Tsimp's Blog

Hello I'm Tom Simper, I'm an aspiring graphic designer and this blog is where I am going to display some of my work and thoughts about it.


I have noticed that stars in the media all seem to be making the same hand gestures covering one eye. To illustrate this I have compiled many images of celebs doing these signs and have created a design based around it. I have created two designs focussing on the eye as this seems to be the focal point of the stars in the 'industry'.

I used photoshop to create this image by drawing the outline of an eye on top of the celebs and manipulating the hues and shades until the eye was just visible through the images.

I used a similar technique with this image but I didn't crop around the eye, and I used a lighting effect  to create glare on the eye.

I have recently been experimenting with different printing techniques such as: Lino cutting and Mono printing. This inspired me to create a poster combining the techniques. The theme of my poster is the control that the music industry has over it's artists. I created Lino stamps of controlling hands and an all seeing eye to represent the controller, with Monarch butterflies and puppet strings showing the control placed upon the artist. I took a Mono print of Jessie J because she is an artist controlled by the music industry which is reflected in her lyrics and music video's.

I wanted to combine my new techniques with my current practice which utilises photoshop  so I scanned in my image. I then meticulously outlined the different elements in the picture, adding colour, creating shadows and shading and finally adding effects too bring it to life.

This image depicts Lady Ga-Ga being programmed by her handler which in this case is Joseph her dad. The leopard print clothes and ears represents the sex kitten programming, which is reflected in her music which is usually about sex. This influences her young and impressionable audience. The computer she is connected too is programming her and is making her into the already controlled artists that you see on the screensaver. I created this poster mainly from prints which I scanned in and edited using photoshop. The only imported image are the photographs in the back ground which have also been edited such as the cracking around Ga-Ga 's eye.