We Made This

Guardian iPhone app

  

Well, this is just a whole bag of good. The Guardian have launched an app for the iPhone, and it feels like a real step towards those personalised newspapers futurologists have always dreamed about.

The app costs £2.39 to buy, launches fairly speedily, and lets you tailor the bits of the paper / site you want to read. The home page opens with a Latest section, which shows your choice of up to six filtered areas (we've chosen Top Stories, Culture, Features, Technology, UK News and Film - you select them using the settings icon at the top right of the screen) and a Trending section (as per Twitter). 

There's a shortcut menu at the bottom of the screen, which you can also personalise. The Favourites page (below, far left) lets you choose more sections to keep an eye on, and you can add in your favourite columnists too. 

Following the Art & Design section (below) as an example, you jump through to a page showing Editors Picks, Galleries, Features, Popular, and Audio (they've not got video on the app yet). Clicking on an individual story takes you through to its page, which is set at a fairly comfortable text size (you can increase it and decrease it if you're wildly long or short sighted), though the leading is perhaps just a tad tight? You can bookmark the story, and email it / facebook it using the Send icon at the bottom left of the page. You can also download content to read later on the tube / plane / beach.  

 

There are areas they've not included in this 1.0 version, including hyperlinks, commenting and video; and it's iPhone only for the time being, though they're working on rolling it out to other mobile operating systems. It's also UK only for now, apparently due to some complex EU tax rules. Check out the full FAQs.

We're loving it - total future goodness. Pick it up from iTunes.

(And heck, while you're there, check out the Google search app - the voice activated search function is super shiny.)

Jimmy Turrell

 

One of our favourite illustrators, Jimmy Turrell, stopped by the studio recently to show us some of his latest work, which combines handmade collage, drawing and painting alongside digital mark making.

 

He's worked with clients such as Nike, Channel 4, The Guardian, The New York Times, XL Recordings, and Dazed & Confused; with  more recent projects such as the D&AD winning book cover for Heart Agency's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (designed by Pentagram) as well as promotional artwork for Glastonbury 2009.

 

While he was here we took the opportunity to ask him a few questions about his working process.

WMT: A lot of urban/street artists are beginning to make careers out of selling prints and originals of their work. Is that a road you'd like to go down? (Jimmy already sells a few prints online.)

JT: Yeah - it's definitely a part of my work I want to develop more. The way things have moved over the last ten years with illustrators selling their work from their own sites and through online galleries - it's broken down the boundaries of what it actually means to be an artist.

WMT: Can you describe the process you go through on an average piece of work, from briefing to finished piece?

JT: Basically I sit down with my sketchbook and flick through old books and mags to try and get a feel for the piece. I’ll then start cutting things out and sketching and I’ll begin to make a visual scrapbook of ideas and themes. Once I’ve got my primary ideas fleshed out I’ll begin the drawing/painting/collage process proper and then I’ll scan the work into the computer and continue from there.

 

WMT: Is there anyone you'd particularly like to work with?

JT: I've been lucky enough to work with some of the companies I've always respected  (Intro, Pentagram, Colette, XL) but it would be fantastic to work with one of the greats - Saville, Glaser or Hipgnosis.

WMT: Is there any advice you'd give to someone who's thinking of becoming an illustrator?

JT: Financially it can be a bit of a slog starting off. When the magazine I was working for folded I thought my world had ended and that I’d never work again. In actuality it kicked my arse into gear to start looking down different paths. If you have the talent then it will eventually shine through - so keep at it.

Jimmy's been good enough to let us have a unique hand-made print (below) to give away to one of you lot - it's one of ten he created for The Guardian's Glastonbury 2009 Guide, featuring a mash-up of Lady Gaga, La Roux, Bruce Springsteen and The Prodigy.

 

This is how the final artwork was used at Glastonbury:

 

To be in with a chance of winning, just drop us a comment below.
 

Ephemera Society Special Fair

Crikey, December already eh?

That means it's time for another of the Ephemera Society's Special Fairs - taking place this Sunday, 6 December, from 11am to 5pm at the Holiday Inn on Coram St, WC1N 1HT (here's the Google map). The special fairs are the larger versions of the more frequent Bazaars, and are a great chance to pick up really unique Christmas presents for the design geek in your life.

At the last event we picked up a stack of rather fantastic 1930s invoices for Manchester firm Butterly & Wood - check them out on Alistair's Flickr set.