Attention all City fans - and beware all designers...

Recently I was contacted by a client who emailed me with a straightforward request - produce a piece of artwork showing the City of Manchester stadium amongst a montage of famous Mancunian buildings.

I made the mistake of failing to ask for any payment upfront. Because the deadline was looming and there probably wouldn't be time for a cheque to reach me in the post before I would have to complete the designs, I figured that just this once it'd work out okay. This was my first mistake.

We went through a couple of revisions - nothing hugely complex, but in total I probably spent about 3 hours on it. I stated that £40 ought to be a good fee for my services - I figured this was a bargain, as a studio would have probably charged 5 times that - and it was agreed upon. Basically I thought it'd make a great addition to my portfolio as well as being a source of a bit of pocket money.

Now, the deadline that was originally mooted was "end of November". I had crazy things going on during the last couple of weeks of November including trips to london and so on, so there were a few days where I failed to check my hotmail in the evenings. I had sent one or two draft versions over to the client as the project progressed and I had kept up to date with the amendment requests.

The second mistake I made was failing to get a proper postal address for the client.

On something like the 28th - as I type this I can't be bothered to check back on my hotmail as to when the actual date was - I found an email from a couple of days previous, asking how it was progressing. I polished off the final changes, sent off the finished design and, within about 2 hours, I got back the following email:

Hi Mike

As I hadn't heard from you I had organise an alternative as time scales were tight, so apologies

Thanks

I knew I'd taken a silly risk commercially speaking, but I didn't expect to be so blatantly ripped off. In response I wrote stating the work had been completed to the originally specification, on deadline and for a minimal fee. I even suggested that the finished work would be ideal as a Christmas present
if the birthday date had mysteriously jumped forward, so I would expect at least partial payment immediately. I've since heard absolutely nothing and obviously I've no way of hunting down the client.

A little reminder to any designers out there: When starting work with a client, get them to clearly state a deadline - in writing - (even down to the time of day), and always get somekind of financial commitment from the client before commencing work.

So...

In order to ensure that the robbing so-and-so hasn't received a unique piece of artwork for free, any Manchester City fans are welcome to download the picture above and to distribute it with no strings attached. It's my little present to you. Oh yes... and if your girlfriend gives you a framed copy of this for your birthday and claims it's a one of a kind commission, just give her a slap for me would you? Alternatively, if you do like the attached artwork, please send a quick email to elainewood24@hotmail.com thank her and say Mike says "hi".

Home of Hope

"Home of Hope" is a children’s home, ten miles west of Accra, the capital city of Ghana. This school provides education for the resident children in the home and over 170 children from very poor families the surrounding villages. These children are also fed daily.

Since 2005 the ‘New Day New Life Ghana’ child sponsorship programme has supported the accommodation, feeding, education and health needs of the children under the care of Pastor Osmond Owusu in Ghana.

The attached poster is part of the package of graphic design work I created for New Day New Life Ghana this month, to help with their fund raising efforts. If you would like to know more about this fantastic cause you can click through to their website here New Day New Life Ghana

Multi-lingual designs!

B.O.J. Catering approached me to design a new logo and a promotional poster. This project presented a new opportunity for me, since the poster had to be in Polish. My knowledge of the language is basic (I can understand most of a conversation) but I'm not up to spelling anything yet!

Interiors

Well, I've been continuing with my sketch studies, learning how to draw people. The progress is encouraging, but I can't get at a scanner for the moment to upload examples. Instead, here are a couple of interior visuals I produced some time ago. The process was nothing new, but I quite liked the colour schemes, and a certain mate of mine helped come up with the poster slogans in the blue room :o)

cartoon illustrations

Well, I'm still trying...

Comic-book-guy

Having tried to create some comic-book style characters and scenes over the past week or so, I found that my understanding of the human proportions wasn't good enough to allow me to draw without references.

I spent a little time learning the proportions for a male superhero character and this was my most recent attempt at drawing a muscle-bound dude. The chest isn't right and I'm sure there are a bunch of other things that need work too, but this was produced with only a grid-background as reference.

Sketchy Sketchy

I've been trying a mixture of techniques in Photoshop with the use of a pen/tablet. The combination I finally settled on today gave pretty good results for emulating a traditional hand-rendering.

Initially I planned to sketch up some concept designs for a game character during lunch-hour, then I lost interest and just went off at a tangent!

Here's a concept jet... or something. It's not even half-realised as an idea. The back end is just a fin and hence as ugly as sin. At least I developed my photoshop skills in the process.

Boing!

Some photoshop artwork (produced with paths and layer styles) for a friend's little baby. This was printed at large scale as a poster for his bedroom.

If you click on the image above you can download a decent sized image for your own printing.

3D Studio rendering

In the past few days I have improved my understanding of the 3D Studio Max rendering system. This is the programme I use for visualising special furniture designs and office interior schemes. Its capable of producing really impressive photo-realistic images, so its a great piece of software to work with.

Certificate

Another just-for-fun piece of graphics work: A friend was organising a school-leavers party for her daughter and classmates. Caps and gowns were the order of the day, so I produced a mock-certificate to add to the theme. Its basic Photoshop styles and shapes, but it seemed to go down a treat.

Low-cost leaflet

Practical Karate approached me to design a flyer for their club in Wilmslow. I went with a clean, crisp look and minimal use of colour, in order to allow the flyer to remain legible after numerous photocopies were made.

Web Design

I'm currently producing a new website for the Dean Row School of Dancing. The original site was essentially a place-holder that went live about 2 years ago. Now the school's principal requires a more fully-featured site including a photo album of the stage shows they performed over the last 20 years or so. Here's a screengrab of the work-in-progress:

Invitation

Here's the design draft for an invitation to a theme night.

It was sent as a PDF to Architects and Interiors Contractors. I would have preferred to finish it off with some gothic scroll-work but time was tight.

Comicbook Art

I created this comicbook-style piece from a sketch scanned into Photoshop and coloured up in layers with a Genius digital tablet. The tablet was dirt-cheap at about £20.00 and its a fantastic tool for work of this type. I was so impressed with it I went and bought a second one for my Dad for his birthday gift... and then a third just for myself incase my first one broke!