Our mates at Brave just sent us a brand spanking new Panasonic TA1! They recently crowdsourced a crack-team of UK designers to create a huge range of skins to customise their latest HD MMC camera – our little number is adorned with a monster skin designed by Brave art director Chris Weston. Check out the full range here.

This post comes from the heart. If you are at all interested in print, independent magazines or free bloody speech then you need to subscribe to this service; it has, quite frankly, changed my life.*

The concept of Stack is to promote independent press by sending subscribers one (or quite often several) independent rags a month. This can range from Eye (RRP £17!) to Little White Lies, Bad Idea, VNA, Anorak, the list is endless. If you’ve heard of these then you’ll know what a good deal this is, if you haven’t then you, child, are the most in need of it.

Strangely though, for me at least, it’s the other ‘free’ magazines you get with the featured title that make it all worthwhile. One example is Manzine, an outspoken reaction to mens magazines written by some of their editors. Reading-on-the-bus-kudos aside, it has helped to reinforce my confidence in the power of a print mag, however home-made - No-one else will own my copy of Manzine, I’ve spilt coffee on it and dog-eared the corners, it’s truly been a journey. I still pick it up months later and it’s as ball-splittingly hilarious as it was the day I got it.

I can’t recommend Stack enough, it’s a bundle of joy landing on your doormat every month, a constant in a world of wars, politics, doom, gloom and digital media. Plus they delivered issue one of our magazine last month, getting them a gold star in my book.

Jonny

*well maybe not changed my life but it’s definitely been the best £40 I’ve spent this year

£2.50 for 64 pages, an Eboy cover and fold-out poster, articles by creative types including Adrian Shaughnessy, Sanky, D&AD, Glug, Eboy etc. Want it? Buy it here.

Think you’ve got an ident in you? Want it shown in front of a live audience of creatives at New Blood? Want to Win an iPad?

Thought so. We at ShellsuitZombie are proud to announce our New Blood competition, the winner of which will get an iPad and their work shown at our film festival on Sunday the 27th of June which includes several Future Shorts and an educational free screening of Art & Copy, the film that everyone in Ad-land is so desperate to see. Our Sponsors, the brilliant London Digital agency morphlondon, have kindly donated their brand pack, an iPad and created a snazzy website which will let you view all the entries and upload your own in the blink of an eye. All you need to do is download the pack and get making!

Seriously, there’s no catch to this. Show us what you’ve got in 12 seconds or less and win an iPad and some great exposure. Nuff said. Go here to enter.

Entrants must be a student or have graduated in the last 2 years. Members of ShellsuitZombie cannot apply…bollocks. Closing date 25th of June.

Some of the more observant amongst our readership may have noticed that our blog, usually churning out content like a cow in a prune orchard, has slowed down recently. This is for two very specific reasons.

1. The ShellsuitZombie magazine

We are proud and very excited to announce issue one of our print mag is currently being compiled, designed and written in order to launch next month. It will be 60 pages of fantastic articles and interviews with some famous (and not so famous) members of the creative industry, as well as our usual heady mix of irreverence, bad puns and slapstick. A true antidote to the existing design press, it is aimed at the graduate and will sell for as little as we can possibly make it, despite having:

A cover and free poster illustrated exclusively for us by Eboy
Words from the likes of Adrian Shaughnessy, Sanky and Glug as well as many others
Articles on Cake, ITV’s ‘The Gladiators’, Moustaches and Michael C Clarke
A true graduate voice on some of the subjects and issues that young creatives really need to know about.

Anyhoo, we’re very excited.

2. D&AD New Blood

After wreaking a certain amount of havoc at last years event, some bright sparks at D&AD have decided to let us loose once again on the unsuspecting public at their huge graduate showcase New Blood. This year held at The Truman Brewery (right in the heart of Brick Lane) on the 24th to the 28th of June, it promises to be a cracker, but what we will have on offer should be the icing on the cake:

Two nights of live music
A film night showcasing graduate work alongside some award-winning short films and features
A dedicated market allowing exhibitors to sell their work/themselves
A whole tournament of creative face-offs (like last year on speed)
A REAL RICKSHAW (from Jaipur)
The launch of our magazine
Job and placement opportunities
Interviews and videos
World Cup football (very important)
Pens
beanbags
and of course plenty of liquid refreshment.

If this sounds like your cup of tea you’d better nip down to our facebook event - that way you’ll get all the news and sign up to our various activities as they are revealed. Make sure that you also register for New Blood or you won’t be allowed in.

WOW that’s a lot of work, so forgive us if the posts aren’t as frequent as usual, it will all be worth it (we promise).

Being a stereotypical middle class white boy, I am obviously fascinated by street art.  In the past we’ve posted about the likes of JR, Blu and the Wooster Collective, and, as promised to a nice young man at VS, we are planning a graffiti-mega-post in the near future.  But in the meantime, to wet your whistle, here is a new Blu-style stop motion by Israeli team Broken Fingaz.

Via Fubiz as usual!

Edit 11/04/10: more lo-fi animation awesome here! MF

Our friends at creative agency Brave are looking for the best junior creative team in the country. When they find them, they’ll give them a one month paid placement and the chance to earn a full time job at one of the UK’s fastest growing creative agencies. But instead of making people trek from the four corners of the land, they’re holding book crits on Skype! So if you’re feeling brave, why not  check out their site or drop them a line on skype_crits@brave.co.uk to arrange a chat and show off your work!

Timothy Saccenti has recently had a website overhaul courtesy of design studio Build.
When Build are faced with the challenge of designing a new website, they really do grab hold of web browsers and show them who’s boss. They own the digital space through a unique approach to interaction design, offering a new perspective on what modern day browsers are capable of.

To see more of Build’s digital work, check out Jason Tozer’s website. Oh hello cascading style sheets.

Amazing.

I don’t know what this means but I love it!

Turns out it’s from Barcelona design school Elisava. You can add your own gifs!!

via Core77

Casting my mind back to our ‘VS’ event in the heartland of Shoreditch last month, we came across a passionate group of individuals who combine forces to form Dumpoke. (I’m thinking like Megazord from Power Rangers but better). In their own words, in one sentence, they exist as “a steamed dish consisting of boned and stuffed meat and like putting a meal together, each member contributes their own original ingredient to make what we deem a very tasty dish”.

Their experimental and fun-loving collaborative approach was exactly what we fancied to spruce up the website, and thus we approached them to create a range of banners. When Simon from Dumpoke came back with the designs and showed us the ShellsuitZombie cushion, there was some fully furnished love resonating from the SSZ mansion. Below is a collection of their masterpieces, two of which we selected for use on our site!

“during the ‘VS’ event they made me feel comfortable and what does a cushion do? Make you feel comfortable”. Explains Simon.

Check out Dumpoke’s ‘mighty-morphin’ creative work here.

Michael Willis is an illustrator with some really nice editorial work under his belt for several magazines that I haven’t heard of (cue self-flagellatory slap on the wrist) and a few that I definitely have (idN, Beautiful/Decay etc.). Bold use of clashing colours and geometric shapes mark Michael as a name to look out for in the future. Nice one bruv.

Mercy, a forward-thinking London/Scouse design and creative agency, has started a project this year to release an E-Zine every month along the theme of the classic 1957 film 12 Angry Men. Issue 2 (based on the central character McArdle, for those interested) features such heavyweights as illustrator Si Scott and Megapoet Luke Wright (read his contribution here) - definitely something to keep up-to-date with, especially if they keep pulling names like these out of the bag.

ps. on the subject of Mercy, keep eyes peeled for their other stuff and events.

Some of our long-term readers may remember us covering the 2009 World Beard and Moustache Championships. Well this is entirely different to that. The London Word Festival is upon us and we here at Zombie Towers are excited as hell about it. With linguistic stylists from all over the world gracing the stage as well as other events ranging from screen-printing to crime-comic- jazz interpretations, this one has it all. You’ve already missed Alex Horne, Robin Ince and various other semi-celebs but there’s literally mounds of steaming culture left to see before the whole shebang ends on the 1st of April.

Impress your mates. Go to a poetry recital.

Living in or around Nottingham? Love Screenprinting? Then you’re gonna love cheesy peas Screen fiends, a screenprinting event being held by Nottingham Trent Design students. Thing is (and sorry guys for being so crap) it’s in 2 days!

Anyway, find a crappy old tee, bring it along and get a one-off design that will rival any of the wang* that the Shoreditch kids are rocking currently. Find out all the deets here.

*wang = mildly derogatory term (not as rude as wank).

James Sanderson, a Bradford-based designer, found this carrot, took a picture and posted it to his blog. Clearly following the Dadaist route of Readymades, Like the great Duchamp Jim has a playful attitude to his work, spicing his blog up with carefully crafted bits of nonsense as well as some slick branding, illustration and type. And just like a few people we met last week he’s not afraid to make a nob gag.

This* makes for a nice way to say something about yourself as well as your work with your web presence - people want to see a person as well as a portfolio.

*His whole site, not specifically the carrot.