With the arrival of the new year, I thought it was time to give my blog a fresh look, and more importantly… a fresh logo. My new logo was the final result of about a week of work. I know… I probably should have spent the remainder of my Christmas holidays eating left over Turkey, and chocolate, but I wanted to do something productive with my time.

I was never totally happy with my last logo, because “Mark McCorkell Design” was in many ways a bit ambiguous! What type of design did I do? It was probably clear enough that I was a designer, but the logo didn’t say much about what type of designer I was. This new logo – I can say with absolute certainty that I am happy with it, and it does say on a few different levels, exactly what I want it to say, visually and typographically.

Once the new logo was established, I decided to re-work my blog header and take things back a lot more minimal, which is what I had initially intended for this blog. The phrase “less is more” was always something on the tip of my tongue, so I thought I’d drop that in there to bring some character to the negative white space on the top right.

I used 3 beautiful fonts for my logo. The “mark” bit uses BaronLightDB, the “mccorkell” part of my name uses Aeroportal, and the title line below uses Quicksand. When I was working on the logotype I discovered elements of each of the fonts that I liked, so the best solution was to combine them together, which turned out to be exactly what I wanted. Never be scared to mix it up – if you like different elements of different fonts then try them out together… experimentation is key to lot of great designs.

I welcome all feedback on the logo, so don’t be shy… if you read this drop me a comment below!

Last week I was fortunate enough to stumble upon Kotryna Zukauskaite, a Lithuanian born student of Illustration and Animation at Kingston University, London. Kotryna emailed me directly expressing a sincere appreciation of my blog, and asked if I would be interested in sharing some of her work on my blog.

After taking a look at Kotryna’s portfolio, I was both flattered, and delighted to inform her that I would have no hesitation whatsoever in sharing some of her wonderful work on my site. I think there is a real creative originality with Kotryna’s work and pretty different to a lot of work I have seen from other current Illustrators, which I think has a lot to do with Kotryna being from a more Eastern European influenced background.

“I would describe my style or at least direction to the side of non-character based illustration based on basic shapes, bright colours, abstraction, a little bit of 3d stuff in some cases.” Kotryna Zukauskaite

Kotryna’s influences include, Johnny Kelly, Sean Pecknold and Russian Futurists. I have previously posted about Johnny Kelly’s work, and there are clear parallels between Kotryna’s work and Johnny Kelly’s work, but I can safely say I prefer Kotryna’s – her work has a much more off the wall vibe to it.

“I am particularly interested in fashion illustration, statistics/data illustration and any genre that could be designed using basic-shapes based collage/montage style. But having said that, I am trying to go forward and not to stick to that kind of direction only.”  Kotryna Zukauskaite

With so many pieces of beautiful artwork to choose from in Kotryna’s online portfolio, I just picked out some of my favourites to share with you all – check them out below, and if you would like to see more of Kotryna’s work, visit her website here.

And a few more

Approximately two weeks ago I was graced with a brand spanking new iPhone 3GS, and since I first turned it on I have been enjoying playing with my new toy like a kid on Christmas morning. When you long for something and you finally get it, the chances are it will never be as good as you expected it to be. This time was different.

For the first time ever, I have got something that exceeded my expectations in every way. The iPhone 3GS is a quality bit of gadgetry and it would be almost rude not to pay some form of tribute to it on my blog.

On the header graphic above those are my actual screens on my iPhone 3GS, and all of the apps I currently have on it. As you can see, I’ve been busy and bought quite a few already! But like everything, I do have my favorites, and below I have listed my top 5 apps, and why I like them most (in no particular order).

Things
If you have ever been in my house in the room where I work, you’ll see an abundance of post-it notes on my desk to the left of my iMac. Things is sort of like a digital version of a to do list, but a lot better. It is a well known app within the iPhone app world and highly regarded as an excellent productivity app. I use Things on my iMac here too, so when I add something to do here, it automatically syncs with my iPhone, keeping my to do list up to date. Part of the joy of it is it’s simplicity and quality of design.

Facebook
I’ll admit it… I am a Facebook addict, which is okay because I am at least aware of it. I love going on Facebook and seeing what everyone is doing at the weekend, you know the score. The Facebook app is excellent, and comes in very handy for Facebook on the go. Simple as that.

TweetDeck
When I’m not on Facebook, I’m usually tweeting via TweetDeck. TweetDeck is a platform for updating Twitter, and enables easy updating of multiple Twitter accounts all at once, and now even Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. Having TweetDeck on my iPhone is really handy for keeping up to date with what’s going, similarly to Facebook, and another way for me to share on Twitter from anywhere.

Evernote
In some ways this is similar to Things app, but in many ways very different too. Similarly to Things, you can make a note of something to remember, but it is not exclusively what Evernote is for. Using Evernote, I can leave myself a note to remember something via voice memo, taking a photograph, or text message. However, a lot of people are starting to use Evernote as more of a digital scrapbook of things they like. I have started to use it this way too and any time I see something I like I take a photo of it and upload to my Evernote scrapbook.

Google
Sounds exciting… doesn’t it? Well, pardon my sarcasm, but this one is actually very cool. Using the GPS technology in the iPhone 3GS this Google app can return search results that are relative to your location at the time of the search. And another really handy feature is the voice activated search! So, lets say I wanted “Pizza”, and I called out Pizza, then the app will go and find me pizza places near by where I can order some pizza. There’s nothing more frustrating than searching and getting irrelevant results back, so this app has came in very handy so far.

As a self-confessed web-geek and twit-a-holic I thought I’d do a type of homage to twitter type blog, kind of like a #FollowFriday, but a more expanded version.

Different people interact with Twitter differently. Personally, I use TweetDeck and have it open running in the background so I get a constant feed of fresh tweets throughout the day. This can be a huge distraction though, so I am a lot more selective in who I follow compared to some people that have a more ‘trigger-happy’ approach and are constantly clicking to ‘follow’ new people.

Out of the people I follow on Twitter I thought I’d select 5 of my favourites and explain why I follow them.

Lee Munroe @leemunroe
Like most the people I follow I have never met Lee, but Lee’s Web Design portfolio is exceptionally good, and Lee usually tweets some good, useful web stuff worth checking out. As a Web Designer, Lee has evidently got a beautiful balance between creativity and technical proficiency, which makes an exciting designer, and one to keep an eye on!

Leeanne Lowe @leelowe
Leeanne Lowe is another Web Designer I follow, and Leeanne seems to have an interest in some of the same things as me, being another self-confessed TV junkie! It’s good to follow people that are into things you like because you can share and exchange tweets that interest each other, and not just the usual pretentious fodder some people churn out.

David Airey @davidairey
David Airey is a recent addition to my follow list. David is Graphic Designer and has a stunning portfolio of work under his belt, and a really nice website with lots of good content. I’ve found that David tweets some good quality material, and I’ve enjoyed quite a few of his tweets so far. I love the type of work he produces, and from what I’ve seen he is another minimal design lover, like me!

Jon Hicks @hicksdesign
Jon Hicks is a name most designers are familiar with, and is most well known for designing the infamous Firefox logo. Jon is currently working exclusively for Opera as a UI Designer. Jon is always on the pulse of what’s happening in the web community, which makes good reading, and I have discovered quite a few handy little Mac apps from following Jon’s tweets.

Chuck Anderson @nopattern
Chuck Anderson/NoPattern is probably the individual I have blogged about most! Chuck has produced some awesome work for massive clients, most recent of which is Microsoft, and Chuck designed the new artwork for Windows 7. Chuck is a cool guy, and an exciting person to follow and through Chuck I’ve discovered some superb artists like Shadow Chen.

Being a following of artist Chuck Anderson on Twitter @nopattern has a few benefits, one of which is the chance to discover new artists and illustrators that Chuck often tweets about. Recently Chuck tweeted about Shadow Chen, a very talented Chinese-born artist and illustrator that he may be collaborating with soon.

Upon arrival on Shadow Chen’s website you’ll find yourself engaging with a beautiful animated website, and when you experiment and explore further you’ll discover the residing stunning artwork by Shadow Chen. Impressed and inspired I then took a digital dander over to check out more of Shadow Chen’s work on Flickr, which didn’t disappoint. Below are some of my favourites – and if you like any of this work then check out Shadow Chen’s website, and additional artwork on Flickr.