on and which way the entrance is (it’s an old pub so has 3 possible entrances – only one of which actually opens). A couple of design variations later and we were left with the bearded hipster style guy staring imperiously at you along with a couple of Band in Hand logo’s and the yellow and white arrows. It’s pretty clean and straight forward all things considered. I think I need to go and make a proper mess somewhere now…
You know how they say there’s a bullet somewhere with your name on it? In this case it was a giant arrow and it definitely had my name on it. Anyway, there I was minding my own business ambling to the shop when I hear an odd whooshing sound behind me getting swiftly louder. I stop for a second and am just turning around when something flashes behind me and lodges itself in the pavement with a concrete rending crunch. For a second I’m in disbelief. Then I realise that my old nemesis has broken the ceasefire and loosed a first salvo of their house busting giant arrows… THIS. MEANS. WAR!
You give love a bad name (featuring a very angry robin!)
So it’s Valentine’s Day again and we’ve been busy. This shot has really got it all – something Valentine related, an earworm and even a bit of wildlife. A winning shot if ever I’ve managed to take one. Despite the fact that the robin looks cute he was, in fact, very angry. He didn’t seem to appreciate our work. Everyone’s a critic…
We’ve previously done an earworm and I thought it was about time to give it another go. The success or otherwise of this piece hinges on the fact that just about everyone is familiar with Bon Jovi’s ‘You give love a bad name‘ and so I’ve done my best to try and get it playing unheeded in your brain. For no reason other than I can. It’s difficult to know how successful I’ll be but them’s the breaks.
We all know the countless problems the living dead can cause so sometimes it helps to be prepared with handy signs pointing the way to the hungry zombie hordes. This is especially useful if you’re tooled up with the latest in double barrelled shotgun technology. Just remember not to let them get too close – and never let your guard down! The blood spatters pay testament to someone who forgot that…
It may be late in the day but it’s still Friday (I checked) so this definitely still counts as Free Art Friday! We will hopefully have a couple of pieces appearing in this evening’s feature on Free Art Friday on the Culture Show (BBC 2 @ 7pm) so keep your eyes peeled.
In what i’m hoping will be my last post of the day we have this slightly odd commission. I’m not entirely sure how the mirror came to broken (i.e. I’m not the one with seven years bad luck!) but as soon as it was brought in for us to evaluate exactly I knew there was something just crying out to be put on there. We could not try and hide the crack as it would then look even worse than it did already so we thought the best thing to do was to highlight it’s imperfections.
Once we’d found a suitable font, cut a couple of stencils and also got a couple of lightly glittered arrows on there to really put all the attention on the crack we realised that we had job done and to do any more would risk ruining it so we decided it was time to down tools. I’m particularly happy with the result as i managed to restrain myself before adding more and in hindsight it just fits perfectly. One more happy punter taken care of…
For reasons that are hopefully completely apparent it’s pretty tricky to photograph a mirror whilst: a) trying to make the mirror look relatively normal shaped b) trying not to get yourself or any other objects that just attract the eye in shot c) trying to highlight the big crack running across the mirror and the text either side of it. Now whilst i’m certainly not saying that Duffy, Donovan or Bailey couldn’t do better I think I did a pretty reasonable job considering my usual level of skill with a camera.
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