alex canning // sparetimedesign

Coombs Moylett Site Launch

Alex Canning — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 17:10:36 +0000

After launching John-Gardner.com version 3, I was approached by Lisa Moylett of Coombs Moylett Literary Agency to design and build a site. The company had nothing in place at the time, and no branding, so I was very fortunate to be given the opportunity to have a good run at it.

The brief was to establish an online presence for Coombs Moylett, and provide a showcase for new authors being represented by the agency and a platform for a new service – The Fiction Editors.

The intention was to create a streamlined site with a more modern look and feel than its contemporaries, and I think that with the client’s help and support that this has been achieved. Take a look for yourself – www.coombsmoylett.com

Soul Estate / Fresh Delivery artwork

Alex Canning — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 18:44:56 +0000

It’s been a heckuva long time since I’ve posted any new work! Here are some new pieces – I say new, the first one is, the other two are from before Christmas – created for my old chum Mr Dirty Hairy from the Soul Estate.

This was put together very quickly this weekend for Fresh Delivery, a night that may re-occur in future. In which case, there’s room for development of the idea of having a new 50s character with every poster.

An idea for a new logo for the Soul Estate. The colours here are from another project I’m currently working on, I liked the combination enough to use it again. It may get re-purposed in the near future…

I’ve been quite inspired by the work by ISO50 aka Scott Hansen, and this was my attempt at trying something along those lines. It’s nowhere near as accomplished, but I guess that’s what practice is all about.

John-Gardner.com – Version 3 launch.

Alex Canning — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 22:37:54 +0000

This evening I had the great pleasure of flicking the giant on-switch for Version 3.0 of John-Gardner.com, the website of crime and thriller writer John Gardner. It’s taken about 4 months to develop and should allow for new features and greater fan-interaction, thanks to the CMS platform Drupal on which it is built. I’ll be updating my portfolio soon with the full details but in the meantime, I’d just like to say thanks to Aron Carroll and Sam @ BPWEB for their web skills. Also, thanks Simon for letting me be part of this project. Cheers dudes!

As it probably fairly obvious from the post title, you can visit the site at www.john-gardner.com.

John-Gardner.com v3 Home

John-Gardner.com v3 - Updates Page

John-Gardner.com v3 - Bond Gallery

Mothers Day.

Alex Canning — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 19:09:26 +0000

You’ve gotta love mums and should appreciate that they put up a lot, so I quickly knocked this up as my tribute to mothers everywhere. Feel free to display proudly when yours comes round for Sunday dinner. Right click and select “Save Target” or “Save Link As…”.

Smothering Sunday

It’s All Happening at the Zoo.

Alex Canning — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 17:19:58 +0000

Ah a new year and with it, new playlists. Aron and I have created many of them, yet only a few have come to light. Maybe I’ll post a few more in future. The theme for this one was simple: Zoos! I really enjoyed this one for the following reasons:

The easier the theme is, the easier it is to find songs to go into the playlist. Keep it simple, stupid!
These playlists are a great way for me to discover great music I might not have listened to, this one was no different.

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did, I definitely reckon this was one of the better ones. It’s All Happening At The Zoo

It's All Happening at the Zoo

Simon & Garfunkel – At The Zoo
Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin – Anne Elephant
Mew – The Zookeeper’s Boy
The Phantom Band – Crocodile
YOURCODENAMEIS:MILO – Lions, Then The Donkeys
Cass McCombs – Cuckoo
The Whitest Boy Alive – Golden Cage
Caribou – Pelican Narrows
Ratatat – Wildcat
Subtle – A Tale Of Apes 2
Le Loup – Planes Like Vultures
Dosh – Wolves
Console – Dolphin Dos
Au – Are Animals
Animal Collective – Lion In A Coma

2009 Wrap Up.

Alex Canning — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 20:00:02 +0000

2009 has truly been a rollercoaster ride for me and it feels odd that it’ll soon be over (only for a new ride to begin, no doubt). The year started with the threat of redundancy, which was soon rendered a reality when in March I lost my job. Some six weeks later, I’d be starting a new job which would give me my first taste of working in a studio. Things have more or less turned out alright, and losing my job earlier in the year really gave me a kick I needed to reboot my career.

Whilst I’ve had some great support from family and chums, there are a few guys I’m indebted to, namely: Aron for his unparalleled HTML/CSS assistance and for being an awesome sounding-board, Huw for giving me career advice throughout the year, Jon for giving me the job at Mobstar (and saving me from further dole-queue perils!), Simon for all kinds of worldly/design advice and keeping me working and Lisa – it’s been a pretty tense year for us both and she’s been super supportive through it all. Also, cheers Sam and Nick at BPWEB – these guys very graciously provide my web hosting.

Also, thanks Mum!

Spotify Playlist: Red Beret, Yellow Beret.

Alex Canning — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 16:38:31 +0000

I’m fortunate enough to be able to listen to music whilst I work at my current job but this freedom comes at a price; I’ve listened to the music on my MP3 player so much that I get bored and don’t want to listen to any of it. Spotify has been a blessing in this respect, giving access to a wealth of material I don’t have in my possession though despite this, I can still be left lacking in inspiration. A friend Aron recently suggested we try out the collaborative playlist feature and ever since then we’ve been construction our own inter-office playlists, no more than an hour long and loosely held together by a theme we take turns to pick. With his blessing, I’d like to share some on the site, as I’m certainly quite pleased with the outcome of them.

One playlist in particular was Red Beret, Yellow Beret, suggested by Aron – a Jacques Cousteau inspired theme.

Red Beret, Yellow Beret

Swell Maps – Midget Submarine
The Spectors – Swordfishtrombone
Stereolab – Silver Sands
Modest Mouse – Ocean Breathes Salty
The Shins – Sea Legs
School Of Language – Marine Life
The Flaming Lips – Aquarius Sabotage
Little Barrie – Bailing Out
Longwave – Meet Me at The Bottom
Thee More Shallows – Night At The Knight School
Neutral Milk Hotel – In The Aeroplane Over The Sea
The Mountain Goats – Oceanographer’s Choice
Kings Of Convenience – My Ship Isn’t Pretty
Dirty Three – Sea Above, Sky Below
Minotaur Shock – Six Foolish Fishermen
Man Man – Whalebones

GPS.

Alex Canning — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 11:13:23 +0000

I was sent this video by my friend Paul, and will certainly make me more cautious about using the GPS feature on my phone in future. The video also seems to have been shot in my neck of the woods of Brighton, which is nice. I’ll add that to the list of features which already includes the masterpiece that is Wimbledon.

BPWEB Site Mockup.

Alex Canning — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:26:34 +0000

I’m fortunate enough to get my webspace provided by the good guys at BWPEB who have been friends of mine since college. Definitely check them out should you need some hosting or a dedicated server. Anyway, as an exercise I mocked up a new design for their site, complete with new logo.

Logo Mockup

Site Layout

Dirty’s Akai Repair.

Alex Canning — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 16:12:55 +0000

Dirty's Akai Repair

This morning I was thinking back to a time in 2005 when a friend of mine – Dirty Hairy – tried to fix his broken Akai sampler. I think the floppy disk drive had broken and I had a spare, though this may have been a seperate incident – Dirty has had many more Akai mishaps since then. Opening up a sampler or any piece of electronic kit, consumer or otherwise is probably not a great idea. I can’t imagine they have a great number of user-servicable parts. Nevertheless, we had a go and I guess everything went ok as the machine lasted for many years after. I thought back to some photos taken at the time and had the idea to turn it into an advert for a ficticious advert. I was going for something vintage (70s/80s maybe?), and I hope that, for a morning’s work, it is successful!

Click on the image to view it