Following on from the announcement of my collaboration with the Museum of London with their new summer exhibition, ‘Our Londinium’ I was featured in the Design Week blog with some info about the work and exhibition. Very happy to have been mentioned on there! View it on Design Week here

Also I was featured on the London College of Communication’s blog which can be viewed here as well as the Alumni newsletter. – Cheers guys!

Thanks to everyone for the great comments about the work!

Last year I was commissioned by the Museum of London to produce a series of illustrations as a visual identity for a new exhibition to coincide with the Olympics called ‘Our Londinium 2012′. They asked me to adapt my doodle style to incorporate modern day and roman objects to build a larger final image. The objects that would make up the final image were all chosen by the museum’s youth panel ‘Junction’. The same panel that chose the doodle style for the exhibition! (Cheers guys!). From the very start the nickname ‘The Doodlist’ was given to me, think it might catch on!

The illustrations will be used for the marketing and internal displays of the exhibition which runs from 22 June 2012 until 2014. I thoroughly enjoyed working on this project and meeting the panel that have helped organise it all. Can’t wait to see it all come together!

More info:
“The Museum of London is working with young people and artists over two years to create bold and imaginative installations in its popular Roman Gallery and other key spaces in 2012.The project will feature new sculptures, creative films, animations and sound, witty and thought-provoking insertions of contemporary objects, drama performances, Latin-inspired poetry slamming and other exciting events…”

A recent article on the guardian website talks to the Junction panel, read here/

Read more on the exhibition here

Closeup:

Modern Objects used:

Roman Objects used:

The illustrations will be used for the marketing and internal displays of the exhibition which runs from 22 June 2012 until 2014. I thoroughly enjoyed working on this project and meeting the panel that have helped organise it all. Can’t wait to see it all come together!

More info:
“The Museum of London is working with young people and artists over two years to create bold and imaginative installations in its popular Roman Gallery and other key spaces in 2012.The project will feature new sculptures, creative films, animations and sound, witty and thought-provoking insertions of contemporary objects, drama performances, Latin-inspired poetry slamming and other exciting events…”

A recent article on the guardian website talks to the Junction panel, read here

Read more on the exhibition here

Closeup:

Modern Objects used:

Roman Objects used:

- Go with your gut feeling
- Failure is not always bad, without failure you can’t learn.
- Keep interested in what you do and take risks.
- Design Design Design
- Michael Bierut is a “Typographic Slut”

It was a fantastic weekend and I feel like my head is full of inspiration and creative energy ready to explode onto the world. It was also amazing to meet the legends such as Sagmeister, Bierut and Kessels at the afterparty.

Bring on 2013!

Photo of Shepard Fairey at offset below:

Me and Michael Bierut

Stefan Sagmeister and Erik Kessels!

Colours look like something form a party ring no? Mmm party rings.

More details about the shirt here: http://www.ollygibbs.com/the-salvation-army/

To buy the shirt and help The Salvation Army’s Overseas Child Sponsorship Program click the button below:

During final year at uni I created a project whereby I designed a box set for a band, Pulled Apart by Horses. The idea was that the boxset itself was built within a guitar – the only way of getting to the set was by smashing the guitar. This would give the buyer the thrill of being a ‘rockstar’ as well as recreating the frenzy that the band produce on stage. The guitarist for the band, James Brown was up for smashing it for a while but it wasn’t until the 23rd January, the release day of their new album ‘Tough Love’ did the guitar meet its demise. He even commented about the guitar looking “too nice to smash up, I kinda wanna take it back into the tour van with me”… I wasn’t gonna accept it escaping its demise so the show carried on.

The event was recorded with two cameras and is currently being put together to create a slow motion film of it’s destruction. It took one smash to destroy the guitar but it worked well. A few shots below give a glimpse of the action…

A link to more information on the boxset: http://www.ollygibbs.com/pulled-apart-by-horses-box-set/

Many thanks to James Brown for agreeing to it and the support he showed!

http://www.pulledapartbyhorses.com

This was an ongoing project for my 3rd year project at university. The idea was to allow people to enter my psyche and to experience some fun in looking at illustration. I wanted them to enter my world and to enjoy looking around at what I put on the paper. This was part of my final year exhibition and was a show stopper with people being drawn into look further.

The piece took in theory a month but the majority was done over a week of barely any sleep. It measures just under 5ft x 5ft and is my largest illustration to date. It was hand drawn with pen and is drawn on without any prior planning. In the piece itself I have included many cultural references that Im fond of such as Doctor Who’s tardis, daleks, the delorean from back to the future and many more. There’s also a ‘Where’s Olly?’.

Below are a selection of other ‘worlds’ I created but in a smaller size varying from A3 to A5.

Over the summer I got asked by the fantastic ‘Do the Green Thing‘ to realise their logo in my style. (http://www.dothegreenthing.com). DTGT is a sort of service that suggests creative and better ways to be more green in life but with a bit more fun. They have a cracking mascot of a creature that they asked me to reproduce in my detailed style but with a twist… the idea was to build up the monster with fruit and veg; a nice development of my illustration style. The final pieces are to be used as part of their ongoing videos at a later date. A few other artists have also been part of this recreating the logo in their own styles.

Some experimentation with size and bring the monster a bit more to life…

This is the monster recreated with my usual style…

I was asked by Fulton Hawk, marketing in America for The Salvation Army to be a part of his creation ‘WARdrobe Army Apparel’. It was created for designers to donate their time and effort to create t-shirt designs to be worn and sold to support the efforts of The Salvation Army. Artists involved so far include Hydro74, Matt Stevens, ZombieYeti and more!

Fulton liked my detailed illustration style and so through a few different designs came to the final choice of using the shield motif as the main shape due to being instantly recognisable. I worked straight into illustrator for this instead of hand drawing which allows the design to be scaled however without losing quality.

Buy the shirt below and help support the salvation army!

Part of a brief for Uni gave us the chance to design and build a box set for a band of our choice. I chose Pulled Apart by Horses and wanted to emulate their live persona within a unique box set. The packaging was shaped up using pattern work and mark making to create illustrations. The box set consisted of 4 vinyls, 1 CD, 1 fold-out poster, 4 digital prints.

The key aspect that I wanted to put across was the band’s ferocious live act. From the first note they go crazy on stage and embrace their audience. I wanted the consumer to feel this energy and to live every guitarists dream of smashing up a guitar. The box set above was created and then built into a custom guitar whereby the only way of getting to it would be by smashing the guitar up. Thus the consumer experiences the thrill of being a rockstar! A simple but effective method I feel.

The guitar met it’s match on 23rd January the release date of the band’s new album ‘Tough Love’. The lead guitarist, James Brown, did the honours in a true rockstar manner, pretty epic to watch. The video is still in production but below a preview shot…

Since 2009 I’ve been involved with designing banners and online advertisements for ‘Muse’ releases and general news topics. These have been used on the official Muse Facebook, Myspace, Youtube and Bebo pages as well as being included in ‘The Resistance’ widget. The main focus was with the release of their latest album ‘The Resistance’ with adverts needed for the new album, singles and other related subjects including merchandise. I have continued to do this with all the latest releases such as ‘Neutron Star Collision (Love is Forever)’. For their stadium tour I created the layout designs to be used by the promoters around the world in advertising.

Since early 2009 I have been involved with working on the official website for the band ‘Muse’. I was involved with implementation of data and general maintenance such as comment control and photo moderation as well as moderating the official messageboard. I’m also involved in creating all the banners on the site for the frontpage/news/shop as well as creating the backgrounds and other graphics.

As part of a project I was involved with working at Media Citizens, I was given the chance to use illustrations to bring a brief to life. The brief was to create a new design for a website that aims to encourage 13-19 year olds to get creative and tackle live briefs for big companies. It was a website run by The Ideas Foundation. I found this to be a fantastic idea and it struck a chord with me when I was younger and wanting to gain experience. Using some fun illustrations and a bright colour palette I wanted to create a world the users could get lost in whilst using the website. The hands were a small homage to Monty Python’s Flying Circus. The client was very satisfied and it was a fun project that was close to my heart.

Illustration details below:

‘Pulled Apart by Horses’ are a punk/rock band hitting the music scene hard gaining lots of publicity from the likes of NME, Kerrang and more. They’ve built up a reputation as being of the best Live acts in the uk at the moment and have gone on to support Muse for a stadium tour date.

In late 2011 I was asked to redesign and build their website to tie in with the release of their new album ‘Tough Love’. This involved creating splash pages promoting their singles and then later for the album itself. The website went through an interim stage and then was released on the day of the new album.

2012 website:

In December 2010 I redesigned and built their site completely to be more customisable for the band. I developed this further with myspace with the new profile design which was being rolled out. I have also been involved in creating banners and online adverts for myspace, facebook and youtube.

2010 website:

As part of working with the bands artwork I was also asked to create promotional ads for magazines and posters for festivals as shown below. This included the likes of Kerrang! Magazine and Poster boarding for Sonisphere Festival as well as a flyer promoting their london gig at the iTunes Music Festival.

This illustration was for a competition to design a snowboard sticker decal for Grafik Armor. My design was chosen and is now for sale over on their website.

Reddie & Grose approached me a few months ago to design them their annual christmas calendar which would be sent worldwide to their clients as a gift. They wanted something similar to my usual illustrative style but obviously christmassy. I went ahead and designed pattern-like images that fitted together. I started off using their colour palette provided and eventually stripped it right back to basic line work. Illustrations and photos of finished product below…

For a uni brief we were asked to re-design and come up with a different way of displaying the magazine, Varoom!. I decided to make the logo into a stronger symbol embracing the exclamation mark and the ‘V’ by combing the two. The idea was for my design to be more of a supplement or side-magazine for the main one which could target key areas e.g. students or tackle subjects on specific genres. Each article was to be on its on pull out folder allowing for the magazine to be shared and easily read where-ever.