British Snowboard Speed Record 151.72kph

So when I am not doing design work, I like to film extreme sports, however sometimes it's good to be the one in front of the camera as take part yourself.
Three years ago I decided that I wanted to break the British Snowboard Speed record, this was currently held by Jamie Barrow, one of the British boardercross racers.

I managed to get sponsorship from Ruroc helmets and Windlip Snowboards, we did some testing of their current boards and developed one specifically for the attempt, it has almost zero side cut, raised rails and carbon fibre topsheet to keep it rigid. Cork was also added around the nose to help dampen any vibrations that might be caused if it was not a perfectly smooth surface.

Although that seemed simple, that was the easy part, the hard part was getting permission to use the slope. With only 3 slopes fast enough in the world to use it quickly narrows down options of where to go, fortunately all of these were in the alps, unfortunately 2 of these were closed. Verbier glacier slipped meaning the slope no longer existed and Les Arcs, famously the fastest and longest of the speed runs was closed by the lift operating company as they did not feel the risk it brought to the slope equaled the monetary gains of those who came to the slope for speed events.
Leaving Vars the only slope still fast enough to reach the speeds needed, being run not by the main lift company or town but by an individual who was very anti snowboard means that it is almost impossible to find out when the slope is open. Two unsuccessful trips last season made me tentative about going all the way again only to be disappointed, however sometime you just have to go for it and hope that things will eventually work out...and they did.
The weather was clear and training was on for the skiers, not all the slope was bashed so we only had some to practice with, I did a few runs getting into it, hitting around 100kph, then 130 kph on the first day. With the slope pisted higher the next day it was great conditions snow wise, however there was an extremely strong cross wind, this didn't cause huge problems for me, just made it harder to keep straight and tucked up.

On my second run I managed to equal the British speed record reaching 151.72kph:





I did one more run, although reaching a higher top speed I had to put in a heavy turn to keep stable, only averaging 138kph average over the 100m measued distance.

Until next year!

2015 a New Year, New designs

A new year and time for a slight refresh for The Kitesurf Centre.

We decided that many of the customers liked their previous circular stickers so we have continued with these designs with a slight change in terms of the colourways. The majority of their clients prefered the Blue with others opting for the purple and a few the pink, the yellow was the least favoured firstly the colours had not come out quite as planned ,the print quality had been quite low and the company has since closed, but also the yellow did not match up with many of the boards or footstraps colour schemes which is where most of the stickers are placed.
Looking into this I have designed this years stickers by first looking at some of the main Kitesurfing brands that are stocked by the centre, such as North, Liquid Force and Airush and seen which are their colours for this season. Using this info and after speaking with customers over their prefered colour of stickers and boards I then proceeded to produce the new circular stickers.
I do the main basis for the design in illustrator as I find using vectors for the kites and swirl much easier especially at the stage where colours are constantly changing and then do any finishing touches in photoshop.

There were a few slight changed to the text to make it a little easier to read at a glance however nothing noticeable without looking at them back to back.

Green is one of the new colours, this is used on many of the 2015 kiteboards and I went for quite a neutral green so that it works with more of the other colours on a board rather than the clashing style I used on the last batch.

The other design idea I wanted to visit was one where the brand name was more prominent, or even the basis for the design itself. An advantage to this is that it could be used more for marketing on items such as car bumper stickers, on seeing the deisgn The Kitesurf Centre chose to do a large and a small of this so it could still be used on board or other items.

Reading Vegetarian and Vegan Society Logo

I have been asked to design the logo for the society, firstly looking at breaking it down into the separate words and how these can be shortened/ linked together

READING UNIVERSITY
VEGETARIAN
VEGGIE
VEGAN
VEG*N
SOCIETY

From here I then put a few ideas quickly together using shorter words or acronyms.

From I then took the idea of the lines and added a background pattern with fruit and veg repeated.

I then looked into actually designing a logo in the style of a logo, one simple and circular, the other more in the shape of something you might find on a pot of Jam. I like them both, although with the natural feeling colour choice neither look over exciting.

I really liked the idea of using the acronym RVVS so had a look at that however I decided it looked more like a banner for a business than a university society logo.

I then looked online at other Vegan or Veggie logo's, many of which involved a plant or one leaf coming off the V at the start. This looks ok but a bit simple for a logo, I thought maybe make a plant with the leaves at the words.

 

Although this doesn't say Reading on it anywhere it could easily be added, perhaps as the stem or the rim of the plant pot. I think this has a much more fun and welcoming side to it and fits in better with the university society style of things.

Finally I took the idea of using words all the way and built an entire tree using words that are associated with being a Vegetarian or Vegan. From famous scientists who have lived in this way to how you will be viewed and feel about yourself.

This one taught me a lot about the life choices that are made from being a vegetarian or vegan but also about many offshoots of these such as beegans or the more extreme animal rights activist, all of whom aim to make the world a happier, healthier and more equal place.

I have used a few pictures and vector art Designed by Freepik, which has been useful to get me stared with ideas, a great place to look for vector files for projects big or small.

Summer Video Edits - The Kitesurf Centre - Liquid Force

Over the summer I have been doing a few edits for The Kitesurf Centre, this involved filming in a range of conditions and then putting a quick edit together after.

Some are about equipment, others have been used to advertise lessons and even a few mini vids to help show off a trend or new sport such as the Kite biking (BKX) video .

Here are all of the clips and videos I have created on this project over the summer:



















There are quite a few but it has really helped me work on my filming and editing, trying a range of cameras and techniques, I will soon be upgrading from the GoPro Hero 3 to the Hero 4 which has just been released and am eagerly awaiting the arrival of a DJI Phantom 2, which will greatly open up the angles available to film with it's superb versatility. Kitesurfing videos with a drone will be following soon. I have had some issues with editing a lot of the GoPro footage that is taken straight into Adobe Premiere, with much of it often having to be put through GoPro Studio first. For a couple of the mini vids where little editing or posts production is required I have just used GoPro studio as there was little need to move it across after.

The Snowkite Centre leaflet design

This project was helping out a friend, he already had an idea for the design but just wanted it tweaking and smartening up.
The snowkite school he is starting in Italy plans to work with The Kitesurf Centre by advertising to the Kitesurf students there and to try and bring them across to Aosta near the French border in Winter for some snow kiting.
I first showed him a few other leaflets to help with some ideas and looked at the current website - uk.snowkitingcentre.com

Here is the first design that we came up with:

This looked ok but we decided that the "Lessons and Hire" was the most important text on the page and needed to stand out a little more, we looked into making a curving white line between the text to make it look like a snowboarder had gone down a mountain. However we soon found that this was very difficult and didn't looked good so we took the idea of the Bold white block around the text on the kitesurf centre leaflet and tried with that.
We also thought that the whole document was a little flat and lacked a bit of life and the winter feel that it needed.
Here is what I came up with as a finished product:

The new pin shows the location a little better.

The "lessons and hire" really stand out well and the snowflakes bring a nice sparkle and winter feel to the whole experience. The large snowflake has also given us an idea of where to go with a logo so this should be coming soon.

See more on the subject at the snowkiting centre

2014 Promotional work

With the new year starting The Kitesurf Centre has brought in all of the new gear and so with that comes all the new promotional material and banners to go with it. These were all created using Photoshop CS4
Here are a few examples:

These two were used as part of a scrolling banner on their shop home page.

This was actually used around November although I found it so fun to make and decided it was worth putting in the post.

The other main pieces of work has been a of a similar nature, a desk front, holiday adverts and end of lesson hand out packages.
 

Next post all about photography and how to create circular panoramics!

Freeze Frame Filming and editing #Ridebarinvalthorens

#Ridebarinvalthorens

With this as the name of the short video I was making it roughly gives away what it's all about.
I joined a group of bar staff on their yearly trip to the alps to film and edit their trip together as part of Freeze Frame a company based around extreme sports filming, they can either rent the cameras out to you or if you are feeling lazy or want something slightly more professional they can film, edit and do it all for you.

It was perfect weather for filming in the days:


With all the footage collected and some tricks with the panoramic shots it was time for some editing.

I use the adobe suite to do my editing however I am still on CS4, with a little research into making a good intro in after effects and a voted choice over which song to build it to by the bar it there was only one thing left to do, cut it all together. Here is the end result, they had a great time but many are learning so it's no Art of Flight