13 Apr Ngon Art – Book Three

I personally love those days when you wake up Monday morning, go to work, get stressed out at the mere thought of having to put up with yet another stressful day, only for it to get gradually worse on the way towards dinner and then a tiny thought pops into your head ‘why don’t you check on the print progress of one of the projects you’ve been doing?’… Why yes, brain, I think I will.

With that, a small trip on the internet to pick up the tracking number… click… The landing page displays ‘out for delivery’, but that can’t be right, estimated delivery wasn’t for another 3 days, surely my excitement needs to be contained as peeking too soon could result in an unfortunate mess! But wait, scrolling further says its in Manchester. Delivery before 12! I better text my girlfriend to make sure she listens for the door! Excitement breaks! She replies back ‘Its here!’ with a picture of a cardboard container holding something wondrous within… Oh god, the mess I’m about to release would make the juiciest of adult stars limp with shame.

Yes, Monday was a good day that year and on my return home, a shiny white book awaited me with just as much anticipation. And that book was NGON ART.

Seventy pages of matt eggshell goodness with beautifully printed designs, illustrations and renders within a full wrap hard back case.

This is Book Three entitled NGON ART, printed delicately by blurb.com and they did a great job too. Each page holds the ink and detail extremely well for matt printing, light colours are vibrant and dark colours don’t overpower and bleed into each other.

This book, as its predecessors, has a main use as a portfolio, I’ve been working on this particular one for about 4 months now, on and off and when I could muster the mental strength to sit down and design it.

The design went through several incarnations before I settled for a bold, striking look, using vivid colours, a heavy weight header font to capture your attention and full bleed imagery to finish you off, only to pass you a cigarette and then roll over and go to sleep.

Needless to say, for a designer, every Monday should be like this. Take a minute out to bask in something you’ve done, be it small, medium or absolutely mindblowingly massive. The reason being isn’t to fuel your own ego, far from it, it’s to sit back and put admiration into what you love doing, the details you’ve put in that no one but other designers may or may not pick up, it’s to feel good that you enjoy creating, building, tinkering and refining to fuel your passion. You’re a deity in your own right, a God of your own world, to shape it as you please and then destroy it to re-imagine something new.

Or some shit like that…

Anywhoo, NGON ART… Welcome to my world.