Lightship Visual

The Neutral Swiss

robotstu — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 06:12:32 +0000

Stuart was invited to speak at the Lebanese American University in April 2005 for the first typographic conference held in the middle-east.

His lecture: "The Neutral Swiss: Modernism fails through the prescription of photography" was derived from his research into visual communication.
Stuart is working on his PhD based on the paradoxical premise that less realism in an image equates to more accurate communication.

Return soon for more on this …

Joondalup ‘Airborne’ Splash

robotstu — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 04:24:21 +0000

This was the opening page of the City of Joondalup’s festival website for 2003. Music is by the very wonderful Icelandic band Sigur Ros.

Grids: Creative Solutions for Graphic Designers

robotstu — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:17:37 +0000

Yes! Made it into a Rotovision book. Here’s a poster I did for a series of talks by some of New Zealand’s best modernist graphic designers. Hence the rigidly gridded design, which obviously worked also for the editorial team at Rotovision. This one they have put into their sumptous "Grids: Creative Solutions for Graphic Designers". The book shows the grid upon which each piece of design was built and even includes a CD-ROM with grid templates "to go". Thanks to Dr Noel Waite for the words on the poster. What I tried to do with the "L"s at the end of each line of the title was suggest open mouths with the words coming out: I thought it would be a bit of visual wit to loosen up the grid. Needless to say noone has yet picked up on that!

Your Arts is Showing

robotstu — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 13:12:14 +0000

Paula Silbert has been a very good client for Lightship, so we were very pleased to have come up with something suitable for her that we were both really chuffed about. These graphics are intended to show Paula doing what she does best, ignoring barriers and doing her utmost to pack the punters into the galleries. A chance to draw some ‘art’ but the real trick is in the typography which is set up like a gallery caption, including a description of the medium ‘lithograph on board’ and ‘ink on paper’ and the ‘canvas’ sizes.

French gig poster

robotstu — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 05:24:13 +0000

This is for one of the bands on the HSR roster, Beautiful Lunar Landscape, for a gig in Bordeaux, France, where they were ably supported by another HSR outfit, Colour Kane, who hail from Belgium.
I got inspired by the amazing French illustrator Michel Quarez who did, among other things, some very psychedelic ads for Citroen in the late ’60s. Thanks to our involvement with Hidden Shoal Recordings, Lightship Visual is becoming a small international concern and I can play at being a Reid Miles (the Bluenote sleeves guy) or whoever does those stunning ECM covers - Stu

Hidden Shoal Records

robotstu — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 09:47:59 +0000

Why have we been so busy? In addition to running the biz and working for all our fabulous clients, and me (claiming that I’m) writing my PhD, we’ve gotten mixed up with Hidden Shoal Recordings, a fab initiative of the wonderful Cam Merton (sometime Lightship collaborator, especially in the 3D department). You can go there to check out what it’s all about, but here are a couple of samples of my covers for some of the wonderful acts on the HSR roster.

This is the cover for an EP by the Japanese artist Cheekbone. Photo by Samantha.

This one is for my own project (with Wayne Harriss). The image is a camera throw, a chaotic means of taking a photograph that Samantha showed me. Hers are better, check out her ‘Serpent’s Sleep’ cover for CSR.

And an illustrative one. The title I took from Jorge Luis Borges’ story. A must read by the way
There are plenty more covers over at HSR but these are the ones I think are really working for me.
—Stu

ECU Yearbook

robotstu — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 09:33:59 +0000

It’s been a while, by garrh. We’ve been so flat out at Lightship that I haven’t had time to put any new posts up since, ooh, about half-past 2006. So, appropriately, here is something from the end of that year, an all singing, all dancing, interactive yearbook of graduate student work from the School of Communications and Contemporary Arts at ECU. Anyone truly interested in the project can contact stu@lightshipvisual.com and you can avail yourself of a copy of the CD (while stocks last!). Some new Flash skills were learned during the making and a big thanks must go to Malcolm Riddoch for his assistance in getting this over the line. Hmm … now it’s just about time for this year’s book. And stay tuned for the redesign and rebuild of the School’s website, very late 2007.

A presentation with HEART

robotstu — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 11:40:46 +0000

Remember, remember back in December we told you about a body of work we were operating on (with our favourite renewable energy bods, RISE)?
We can at last reveal the project, codenamed HEART, was a submission to the WA State Govt. to get funding for the very ambitious Murdoch Activity Centre and Fiona Stanley Hospital.
This project had so many wonderful aspects to it for us at Lightship Visual including the opportunity once again to animate and illustrate (and they call it work!) and for a very pleasant JV of clients (RISE and DPI) AND to assist with an undertaking that hopefully will benefit us all.
This project also made me feel good because I got to work with my good friend Cam Merton (of Shirticus and Hidden Shoal Recordings fame) and call on his sublime 3D skills.
I also got to dabble in architecture (any other frustrated architects out there?) made some very rough sketches and, hey presto, Cam made them come to (virtual) life.
It’s a shame my blogging software won’t allow the 3D movie to sit inside the Flash presentation here. I’ll see if I can get an update on the software but in the meantime, if you really want to see it, I can e-mail it to you. Just drop us a line at stu@lightshipvisual.com

Sustainable Illustration

robotstu — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 02:35:07 +0000

It’s not every day you get a client enlightened enough to commission some illustration, let alone a whole series of complex illustrations to represent complex systems. But then it’s not every day you find a business working hard to try and find ways to save the world. These people are among our favourites here at Lightship Visual; it’s RISE or the Research Institute for Sustainable Energy. Keep an eye on us and them in the new year as we’ve got some very hot irons in the (non-fossil-fuelled) fire.

Small link in a big chain

robotstu — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 02:23:02 +0000

Website design for a revolutionary technology to prevent waste in the oil & gas industries.

The images were made by Sam Landels from 3D models by Clive Williams built to the specs from design engineer/inventor Derek Hall at Testlok. Testlok and TestPup logos are from us here at Lightship Visual, as is the site design which is in Stu’s High Swiss style: lean and mean and hopefully functional.

This device was featured on the ABCs ‘New Inventors’ show and is currently being promoted with Sam Landels’ very slick DVD for which Lightship did the animation and music.