That guy is Noel. He was at VS. We think he enjoyed it.

On Tuesday the 16th of February, a day that will live in infamy, We, ShellsuitZombie, hosted a silly evening. Braving wind rain and puddles, a krunkload of people came along to enjoy what we had promised would be a night of competition, intrigue, industry and graduates. And against all odds, we think we just about pulled it off…

With creatives from agencies like AMVBBDO, Fallon, W+K, Profero, BCL etc, designers from beautiful boutique agencies like A+B, The Plant, Morph, Magpie and DRY as well as some lush prizes on offer, a couple of cracking bands, beats by DJ and Designer David Rudnick and a lovely bunch o’ students and grads, that made for a fun-ass time. (and the longest sentence in the world. care.)

The Point

We believe that your first contact with industry shouldn’t be in the reception of a design agency, nervously clutching your portfolio. Job interviews are so forced and you have such a short time to get your personality across, yet personality is a vital part of teamwork and the creative process.  Fortunately, the majority of design professionals are joke-loving booze-hounds and somehow they seem a lot less daunting with a beer in their paw.  Our intention was to create a social atmosphere where grads and pros meet not as potential colleagues, but as co-humans; connecting through humorous anecdotes, not relevant work experience; flipping beermats, not pages of the (immaculately formatted) CV.

The Competition

We really wanted to avoid a school disco situation with grads on one side and pros on the other, nervously eyeing each other, dreading that first dance.  So we came up with a strategy to skip the small talk and escalate to full-on flirting.  The theme of the night was VS, and so a competitive spirit was encouraged throughout the night.  Guests were instructed to pick mini-duels with each other in whatever form they deemed appropriate.  These nano-challenges could be anything from drawing the best willy, to a dance-off, to the best magic trick. The winners of the most impressive micro-tasks won some awesome geek-out prizes kindly donated by our friends - including mugs by A+B Studio, t-shirts and posters from Magpie Studio and the limited edition Firetrap gnome from DRY (thank you all for donating these prizes).  Most importantly everyone got involved, the air was thick with challenges, and these led to real dialogues between new acquaintances.

Meanwhile we had music from the awesome Keston Cobblers Club and the smooth sounds of Harrison Hope.  Later on designer and DJ Dave Rudnick laid down his eclectic beats (So Solid anyone?) and the boozy chat continued.

The Future

More of the same innit?  We love organising events like this and will keep on doing more.  If you have suggestions for themes or locations, definitely get in touch.  Check out our flickr and Facebook pages for more pics and make sure you come along to the next one!

Peace out playerz. One Love.

If this doesn’t make you want to hug a friend/pet/inanimate object then you’re literally dead.*

(via yourstru.ly)

*That’s not a threat [we do our threats predominantly via email], we just mean dead inside, a bit like Paris Hilton.

The second prize haul for Tuesday’s NOW SOLD OUT VS event is a couple of brilliant limited edition prints from Student Designer, ShellsuitZombie contributor and irritatingly talented Midlander [Stoke, bleugh] Andy Cooke. I warn you, I will personally be fighting tooth and nail for one of these bad boys, so bring your A game dickheads (nothing personal). If you want to jump the gun and snaffle one up right now, go to his shop here.

Still more to come you beautiful people (I’m feeling a bit bad about saying the dickheads thing now)

Just a few of the prizes and giveaways available on Tuesday courtesy of the guys at Magpie Studio and A+B Studio. Benji, David and your respective crews, we salute you!

More to be announced imminently.

50 students and graduates. 50 professionals. Two bands. Two DJs. Some beers. And unfortunately we will be there too.

Come one come all to witness a gladitorial battle - observe a series of physically and mentally gruelling tasks designed specifically to test us all. Grip your beer white-knuckled as your agility and nerves are put to the test. Or just help us unite the current and future leaders of the design and advertising industries at utilising a mixture of beer, chat and music.

Some people have asked so we thought we’d give you a bit of an update on who is coming along to VS (which is now in a week!). Here are a few of the rival industry crews who should be rocking up for a pint.

Creatives from:
W+K
AMVBBDO
Fallon
Wunderman
Profero
Billington Cartmell
Morph London
Clinic
Magpie Studio
The Plant
A+B
Dry
D&AD
Glug
Merrell
Mesh

That plus students and graduates from all over London and the UK. Bring your uni down and REPREZENT.
We also have some lush giveaways and prizes (objects, posters, buttons and other ephemera) from Dry, Magpie Studio, A+B and ourselves.

MUSIC
Musical entertainment will be provided by two bands who have been picking up lots of radio airtime and have both recently released debut singles -

First up we have Keston Cobblers Club, a South London folk four-piece.

And second up it’s Harrison Hope, a North London outfit known for
melodic soulful rock.

As well as these two awesome live acts we also have a mega treat in the form of ‘The Liberal Democrats’ - a duo of DJ’s who have recently worked with Ali Love and Erol Alkan (including designing this Tee) and are currently working the London circuit. David Rudnick was responsible for the Annie Mac mini mix last week - believe us these boys will blow your socks off.
Download a free 80 minute taste of David Rudnick right Here courtesy of us.

If this sounds like your cup of tea, click on the poster up top to go straight to our shop, where you can pay the paltry price of £2.50 for your ticket (It will be £3 on the door, that’s if there’s even space!). What’s more, with the cost you will recieve a free badge and a poster on the day so you NEVER FORGET US.

7pm, Tuesday 16th of Feb, The Old Blue Last, Shoreditch. Drop it like it’s hot motherfucker.

Well, only 6 days late and a merry New Year to Everyone. A January of mince-pie-belly-related guilt offset/worsened by extra calorie-burning trudging through seemingly endless snow eh? Well in case anyone is interested, ShellsuitZombie have HUGE PLANS for 2010.

First of all, it’s looking like our initial dreams of a print magazine are finally to come true - we don’t want to give away too much at the moment but we are teaming up with a brilliant independent magazine to bring you a mega issue one of the ShellsuitZombie manifesto, our grads guide to being a grad. We all found our first eighteen months fucking tough so this should hopefully help others get through it. The best news about this is WE NEED YOUR HELP. Much of the magazine will be made up of content submitted or written by you guys. More on this another time.

Secondly, our next (and biggest yet) event is on February the 16th, at THE OLD BLUE LAST PUB in Shoreditch, East London. We will be announcing details next week and there will only be limited tickets so we really wanna see those fingers…

Finally, We will be once again playing a big part in D&AD New Blood, held this year at Free Range in the Truman Brewery. God knows how the crumblies at the deed worked it out but they’ve come up with a great solution to some of the issues of last years event and we are honoured and excited to be involved.

In the meantime we will of course be providing brilliant graduate, student and pro work through this, our blog. yum yum sild.

Tree:Mix is a platform for designers and illustrators to show of their creative skills to the world through a variety of collaborative projects. We posted a while back about ‘Rip Rip, the project where people illustrate halves of a magazine page‘. Well this idea - started by recent design grad James Robert Fox - pushes that even further.

In ‘Digital:Mix’ one person does an illustration in either Photoshop or Illustrator and submits the artwork file to the website. This artwork can then be downloaded by anyone to embellish/improve with the only rule being a link to the existing piece. There is also ‘Scanner:Mix’ which caters for the hand-drawn technophobic illustration style by not allowing any computer trickery.

Both options are free for anyone to have a go at and the idea is brilliantly simple - in fact hopefully SSZ will have a pop at one over the christmas hols (if we can see over our collective bellies post-turkey that is). Then anyone can rate each mix and view them all in the provided gallery, or use the forum to chat to the artists.

Honestly, this site has everything a christmas-holiday thumb-twiddling aunt-avoiding wine-infused image-maker could ever need. Get yourself there, download the files and have a go. Your new Xbox can wait.

As you all know, ShellsuitZombie isn’t a jobs board (and will never be one) but yesterday we were asked if we could help with some work for L’oreal at Lewes based agency Michael Bell. We can’t make it but we know someone who can! (potentially you)

You need to be
-A young designer with a website/work to show
-free Tomorrow (Friday 16th) or Monday
-living close to (or able to get to) Lewes, near Brighton
-able to write an email to james@michaelbell.co.uk (copying in submit@shellsuitzombie.co.uk)

This isn’t ‘work experience’, it’s real CV-enhancing shit.
MIMO (if you get that you’re the right age to apply)

Here is the short shown at the D&AD student awards. Apart from some mickey-mouse After-Effects work (Our fault, not D&ADs) and an overuse of the word ’students’ we’re pretty happy with it.  Thanks to Laura and Dion at D&AD for putting it together, filming it and generally being awesome.

Preparations are underway for our stand at this years New Blood graduate show. We will be offering workshops and short briefs, goodies, great chat and other creative opportunities so if in London between the 29th of June and the 1st of July, get down there and come say hi, it’s free! You can pledge your attendance here.

VietnamtheMovie sent us this image with this explanation:

“First ever Rip Rip by myself & NerosuNero
Here is the concept: You find a image in an magazine, rip it out, rip it in half. You then
illustrate one half and post the other half for others to illustrate. People then post their
halves so you can mash em back together….simple?

Well we love it. So much so that we vow right here and now that if anyone else does this and sends it in we will post it. VTM has laid down the bloody gauntlet, all you need to do is step up.

We would love to see all different styles and subjects covered, whether it be figurative, typographic, computer-based, hand-drawn, made with wood or photographed. Nice one.