More work on website

Visit: wemakeart.com

where we have placed more screengrabs from the work we have done for the Play 'Fear of Queer', which premieres 19th November, Custard factory, First night Sold Out sorry...

New Work

We are happy to announce that we have just won a pitch to animate a series of films for Practical Car & Van Hire. They are a nationwide company that started 25 years ago in Brum - so we are more than happy to help them celebrate their silver anniversary by producing a series of films that take you through the 80's, 90's and the (sorry for using this term) the noughties... The films will be used at the birthday celebration as well as virals and adverts. More info and screengrabs soon. 

Rehearsal FOR FEAR OF QUEER

Tonight's rehearsal went well. The actors are really coming together. We need to tighten up on the film side of things but it's looking really strong - tech tomorrow at the actual theatre, which will help enormously with getting the films right in respect to colour and contrast. Just left and caught the train, which is going the long route back to wolves...

We are the only people on the train except for an MP in first class whose names we can't remember... Although I recall he did give back something like £4k's worth of expenses for which he refuses to say what they were for. Probably 1st class tickets back and forth to Landan! Champaign socialist...

hanging on...

Saw this at about 7.30am, which helped set the day up nicely...

WE HAVE A WEBSITE

We have caved in and made a very small website to house our commercial work. Here's the URL: www.wemakeart.com 

Feel free to look through our work and get in touch to point out anything not working and our spelling mistakes.

cheers,

wma

Working on a theatre brief...

We are very proud to announce that we are currently working on a theatre production with Hannah Philips and Shout. We are producing a series of printed material as well as motion graphics for the play itself. Attached are some visuals as well as the poster. This is the first time in several years we have had the pleasure of hooking up with the very talented writer and director Hannah Philips - so we are very pleased to be working on this.

Hannah is an extremely experienced and original director that always produces extraordinarily powerful plays. The play runs: Thurs 19th, Fri 20th, Sat 21st November 2009 @ 8pm
More info soon,

wma

New Pics from an old job...

A friend of WMA sent us a few fresh pictures of a VJ set we did over a year ago. It was part of the Launch celebrations at Birmingham Metropolitan College's opening of their beautiful Fashion and Graphics studios, Millennium Point, Birmingham. Thought we would post them up...

Cool Type

We Make Art was in Manchester on business today and whilst walking through Deansgate we spotted this remarkable typographic effort. Pure skill - the video was shot on a phone and does not really do it justice...

Offensive design work...

Despite this being an appallingly bad photograph, probably enhanced with some dodgy Photoshop work, it is truly offensive to us on several levels. According to ‘Commission For Racial Equality” webpage: http://83.137.212.42/sitearchive/cre/diversity/map/westmidlands/index.html

“The West Midlands is by far the most ethnically diverse English region outside London, according to the 2001 census data. Nearly one in seven of its population (13.9%) are from ethnic groups other than White British.” So what’s with the ‘ever so white family then?

Nice to see the marketing company responsible for this glorious example of trashy advertising has done their homework, not. Just in case you are wondering where this is from; it is a poster/advertisement for Wolverhampton’s Wulfrun Centre Shopping Complex.

If anyone from the Wulfrun Centre would care to contact us we’d be happy to explain why this is wrong on many more levels – we’ll even re-brand you for nothing – we feel that strong about this...

FREE GIANT POSTERS, YES FREE...

FREE POSTERS

EMAIL STUDIO[AT]WEMAKEART.CO.U.K SOMETHING THAT HAS ANNOYED YOU RECENTLY, INCLUDING A FEW WORDS ON THE BACKGROUND OF YOUR PARTICULAR ISSUE AND WE WILL DESIGN YOU A FREE A0 BLACK AND WHITE POSTER TO CELEBRATE/PROMOTE YOUR GRIPE. 

YOUR EXCLUSIVE POSTER[S] WILL BE PLACED SOMEWHERE IN BIRMINGHAM FOR YOU TO PICK UP [SORRY TO THOSE OF YOU THAT LIVE ELSE WHERE OUR ASBO'S PREVENT US FROM LEAVING BRUM] - IF YOU WANT TO. 

THEY WILL ALSO FEATURE IN THE NEXT WE MAKE ART SHOW, WHERE YOU WILL BE ABLE TO FIND YOURS AND TAKE A FREE COPY ON US...

GET EMAILING - THEY'RE FREE

PARTY AT MEDICINE BAR CUSTARD FACTORY 21.05.09

We are taking on the lovely students from FEED, Birmingham next week for VJ style battle [if you know who we are you'll know we are far to old for this but they insisted, honest]. All details are on the attached poster, which was designed by Ryan Killeen who is a student at FEED.

See you there,

WMA

TDR SEMINAR POSTER

Following on with the FEED branding we have just finished a poster's for TDR's visit to Birmingham's FEED Studio. We decided to supply two versions...

Back to design

We are currently re-branding THISISFEED, which is an organisation within Matthew Boulton College, Birmingham. We are developing a brand for their design dept. Along with the brand is the really horrible job, not, of designing some posters for a forthcoming seminar by one of our heroes Ian Anderson from The Designers Republic.

Here is a little taster of the look and feel so far. Full brand including some animations coming soon...

WMA

2.5ft x x2.5ft, house-hold paint, marker pen and headaches on canvas

sometimes straight lines, computers and software is not where we are at...

'Bambi and Friends' left in Bricklane...

If you are passing Brick Lane you may want to pick up one of our sculptures. We were down in London yesterday checking out venues for a forthcoming show...

WMA

Handbags out for our rail companies!

For months now Chiltern Railways have been having a public dig at Virgin Trains through their billboard ads at Moore Street, Birmingham. Virgin have obviously been rather upset as they have had a pop back on the reverse side of the board. 

We think it is rather funny and refreshing change to the bland adverts that surround them.

WMA

New Public Poster Service

cheers,

WMA

CREATIVE BLOCK

Sorry for being quiet this week, that is assuming that anyone does follow us... The reason is due to the fact that we are currently writing a paper on 'Creative Block'. No this is not a joke. Our deadline is tomorrow so we will be back to posting up some more of our artwork thereafter.

If however you have any suggestions or even problems surrounding the subject of 'Creative Block' please do get in touch. This is an area that we have a great deal of interest in and intend to take our little paper further as soon as we learn to write properly.

Somewhere in the near future we intend to publish a hard copy of our findings in the vain hope it will help industry practitioners and students alike to generate new ideas... We are not saying that people don't have ideas but sometimes getting them out of our heads is the main problem we are faced with...

cheers,

wma

FREE ARTWORK FOR YOU!

We have been a little presumptuous, please forgive us we were bored and had half an hour to kill. We have left you some large format posters around Birmingham! They are tacked up and ready for you to peal off.

Bye for now!

wma

Arts Fest Themes upset us...

In a moment of suffering a slight discomfort, and annoyance at reading this year’s Arts Fest themes we made a flippant post on the Created In Birmingham Blog, which is as good as ever – so shut up and get a life to those that dislike it. We would like to state here that we are very serious in our distrust and dislike of the said themes.

Our main concern is the never changing attitude towards Birmingham that some Brummies have. It’s always, well nearly always stuck in the past. The motor trade, Matthew Boulton etc and worst still, bloody Jasper Carrot and Ozzy Osbourne, who doesn’t even live here and hasn’t done for years. In fact apart from his over exaggerated accent there is nothing Brummie about him. Check out his OZFest to see just how Americanised he has become.

Can’t we just make artwork and celebrate it as it is NOW and look to the future instead of dwelling on what isn’t all that great in our past. Ok, Matthew Boulton did his bit in ending the Slave Trade but had he not been part of it in the first place he surely wouldn’t have needed to contribute to ending it.

Celebrating anything to do with the motor trade seems tiresome to say the least. Anyone that has had to sit through any of Lord Digby’s talks will tell you they are sick of this kind of thing – unless they like staged power/motivational BS talking. His nostalgic talk of the past glories of the industry here in Brum is exactly what is wrong. Instead of dwelling or celebrating on the good or bad of the past: lets deal with the now. Don’t worry it won’t make you a hard line modernist. You can still enter your watercolour daubs into Arts Fest if that floats your boat but you can also enjoy the other things your contemporaries are doing.

Here’s to the now and lets finally say goodbye to the past. Besides I have never ever understood a word that Professor Carl Chinn has ever said due to never ever being able to understand his accent. No one has ever or will ever talk the way he does. Please let’s move on…

we like annette messager

We really felt that we had to plug Annette Messager's work here on our little blog. It makes us happy and every time we see it we want to animate it. It reminds us of Universal Everything's work or the other way around!

Her show is currently running at the Haywood Gallery, London and we are all going on Mass for a day trip!

FORERUNNER RECORDS LAUNCH

We were asked by Forerunner Records to produce a giveaway that provided their customers with information about their services. We couldn't resist doing a 7inch record sleeve.

We had less than 24 hours to come up with the concept and get the artwork to the printers. The lovely snap of Amanda Palmer from The Dresden Dolls we chose was by up and coming photographer Arjun Sohal. There was no time to print a cover with a hole so we opted for stickers of the logos and to have the colour coming through the dye-cut in an abstract way...

Printed onto 140 gsm Beswick’s paper. Type set in Berthold Akzidenz Grotesk - various weights. Pantone Colour 382...

Printed by Heathcoates in Sunny Wolverhampton - very bloody good and reasonably priced!

Sculptures from our Fazeley Studio Show

Here are some pictures of the sculptures that were in our Fazeley Studio Show... Thank You to all of the WMA Team - You know who you are...

Fazeley Studios Opening

Well we are now up and recovering from the Fazeley Street Launch Party. Thank you to all of you that made it to see our work. It was very nice to see Vanley and Emily. Special thanks to James and his partner from CMYKern for making it down and ta for the shout on your Blog.



We are not ones for disrespecting the work of others, as all art is shit and all shit is art, but we now feel that we are the coolest fashionists in town after sitting through two rather dull fashion shows, sorry! Lets say we’ll give Harvey Nichols a miss this year… However, Jacob Kimmie was the total exception to the rest. He didn’t do a catwalk show but instead exhibited a range of clothing that was beautiful. The detail in some of the garments was stunning.



The Studios are beautiful and it is starting to become a hub for creativity, which in our minds is a about time. The people behind Fazeley Studios have obviously recognised that creative people don’t always want to work in damp and dirty places such as the Custard Factory and clients want to visit clean and well-presented studios.



Long live this new era of creativity in Brum.

Out with Vanley Burke

We were out and about with the photographer Vanley Burke, who has been documenting black history for the last 40 years. He has a wide range of projects on the go at the moment. One such project is documenting the places where murder or tragic accidents have taken place. His aim is to show the aftermath not just with the physical grief but the way in which life carries on in the geographical situations they have taken place. These photographs show him taking pictures of a shrine dedicated to a young man that sadly was involved in a fatal road accident. Obviously from the amount of flowers, pictures and messages he is very much missed.