laura@auralab.co.uk | 07793 216 257

Sketchnotes: 10 Things I Learnt

Last week I attended talks organised by Design Wales at the Wales Millennium Centre and had a fun day doing sketchnotes of all of them. Previously I have used just a black marker pen and added colour digitally but this time I wanted to see how the process would work if I did some colouring on the spot. Read more…

London Design and Anti Design Festivals 2010…

LDF at V&A

Last Friday I had a chance to visit London Design Festival and after last year’s good timing and awesome events my expectations were rather high. And truthfully, this time was different: horrible weather, bad ankle resulting in limping, and not many great inspirational moments.

I don’t wish to go on about everything I saw, but to pick out some of the memorable bits (you can also check more photos on my Flickr page). Read more…

Do I have to paint you a picture?

In February I was asked to design the programme for Do I have to paint you a picture?, an international Polaroid exhibition and symposium. The brainchild of photographer Sam Perry, the exhibition and symposium had a good timing now that theoriginal Polaroid film is no longer being manufactured.* Read more…

From there to here – update of recent activity

Rewind & Fastforward:

  • Last post in January – good vibes for the year
  • Go to to West Wales for research week on a film
  • Come back from West Wales & commence storyboard drawing (ideas stage)
  • In February, continue drawing for storyboards & characters (starting to lose bits of paper with sketches on)
  • Design the programme for Time Zero Polaroid photography symposium (it turned out very lovely – more on that soon)
  • Do a lot of dancing and busting some groovy moves, and then, at the height of contact improv dancing (it sounded like a good idea), injure my knee in five different ways
  • Get cabin fever after two days of immobilisation (patience building exercise can never hurt?)
  • Continue drawing a lot
  • In March, get back to walking again and realising I have a huge list of stuff to share here.

So, here we are. Lots of interesting little bits to come, here’s a snippet from December. After out improv gig at Chapter, which I mentioned in a previous post, me and the genius of Mr Nic Finch did some improv drawing.

Read more…

Mix and match notebooks

Notebooks

Here are some fruits of the labour from a Saturday afternoon. On one of my usual wanders around the charity shops I started admiring the old hardbacks on the shelf, especially their texture and illustrations. Touching them gave me a real sense of ownership that had left its mark on the pages. I wanted to get these books but not just so that they can sit still on a shelf with their counterparts – they deserved more than that. Read more…

Them clever designers… snapshot of London Design Festival 09

Last weekend I checked out a selection of events and exhibitions on offer at the London Design Festival.

I like festivals: you are guaranteed to have a selection of visual snippets, tasty (or not so tasty) morsels. I find it rejuvenating to wander around the smaller exhibits, seeing the work of independent and up and coming designers who often have great ideas to show. And all the unexpected discoveries to be made on the way – that’s my kind of day out and about.

My colleagues from Stills went to 100% Design on Thursday, so I decided I would plan to see “all the other stuff” over the weekend. On Friday I started my trek at the Viaduct showroom in Clerkenwell. Their New Modernists exhibition struck a chord with me as I’ve always had a soft spot for simple, clean and clever design. Read more…