The Brilliant creative team blog

So you have been given a print job to work on. You have your layout setup and looking great, you have flowed in all the copy and created all the styles and masters you will ever need, at this point you couldn’t be more efficient... now all that is to be done is source some awesome looking photography.

Images of great photography start to flash through your mind, you know what you want and now you’re on a mission. A quick check from client notes "a young, attractive woman at a party having fun", easy!

You enter your search and wait in anticipation like a kid opening a birthday present who is 99% sure what it’s going to be, only to be greeted with page after page of the most bizarre and useless photography ever taken. What results next is hours of searching and next page clicking as your excitement dwindles into despair and you actually wish you could punch the models in their stupid faces.

Wow... what happened there, everything went dark?

Anyway, there is a fantastic website called www.awkwardstockphotos.com dedicated to the best of the worst in stock photography, seriously this is simply amazing and should be a real eye opener to those that don’t have to deal with sourcing stock photography!

Buzzfeed have also put together their top 60.

We haven’t had to many Christmas tunes playing in the studio this year, I think we are all a little sick of them to be honest, but it’s not really Christmas without a them is it. If you’re kind of feeling the same, why not check out these alternative Christmas mixes to get you in the spirit for the big day!

Benji Boko’s - A very Christmassy remix mixtape

Marc Hype - The worlds second greatest Christmas tape

Enjoy :)

I found this nice little app created by hitcents.com, draw a stick man and follow the adventure.

drawastickman.com

Today we are celebrating a monumental event at Brilliant... it’s the governor’s Birthday, the mega one, the big 4-0!

We invite you all to take a trip with us through what has been dubbed as the ’Wonder Years’.

Cue the Daniel Stern narration...

This guys work really does take me back to print making classes, having to spend hours carving into blocks of wood and leather with various tools only to be rewarded with mangled fingers and a print relief that looked nothing like you had hoped... I really hated those classes!

Mark Evans seems to love all that stuff, his work is so detailed it has to be seen for yourself, plus he seems big on knives and sharp things.

He also has a really nice logo: www.markevansart.com.

This is a nice little video with 29 ways to stay creative.

So if you are ever stuck for ideas or inspiration simply follow the video, cram as many in as you can and your creative block will be lifted!

I love a good info graphic, more for the style and design than anything else. An info graphics job is to convey facts and figures on a subject in a clear and organised format, which can be anything from US oil usage from the last decade to how manly is your drink to how expensive the Death Star would be to actually build ($15.96 Septillion in case you were wondering).

Once in a while I actually pay attention to the information being served and found this to be some pretty cool info about Yahoo. The artwork is pretty large so you will have to View it here.

It always seems that as soon as I realize I cant buy something I want it more than ever. Never more has the case been so than with these "Sin Toys"... it gets worse, not only cant you buy these toys, they aren’t even real!

Damn you Fontomass and your excellent 3D renderings.

Every one knows who Annie Leibovitz is, celebrity photographer, chief photographer of Rolling Stone for over a decade, tour photographer for the Rolling Stones and erm... in debt for 24 million!

For decades she has photographed the big celebrity names and no more so than in her latest ’Dream Portraits’ series for Disney Parks marketing including; Penelope Cruz, Jeff Bridges, Queen Latifah, Johnny Depp, Gisele Bundchen, Jennifer Lopez, Scarlett Johansson and David Beckham amongst many more.

Although the Disney stuff is great I much prefer her adaption of the Wizard of Oz for Vogue featuring Keira Knightley.

Annie doesn’t have a website or portfolio online that I could find so Google Image Annie and enjoy.

Stop the Violence is a series conceived by photographer Francois Robert who has collaborated with Rick Valicenti from 3st. Francois came up with a alphabet made solely out of bones for the photography exhibition "Stop the violence" and Rick stepped in to design the book and also producing a 60 sec promo video.

There are a couple more shots of the collaboration here at 3st.