Future plans are to get the website fully updated with some examples of projects I have done at work and also the full branding of “visually interesting design” Then I am on the look out for any freelance work I can find, whether that be print work, simple websites or anything.

Thanks for stopping by!

Tom out!

Here are a few screenshots of the website, or you could take the preferred version and hit this link up and view it for yourself!

Cheers for stopping by!

Tom out!

Some images of the vinyl sleeve and 12″ record are below:

Thanks everybody for stopping by and taking a look. I definitely recommend everyone checking out this awesome soundtrack. In my opinion the best soundtrack of any game that I have every played or heard.

Tom out!

This week I visited Painshill Park, a 19th century Garden designed by Charles Hamilton. Situated just inside of the M25 next to the town of Cobham, Surrey it proved to be an easy location to get to and delivered some amazing scenery.

I went to Painshill Park with the idea of continuing my exploration of minimal photography, whilst opening my eye up to the different scenery, colours and textures that London’s buildings just could not provide. Taking minimal photography of a natural environment is much harder than a man made one, the shapes are much softer for a start and the wind is constantly battling against you. Despite all the obvious hardships I feel I came out of the day with some really nice pictures, although I will let you readers be the true judge of that!

I wanted to show this first image because I think it sums up the kind of scenery that I had to work with, beautiful Autumn colours, blue sky with slight patches of cloud and amazing reflections. Plus you can see the diverse range of different tree species that grow at Painshill.

I spent a very long time on this next picture, I felt that I could capture Autumn in one image if taken correctly and on a personal level I feel this has been achieved. This was the first piece of minimalist photography I attempted on the day and it was no easy task, the wind kept blowing the leaf in and out of focus and the change of lighting as the sun went in and out of the clouds was a constant disruption to the colours of both the background and the leaf.

Another piece of minimalist photography, luckily the wind struggled to blow this huge tree around as much as the little leaf so no wind problems to take the shot. Again lighting was an issue, but I love the light blue sky, so commonly associated with the Autumn and Winter months, with not a cloud in sight.

Of course with Christmas being only 2 weeks away I had to attempt an image with a Christmas feel. This was probably an obvious choice and perhaps should be marked down due to that, however, the strength of colour within the berries and the glowing green background should more than make up for the lack of imagination.

What trip would be complete without a picture of a Goose?! Lately I have been using my zoom lens for almost every picture I have taken. I really enjoy the strength of colour it produces and the sharpness of the images definitely makes it stand out as one of my best lenses. It is nice to finally use the lens for one of the main reasons I bought it, wildlife photography.

This final image shows that the gardens were not completely void of man made objects, there are various buildings and statues along the walkways, most of them are broken and have been restored to their previous shapes, this image is of part of the watermill which stands at one end of the park. The machinery inside the building is amazing, unfortunately it was far to dark to get a decent image of the cogs and mechanisms, however, this image of the sails I think works really nicely.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my story of the day. I would recommend anyone travelling through the area to visit Painshill Park. It is a £7.50 admission fee, but well worth it and you can clearly see the money goes to good use keeping the park in a clean and visually interesting (pun intended) condition!

Tom out!

I started my journey outside the ExCel centre at the Royal Victoria Dock on a bridge that goes across the dock itself. From this bridge I had an amazing view of the O2 arena, the Gherkin, London City Airport, Millennium Mills (abandoned building) and Canary Wharf. Once I had finished in the docklands area I decided I wouldn’t take the trains but walk my way through London to Canary Wharf, then down Commercial road through Whitechapel finally ending my journey past the Gherkin and at St. Pauls Cathedral.

Here are a few of the pictures I took whilst on my travels. At the end there is a little video of my attempts to get inside an abandoned building i stumbled across.

If you are interested in buying any of these images as prints, I have some available on my webstore at http://society6.com/VisuallyInteresting

This first picture shows the building structure of the ExCel centre, I think it has an amazing interlocking quality. The photo itself is  a little bland due to the sky being so cloudy but is interesting none-the-less.

This next picture is one of my favourites. I love the way the blue tones on the glass change from blue at top, white middle to blue again at the bottom, I also find that if you stare at it long enough you begin to wonder which parts of the building are facing the camera and which parts are the other direction.

The only full building picture I took today, the Lloyds building of London is a magnificent structure and is looking quite futuristic and menacing against the sky in the background. Finished being built in 1986 the Lloyd’s building, often referred to as the “inside out building” was a revolutionary new build, having all water pipes, stairways, lifts and ventilation systems built on the outside thus leaving an uncluttered space on the inside. It is the home of the insurance company Lloyd’s of London.

I had to include this photograph in the post, I love the curves of the building and the much darker (possibly open) window at the bottom I believe helps add to the image itself by giving something for the eye to be drawn towards.

An image with slightly more contrast, this building reminds me a little of Doctor Who’s Tardis. The building itself looks horrible in my opinion and yet I find myself drawn to it, I think there is some beauty in the symmetry it holds which shows through the dirty and dark exterior.

This is definitely my favourite image of the day. The contrast on the building is amazing and when viewed on a large scale really messes with your eyes. This building certainly stood out to me, I’m really pleased I went down the road it was situated on. The grey skies really help add to the look of this photo, so it wasn’t all bad!

As mentioned above here is a little video showing some filmed footage of a quick diversion I took into some burnt out abandoned buildings!

So that is what I got up to this week, I am hoping to be out on another photography trip next Saturday so don’t go away until you have seen that one!

Thanks for stopping by!

Tom out!

To begin with I thought I would add to the collection of photos that Upminster Windmill has already collected over the years. Probably being the most interesting landmark in the town it naturally must be the most captured on film. However, I thought this would be the perfect subject to start with some minimal photographs. As you can see the sky was perfect for the occasion.

Next I walked down to St. Andrews Church of Hornchurch. On the way the sky made a dramatic change which to begin with was quite disheartening, but I think it really improved the atmosphere of the image of the spire, especially the tonal changes within the sky.

And of course! What photography trip would be complete without an image of a flag! Sadly I only came across this Scottish flag, but a flag is none-the-less a flag. This image is much nicer with the grey sky, as the blue of the flag probably wouldn’t have been visible against the previous sky.

All in all it was a very nice morning and I look forward to some more fresh winters mornings with blue skies!

Thanks for stopping by!

Tom out!

Tom out!

Recently I was lucky enough to have the chance to write a small article for the Wayfinding UK blog you can view the post here.

The post called upon research I did during my university project and is based upon the differences in airport wayfinding systems. Thanks go out to Hayley who runs the Wayfinding UK blog and who gave me the chance to write this guest article!

There will hopefully be a few more posts of the photography nature and a little bit of variety heading to the blog in the near future, so don’t go away for too long!

Tom out!

This week I looked into the typeface weight on the signs and also how they should be laid out in terms of spacing between icons, arrows and text. Below are a few image examples that I’ve done. For an increased explanation of what I have done please view the embedded video.

The first images show possible ways of laying out the signs for gate numbers. These have been purpoesely coloured yellow to stand out from the rest of the signs within the airport environment. The red and grey bars show the spacing between each element of the sign. Each bar is an icons border width apart, this allows for proportionate measurements when scaling, instead of finding a formula if using a mm scale.

This example of the gate signs i think works a lot better without the type than with. There is no need to have “Gates” repeated down the sign.

This second set of images shows 3 examples of how the main signs could be laid out. The first two are my favourite examples as I feel number three isn’t as clear as it could be with writing as well. I also feel that not every symbol needs to have a word description next to it because the symbols are quite self explanatory, this is why I have left the secondary processes sections as purely icons.

Below is the video i created going into slightly more detail.

Thanks for stopping by!

Tom out!

First up is this fascia for Sivells estate agents. This was just a simple black aluminium composite panel with vinyl lettering attached to the previous lightbox behind using a series of aluminium box angles. It certainly stands out against the shops either side. We have since installed a trough light above to give it more impact at night.

This second job was done for “The Roofing Centre” and it involved doing 2 ford transits and this smaller transit connect van. This involved 3 simple image wraps on the rear quarters of the vehicle sides and rear.

That’s all for now, there will soon be an update to my airport project, so stick around for that!

Tom out!

The image below (click to view much larger) shows all the currently updated icons, I have been working on these over the past week on and off and can now say I’m very pleased with how they have turned out. Each has been carefully vectorised and smoothed out so there shouldn’t be any nasty bumps. The colours refer to the background colour they would go against on the signs themselves. Blue is for any main processes undertaken at an airport, grey is used for any secondary processes and the yellow is for gate numbers.

This video shows each icon individually against the original version and explains the changes that I made to each.

More updates on the project coming soon!

Tom Out!