Die-Cut Gift Tags

Check out these amazing die-cut gift tags designed by Jordan Metcalf from South Africa. Each one has a message that is illustrated in an animated way. I don't know much about the design and its usage as the designer didn't leave much information, but I just love the style and huge amount of hair! (Not that I like hair, it just looks cool!)...

You can see more of his work on: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sadmascot

Happy Birthday, or whatever!


You Rock. High Five!


Champ!


Get Better!


Good luck!

Get Wired!

If you're looking to promote yourself on the internet, then look no further. I've researched and found some online resources that can help you get your name out there.

1. FormFiftyFive (www.formfiftyfive.com)


The FFF team scours the web to collect the best designs. There's tons of features on the site with great interaction and community building. Not to be missed!

2. Jotta (www.jotta.com)


Features blogs, forums, education and empolyment. There's plenty of space to upload your portfolio. You can browse through others work and use it as a business platform.

3. Behance (www.behance.net)


My favourite. Behance provides a single point of contact for anyone interested in any format of design. The talent you find here is unbelievable.

4. CarbonMade (www.carbonmade.com)


This is another portfolio host like Behance and is one of the main creative talent pools on the web. There's designs across all disciplines.

5. EveryCreative (www.everycreative.com)


A brilliant online resource for networking. Through the site you can present your portfolio and gain feedback and advice from industry professionals.

Which is the best out of the lot you ask?

My favourite has to be Behance, hands down! It has everything. You can network, pitch, gain feedback, collaborate and present all on this site. Plus your work actually looks great on the site too! I have already been asked for design work through Behance and the manner in which it is set up is fantastic. Every designer should have their portfolio on this site!

You can visit my portfolio on Behance for an idea: www.behance.net/abdulmateen

Brilliant Typographic Style

Yesterday on the internet I came across a designer called 'Tareq Yosef' from Jordan. His typography work is absolutely fantastic. The style is elegant and gives its own interpretation. Here's a link to his website: www.tariqdesign.com

The only thing I would say is he manipulates the image a bit too much for my liking, but overall its excellent.

Poster Design

Christmas Greetings everybody!

While many people have been enjoying their holidays, I've been stuck on my computer designing posters for various organisations.

The Centre for Sport in Newcastle upon Tyne asked me to design a poster for their late night badminton sessions. They wanted it to be simple, easy to read and effective. They provided me with all the information and I had less than one day to get it done!

Below you can see the materials I used for the design and the final outcome:





I thought it would be ideal to use a very simple, monotype font like Arial which is easy to see and comprehend. I also used a consistent colour scheme of black, white and yellow throughout the design. I replaced the letter 'O' in badminton with a crescent moon to represent 'midnight'. I think thats probably the part which makes it a little unique.

(I know its rubbish, bearing in mind I only put like 30mins into it! lol, but hey, I thought I'll post it on the blog anyway!)

Calligraphy Work 'Featured'

I've always been fascinated by Arabic calligraphy, typography and its architecture. I just love the fluency and elegance in its style. It uses simple strokes to create complex designs.

In 2005, I had the chance to work with a fantastic calligraphy artist called Nawaz in Manchester who taught me how to write Arabic in its most elegant form called 'naskh'. I havn't looked back since and I now do it as a hobby.

I recently did a personal project on Arabic calligraphy in contemporary and traditional Arabic styles using Adobe Illustrator and two shades of gold and black. It was an instant hit on the Behance Network site and my work was featured on http://www.creativeroots.org/?p=5527 and http://designyoutrust.com/2009/12/13/muhammad-abdulmateen/ and http://www.typographyserved.com/ which showcases the best projects in the Behance Network, within specific industries.

This is the link to my featured work: http://www.typographyserved.com/Gallery/Arabic-Calligraphy-NEW/359139

Here are some selected designs:

Traffic Light Concept

Continuing on from my speeding project, I found this interesting design on economical traffic lights called 'Eko light'. Apparently it is a simple, yet highly practical concept for traffic lights that not only helps preserve the environment by reducing pollution but promotes safer driving as well.








Some benefits of this system are:

There's less stress since you know exactly how long you have to wait you can sit back and clear your head for a while.

There's no need to keep your foot on the gas. Less pollution.

Safer driving - With the Eko light both drivers and pedestrians can be fully aware of how much time they have left before the light changes and that way reduce the chance for potential traffic accidents.

Practical & Visual Research

On Tuesday we had an interesting workshop on 'practical and visual reasearch methods' with one of this years BA top-up students, Marta Siolkowska. It was similar to the research workshop we had earlier this term with Orlagh, but this time there was more involvement and an array of art and design materials on offer.

What we had to do was find a practical and visual way of gathering research. I decided that I wanted to find out peoples inner personalities, and one practical method I came up with was to ask people to draw a quick sketch on 'what would they do if they were invisible?". And yes, this took out the devil in everybody!

Here are some images of the outcome:









We all then discussed each others ideas and findings and the outcomes were fantastic. This was definitely an eye opener and has helped me understand how practical research could be used intensively.