MadeBrave Meets: Frank McDiarmid

All posts tagged Graphic Design

Posted:
May 9, 2013
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Rodger the Dodger

MadeBrave Meets: Frank McDiarmid

Frank McDiarmid is an artist, caricaturist, and cartoonist best known for his illustrations of Rodger the Dodger in The Beano comic strip, between 1973 and 1984. He’s also a good pal of MadeBrave’s, and has recently been helping us out with drawings for friends and clients over at Radisson Blu.

As great admirers of Frank’s work, we invited him up to the studio for a cup of tea, a catch up and a chance to pick his creative brain.

“I have drawn since childhood”, Frank tells us. “A series of happy accidents took me to Dundee after National Service, in 1955. I’d applied for, and managed to land, a job with DC Thomson as a trainee cartoonist. There I spent 11 years soaking up experience and talent, after which I went freelance.”

“What with there being a lot of London comics starting up then, my career flourished until, in the late 80s, the market began to shrink again. And so, in 1993, I opened my own gallery and for the next 7 years I painted avidly, leaving in 2000 to work again from home.
I paint in oils, watercolours and pastels, drawing one-off full-colour bespoke caricatures, and going on the road to caricature bookings at weddings, corporate and charity events.”

With the ever-changing industry and rise of technological advances, we asked for Frank’s take on the decline of the traditional comic book market and if he’s ever considered illustrating for TV, digital animation or moving pictures.

“Of course I regret the unstoppable demise of the traditional comic, but nothing lasts forever. The thought of illustrating for other industries may have crossed my mind, but as of yet it’s gone no further; though never say never. Over 11 years I wrote about 50 scripts for Roger the Dodger, and still, to amuse myself, write nonsense verses to accompany animal drawings. A book for the future? Who knows…”

“My advice to anyone looking to become a professional illustrator would be; develop a style of your own- then perfect it, and study the opposition.”

And we believe that’s good advice for folk in every area of the creative industries…

To see more of Frank’s work or for commissions, visit his website, send an e-mail or call 01241-872844.

Posted:
April 24, 2013
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Repsol

Proudly Welcoming Repsol to the MadeBrave Client List

We’re all about renewable energy & eco friendly practices in the MadeBrave studio. We’re a bunch of keen cyclists, avid recyclers and green shoppers. (Though when we say we’re downloading the latest software to save on packaging, most of the time it’s because we’re just too impatient to wait for the delivery of a new design suite or development program!)

Either way, as keen supporters of all our eco-active clients, we are pretty dang happy to be welcoming another awesome green energy supplier on board.

Meet Repsol – refiners of oil and other raw materials, pursuers of technological advancements in sustainable systems and pioneers in the research of renewable energy.

At MadeBrave, we are proud to add Repsol to our ever-expanding list of environmental and sustainable living experts, which currently includes…

MadeBrave – happy to be helping our clients towards a greener, brighter and more sustainable future.

Posted:
April 3, 2013
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Apple WiFiSlam

Indoor Mapping. Like outdoor mapping but, err…indoors…

Here at MadeBrave HQ we have a lot of Apple lovers (and one PC loyalist), so it is with a mixture of scepticism and intrigue that we digest the news from last week, that Apple has acquired an indoor mapping company. And considering the Apple Map fiasco of 2012, surely we’re right to be a little apprehensive? But we’ve gotta ask the question… do we need, or even want, indoor mapping?

The idea is that large, complicated indoor areas like shopping centres, airports, universities and public transit hubs, would be mapped the same way that cities are. It’s a lot trickier than outdoor mapping; your location needs to be much more precise, along with which direction you’re facing, because the hallways and rooms are smaller and more intricate per square foot than large cities. If your phone is off by half a street in a city, that’s OK; you can still figure out where you are. If you’re wandering through a university trying to find the Maths Department and your phone is off by that much… you might as well not be using it.

Not only is it hard to get the kind of detail you need for indoor mapping with existing tools, but when you’re indoors, you often have to deal with a new problem: walls blocking your GPS signal.

The company acquired by Apple is called WiFiSlam–less a mapping company than a location company, dedicated to overcoming those difficulties. The company claims they have “2.5m accuracy using only ambient WiFi signals that are already present in buildings.” Quite how they can use ambient Wi-Fi signals is still unclear, but Apple must have faith in their abilities, given that they just paid $20 million for them… *queue mini heart attack*

For the non-designers out there, not to worry, Google is also pouring resources into an Indoor Maps Initiative, intuitively called “Google Maps Floor Plans”. The company claims to have indoor maps for over 10,000 locations worldwide including airports, hotels, libraries, museums and even Ikea Stores. That means no more scouring the ‘You are HERE’ boards in shopping galleries, taking wrong turns down endless hotel corridors and bumping into freaky twins, or getting stuck in the soft furnishings department at Ikea when all you really want is a hot dog and packet of Dime bars…

And for the non-designers, non-developers, and non-interested in geeky computer stuff readers, here’s the really good news – indoor mapping is gonna add a whole new level of fun to games of hide and seek.
SOLD.

Source : New York Times

Posted:
March 26, 2013
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Susan likes to stare at the MadeBrave logo for a good few hours every day...

Hey, Freelancers! Yeah, we’re talking to you…

MadeBrave are getting bigger, and not just from the cakes that have been arriving on our doorstep (though that does explain the expansion in waist size) but from the ever-growing list of jobs that have been filling up our inboxes.

Yup, we’re pretty busy just now and as such, are often on the lookout for a friendly face with a creative eye and a clever computer head to jump behind a desk and give us a hand. Someone who might not be with us all the time but is happy and willing to help out with some design work here and there.  Someone self motivated, hardworking and reliable. Apparently there’s a name for someone like that.

Oh yeah, there is. It’s a freelancer. So I guess you could say, we’re looking for a freelancer. Or two…

We’re on the hunt for some middleweight to senior designers who are happy to add their names to the MadeBrave directory of super awesome talent. Working on big projects with a small turnaround time, we need folk who can handle large jobs with speed, efficiency and creative flair.

Sound like you? Send us over your CV along with a recent portfolio of work and we’ll see if you fit the MadeBrave bill.

NB Those who lack a positive attitude, good sense of humour or serious appreciation of Disney’s The Lion King need not apply.

 

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