10 Artists were asked to customise sneakers in their own personal style, and included in that number is Handsome Frank’s lovely Michelle Thompson, who created this head turning pair:

Vote for Michelle’s design here and you’ll be entered into the draw to win one of 3 pairs of Double Identity sneakers. Vote Michelle Thompson!

Girlcore is an all-female music and art collective based in London. To celebrate the launch of their new art book, Girlcore Magazine, they’re hosting an exhibition which opens this evening at the Orange Dot Gallery and both the book and exhibition feature the work of Handsome Frank’s wonderful Seiko Kato.

Other artists featured in this evening’s exhibition include:

Aela Labbe | flickr.com/photos/aela
Boo Saville | boosaville.com
Ellen Rogers | ellenrogers.co.uk
Ina Jang | inaphotography.com
Julia Corsaro | juliacorsaro.com
Lone Eriksen | loneeriksen.com
Rachael Haines | rachaelhaines.tumblr.com
Tatania Leshkina | tatianaleshkina.com
Tanya Johnston | tanyajohnston.com

Exhibition runs from 3rd- 27th February

Private View: 2nd February 6pm – 9pm
RSVP: jack@theorangedot.co.uk

Malika was approached by Penguin’s Paul Buckley who art directed the cover. Inspired by her earlier work such as this Sexy Alphabet she was asked to create a cover that really pushed the boundaries of book cover design. As part of Penguin’s Graphic Deluxe series the remit was to make the cover as collectable as possible.

You can see more of Malika’s work here.

The very first issue of Computer Arts Collection, a new annual series of six in-depth guides from the chaps at Computer Arts, is now on sale in the UK.

Being the trend defining type that he is, Frank’s Jeffrey Bowman was approached to design a series of illustrations to accompany the magazine’s Trend Report. Printed in bright pink fluoro ink, the work looks superb and jumps right off the page (beware). If you’ve not seen a copy get yourself down to the newsagents.

For more information have a little looky here.

You may have seen a copy of  The Good Times on your travels yesterday, a newspaper created to brighten up Blue Monday (January 16th), the so-called ‘most depressing day of the year.’ Created by agency The Church of London the idea was to publish a newspaper that leaves people feeling happy and inspired (unlike the usual morning doom instalment).

A plethora of the countries finest writers and illustrators were approached to contribute and amongst them was our man Jon Boam who produced this rather silly cartoon strip:

If you didn’t manage to pick up a copy you can order it here.

To create the book’s imagery DCH approached a host of talented illustrators to help visualise their facts and naturally came knocking at Frank’s door.

First up Judy Kaufmann created this image to support the lesser known fact that “Per square metre, London has six times more people than Scotland.”

Meanwhile, not to be out done, Stephen Cheetham was asked to create two illustrations for the book. The first to accompany the fact that: “Free-range eggs contain six times more vitamin D”.

And this image to represent the fact that: “You are six times lighter on the moon”.

Nice work.

Here’s a few of our faves:

First up the guys at Maddison Graphic sent us this rather dashing graphic tea towel. That’s Mrs Frank’s stocking filler sorted.

Next up, this curious little parcel complete with wax seal.

Inside was a ‘Party in a box’ for the good people of RGB Photographic, complete with a smorgasboard of festive goodies, balloon, choclate money etc…

Our favorite item however is the Polaroid SX-70 temporary tattoo. Granny Frank will be sporting this on Xmas day.

Frank’s Becca Thorne sent us a rather fetching desk top calendar featuring 12 of her classic lino cut images.

We also received this charming little piece of festive self promotion from illustrator Matthew McGregor (AKA @ididadoodle). The booklet features a lonely Snowman by the name of Chilly Will but urges the reader to dress him and cheer him up. The rest of the booklet is made up of a selection of clothes and accessories for our lonesome snowman to sport.

Complete with festive nipple tassels!

Finally we made it onto a few Christmas card lists it seems:

Christmas greetings from our Emma Kelly.

This lovely concertina card from our Lesley Barnes:

And Christmas greetings from the guys at the Wrapper left us wishing we had nicer handwriting:

A huge thanks you to everyone who sent us things. Wishing you all the Merriest of Christmases and the Happiest of New Years.

Frank.

To purchase Lesley’s paper click here.

Inspired by our favorite Christmas film ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’, the cards were illustrated by the brilliant Stuart Whitton. We hope you like them!

And for those of you that don’t know the film, here’s a little taste of what you’ve missed out on

If you’re in the area, be sure to pop along and take a look around (59 High Street, Saffron Walden) and if you can’t make it take a look at more of her work here.

Great line-up too. With no Glastonbury in 2012 it’s almost worth the air fare to Japan!

Well the agency who commissioned the piece (Palmer Hargreaves) and the client (Mercedes) decided they liked it so much they’d blow it up to a 48 sheet billboard. So here it is wishing all visitors to the Mercedes UK Headquarters a Merry Christmas.

Ho ho ho…

Malika is one of 12 artists who has produced new artwork for the piece. Gifted have chosen the best print process and the finest paper and they’re all ready to go… but here’s where you come in.  They need 100 people to pre-order the calendar in the next 4 days in order to hit the button and produce it.

As an added incentive, early supporters of the project you get 15% off the final price plus some exclusive goodies.

So if you’re looking for the perfect gift for a design conscious loved one, or just want to treat yourself, then check out the site and get ordering here.

Earlier in the year, Matt Taylor worked with Penguin Books on a series of covers for reissues from John LeCarre’s backlist. You may remember seeing them here.

Recently he was asked to do another and here it is: The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.

Working with the talented chaps at Mark Smith Design, Andrew was tasked with creating an incredibly detailed hand drawn map. As Jonathan Young from the agency explains: “The map was used to illustrate the various amenities, restaurants, pubs, places of interest etc. in the Wapping area. Using Andrew’s illustration style was a more arresting way of doing this rather then using aerial photography or an OS style map.”

The finished results are stunning and have been used as an 8 x 2 meter print in the buildings main foyer. It works as both a decorative part of the marketing suite as well as an information-graphic.

The illustration also appears on the inside of the sales folder that is given to prospective customers. I’ve attached a couple of photo’s of the folder to this email.

As the weather takes a turn for the worse and the nights draw in you’d be forgiven for forgetting what the sun looks like. Thankfully, help is on hand in form of a new series of illustrations by Malika Favre. Created for Orlebar Brown online magazine, this series accompanies a feature about the “Travel Connoisseur”. It certainly transports us to sunnier climes, you can almost taste the cocktails…

See the images in context here.

To celebrate we thought we’d bring you a couple of festive images that our illustrators have been working on recently.

Firstly Emma Kelly has created this nutcracker inspired piece for her 2011 Christmas cards. So if you’ve made the cut this year and worked your way onto Emma’s Christmas card list you may be receiving one of these very soon. If not they’ll be for sale in our shop shortly (details coming soon).

Meanwhile, Andrew Lyons was commissioned to created this image for a Mercedes-Benz Christmas card. Santa has never looked so good.

Finally, the December issue of UAE based What’s On magazine looks like this. Santa illustration courtesy of our very own Malika Favre

Happy Advent. HF

And here it is in context:

You can read the article here.

For more details see here.

The subject of December’s Monograph is the Screenadelica gig poster project run by graphic designer Horse. We teamed up with Horse earlier this year to create two gig posters for the summer’s Bestival festival. Both posters were selected by CR for their Monograph publication this month:

Above (left) – The Cure by Matt Saunders

Above (right) – Brian Wilson by Lesley Barnes

To celebrate, Stuart has given us an A3 print to give away to our Twitter followers. We’ll be announcing how you can win them at midday (Tuesday 29th) so if you’d like one, keep your eyes peeled…

If you’re not lucky enough to win one then you can buy one here

Cleo & Lea by Malika Favre

Malika Favre, Michelle Thompson and Lesley Barnes have all created new works for James Old’s new venture. As the founder himself explains: “Everyone buying fine art prints is guilty of the same thing. We purchase works we love but we never get around to having them framed. They remain in tubes, under our beds or stuffed at the back of wardrobes. We want to remove this barrier, ensuring everything we sell actually gets consumed.”

The result? Artistic.ly’s limited edition prints will only be available pre-framed and ready to hang. Each order will be hand numbered, debossed with the Artistic.ly seal and limited to editions of just 50. All Artistic.ly framed limited editions will cost £125 with free delivery to anywhere in the world.

To celebrate the launch of the initiative an exhibition opens tonight (Thursday 17th November) with a Private view party from 6.30 – 10pm,  at The Loading Bay Gallery, Unit 4- 5, Dray Walk, 91 Brick Lane, London, E1 6QL

Knightday and Knightnight by Lesley Barnes

PlusOne by Michelle Thompson.

All of the work featured in this blog post will be available to purchase.

The image is just one of a series of illustrations created to promote Newspapers in the time of digital media and all the works were made from German titles.

Helen was asked to work on a piece that focused on the newspaper industries’ place in the industrial age (the factory), its green credentials (the animals and countryside) and its place in the  future (the wind turbines).

First up, Stuart Whitton was approached by Wallpaper* to create an image for their December contributor’s page. Stuart worked from photographs and drew the six contributors portraits on a scrunched napkin.

Meanwhile, the folks at Wired asked MaricorMaricar to create a hand emberoided piece for their features introduction page. The result is this beautiful geometric pattern which contains the issue number 12 11.

The intricate process was also filmed under studio lighting and a stop motion film was created which Wired used as their loading page for this month’s iPad edition. We’ll be posting the film on the blog later this week.