Archive for the 'Experiments' Category

Friday, March 5th, 2010
We were digging around the archives recently when we discovered this ancient artifact. After blowing away the thick layer of dust that had settled over the top, we peered over the top of our thickset spectacles at an alternate cover design for our great tome, Airside by Airside. Once upon a time, mighty battles were fought between those who liked the technicolour mayhem of this design and those who didn’t. Who won? They say, history is written by the victors. Well, they also get to choose that history book’s cover.
You may also notice strange linear scratches across the middle portion of the cover. These are called “words” and scholars believe they were arranged in patterns in order to promote the book itself by describing its contents. These words also contain a little joke at the expenses of a famous graffiti artist (in your carefully-concealed face, Banksy!). Did we ever tell you the story about Alex and the Islington Banksy piece? It’s a good one. . . let’s just get this back to the archive. . . we really ought to digitise this stuff some day. . .

Posted in Design, Experiments, Us | 1 Comment »

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Thursday, February 18th, 2010
Airside director Fred Deakin recently removed the design hat from his dome in order to don a very snazzy music Montera and write a new tune for a video game. Chime is an experimental mix of music and puzzles, which combines elements from various games and integrates them with the accompanying ambient music.
The music – also featuring contributions from Moby, Philip Glass and Orbital’s Paul Hartnoll – changes and expands as you progress through a level, while the beats serve as a timer. Fred’s track goes by the brilliant title of Disco Ghosts, and is a wonderfully atmospheric piece featuring smooth beats and lush electronics.

Given this blog’s complete incompetence when it comes to shapes (get in that round hole, you blasted square ball!), we can’t tell you if  the game is any good, but our resident games expert, Chris Rain, has given it the thumbs-up. Though that might have been a thumbs-down – we can’t really tell as his digits have been crippled beyond recognition from too much game play.
Chime is released by OneBigGame, a charitable organisation that creates video games to raise money for children in need. 60% of the game’s purchase price will be donated to the charity’s fund. Chime is available now on Xbox and PC.

Posted in Charity, Experiments, Music | No Comments »

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Friday, June 12th, 2009

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Wallpaper just released their July issue on the subject of sex and the erotic. Naturally they asked us to be involved and turn my Alphabunnies into an appetising new alphabet of lovely ladies. As Airside’s resident sexpert in drawing naughty girls, I couldn’t wait to start on it. You can now have a peek at some initial sketches.

Where did my obsession start…mmmmhhhh For a start I have a french perverted mind but really it all started when I was a kid. Everyday I would draw princesses and pretty girls. There were no boys in my sketchbooks: hips and curves were much more dramatic and fun (many of you would agree I am sure). As a teenager it became a kind of compulsive doodle habit that kept me entertained in school.

I could do them with my eyes closed and of course I gave them away to the boys who were suddenly more interested in my drawings. When I joined Airside two years ago I was the only girl designer in the middle of a lovely big boy’s designer club! At one point I was trying to come up with an idea for a print for our shop and I ended up going back to my habit of drawing sexy girls. I was happy. The boys were happy.

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When Wallpaper commissioned us to do something for their Sex and Art issue, they said they’d like something along the line of Alphabunnies. I decided to go with 50’s pin ups instead of animal hybrids and to create a new set of letters.

I feel this set is more organic and the poses are more sophisticated than Alphabunnies but the spirit remains the same: sexy Amazons exploring the joys of foreplay.

The idea here is to pare down my initial drawings as much as possible graphically, using negative space for their bodies. I have to confess I kept my favorite letter from the Alphabunnies – the G – and explored other ways to design the rest of the letters.

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Now you can get your hands on limited edition prints of each of the individual letters of our erotic alphabet. You can see a sensuous selection of lascivious letters here.

Each letter is a limited edition of 10 and the prints are only available until the end of July, so like a rampant rabbit, get in there quick.

This movie requires Flash Player 8

Finally have a look at the animation that our very gifted animator Maki did for the website.

After animating the alphabunnies and these lovely ladies, she is now my second in command when it comes to bringing the pin-ups to life.

Posted in Animation, Characters, Experiments, Illustration, Typography | 15 Comments »

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Tuesday, January 27th, 2009

Neave Bounce

Paul Neave has some great Flash experiments worth playing with, like the one above where balls bounce in response to input from your computer microphone.

Posted in Experiments, Interaction | No Comments »

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