Official Iscariot Website. Be afraid...

Okay, so I finally decided to get things started on Tumblr. I am now posting all of my current designwork and ideas on my new site at

http://iscariotx.tumblr.com

I will still post here, this new site is just to showcase all of my work and is somewhere that anyone can approach me to ask about business or just anything in general. If you have Tumblr or know anyone who uses it, please give me some support and help me get some followers.

If you're reading this, thanks for sticking around on here. I know I'm not posting as often as I would like to but I have lots of things to do and work doesn't get done by itself.

Keep tuning in for news and other items of general interest. In the meantime, here are some handy Iscariot links...

Myspace Facebook Twitter

C-C-C-COMBO MAKER..?

Hey guys, welcome back.

Super excited to tell you that my friends in Staring at the Sun have started to write their new EP, and they have been kind enough to let me do some more designwork for them. This time I will be doing them a new myspace layout, artwork for the new EP, and hopefully some new merch designs to go with the EP launch early next year.

However, in order to do this the band first need to shift some leftover merch and hard copies of their debut EP "Trails" to make room for all this new stuff. At the moment they have a sick combo deal where you can get one of the two awesome T-shirts (designed by yours truly) along with a hard copy of the EP - all for only £10!

So get shopping, and give these guys some support. They deserve it.



Get your hands on this amazing combo pack here.

I know what I'm buying everyone for christmas...

So you may remember me chatting about Loyalty and Devotion clothing from here. And those of you who enjoyed that article will love this.

L&D is currently reducing all of its stock to clear to make way for new products. This means that all hoodies, crew necks and tees are going for dirt cheap. Every order comes with a bunch of L&D stickers, and remember christmas is just around the corner...

So get your ass over to the store and help promote it via facebook link or blog post etc. As soon as Phil can shift what he needs to, the new stuff will start rolling in fresh from the printworks. (Possibly featuring a design from yours truly) - the only way you're going to find out is to support Loyalty and Devotion and snap up those threads last minute.


Become part of the family. Check out the L&D store here.

Long time since last post... get used to it mofos

Sorry I haven't posted in about a week. Was visiting my folks.

Seriously considering using Tumblr as my main blog, but as more of a business/portfolio type thing. I want to keep posting on here but because of the increase in workload it will be less frequent.

I'm not going to stop posting here, if you could try and recommend my blog to people to follow or just look at now and then. I am fully aware more of you are active on Tumblr, hence why I'm looking into making one.



On a side note, Episode 3 of ADTR's weblog is out now. Watch it here.

Posted by request. ITT: Dancing like a faggot

Today I have a special treat for you. The video below is about a year old, it's me and my friend Tom dicking about dressed up like badasses.

To get the best out of this clip, put the song of your choice on really loud and play the video on mute. Personally I would suggest some Stevie Wonder or maybe some cheesy 80s pop.

The first person to make this into a meme gets a prize.

Cutting it fine on time, with ADTR...

Nothing to post about really, apart from I went and saw "Buried" in the cinema. Watching 90 minutes of Ryan Renolds struggle around in a box is more fun than you might think.

Anyway, here is the 2nd Episode of ADTR's webseries, released today. Enjoy.

If you missed Episode 1, you can watch it here.

Monday Songhunt #1

Hundredth - Desolate

Music Video directed by Scott Hansen, who is responsible for other works such as the video for We Came As Romans' "To Plant A Seed". Check out his Vimeo channel here.

Good video, good song, good start to the week.

Listen to more of this band here.

I Would Have Been Your Daddy... or not...

With the arrival of Halo: Reach, everyone's in on the Halo craze. being a long-time Halo fan, i though it was only appropriate to pick myself up a copy of Eric Nylund's The Fall of Reach. If you haven't read this book, you NEED to read it, especially if you are a fan of the Halo series.

Not only does the book explain a hell of a lot of what's going on in the games, it also gives you a full explanation of everything in the Master Chief's life - right up until the first mission of the first Halo game.

I'm not a big reader myself, but this is one of very few books that I find hard to put down. Not to mention it has been re-released with a cool new 2010 Edition cover.

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On a side note, Rooster Teeth (you may recognise these guys as the producers of Red vs Blue) have been putting together some compilations of user-submitted "fails" which vary from online mishaps to campaign glitches. Some of them are actually quite funny - so far there are 3 videos in the collection. Stay tuned into the Rooster Teeth YouTube Channel for new videos of Halo: Reach and more


You can watch the first episode here.

Chad Manzo must have robotic lion butlers....

Seeing as I didn't post yesterday, I thought I would show you another cool artist.

This guy is another artist which I found whilst searching on Emptees a week or so ago. His name is Chad Manzo, he has done design work for many bands and labels, and is also friends with Nicolo Nimor (who you can look at in my post here)

Chad has churned out some impressive designs, these are a couple from his emptees page:

Look at more emptees designs here, or alternatively visit his official blog.

Why I love ADTR...

Okay so everyone knows the new A Day to Remember album drops on the 16th November. As a buildup to the record's release, the band have released a series of absolutely awesome webvideos to document the making of the new album. Here is Episode 1, which was released on YouTube on the 12th October:

New episodes will be available via the VictorTV channel on YouTube.

Also check out the streams for "All I Want" and "2nd Sucks", get a taste of how epic the new album is going to be.


You can visit the ADTR homepage here

I FUCKING LOVE COLOURING!!

So today I went to this pub/restaurant with some friends from uni, and noticed a colouring sheet on the back of the Kid's menu. While the others were eating I coloured in this badass dog with some crappy restaurant pencils and a couple of paint pens my mate had on him. I was pretty pleased with the result - the birds and that flower just can't get over how fucking hardcore that dog is.


Although everyone in the place must have thought I was some kind of retard, I think the bar staff let me continue - probably because it was such a change to see a finished colouring without gravy and ketchup all over it.



Oh, and one last thing...

Best error message ever...

Browsing on YouTube a few months ago and this error screen pops up. I loved it so much I took a picture on my phone and forgot about it until just now. Enjoy.

By the way I am totally aware that Wookieepedia is one of my bookmarks. I have no shame.


If you are also a fan of Star Wars, you should click here

Godzilla ain't got shit on TDWP...

I was on Vimeo a few weeks ago, and found that Jeremy DePoyster (guitarist from The Devil Wears Prada) had his own channel. Not only are the band super-rad, but Jeremy isn't at all bad at shooting videos. If you're a TDWP fan, make sure you check out the videos on the site. Here is the most recent one, documenting some of the highlights of the "Back to the Roots Tour" in Japan.

Be sure to listen to the band's new EP "Zombie", which came out a couple of months ago. Visit their myspace to learn more.


Visit Jeremy's Vimeo channel here.

Nicolo Nimor could kill an elephant with his skills...

As a designer I am always on the lookout for work to inspire me. Often I end up on sites like Emptees, admiring all of the sick artwork and feeling extremely un-talented in comparison.

One of the designers that stood out to me is Nicolo Nimor, a graphic designer and clothing label owner in the Philipines. Nic is an extremely talented illustrator, and has produced shirt designs for bands such as "The Devil Wears Prada" "Miss May I" and "Architects". An extremely gifted artist indeed.

Visit Nic's profile on Emptees here, and look through his portfolio of truely amazing work. Here are some examples from the site:

Nic also has his own clothing company - Nick Automatic. Check it out here.

Music to design to... #1

I've never been a fan of Bring Me the Horizon. I'm not a scene kid and I know Oli Sykes pissed on a girl, but I actually listen to bands because of the music, not the image.

The new album "There Is a Hell, Believe Me I've Seen It. There Is a Heaven, Let's Keep It a Secret" has been on repeat on my iTunes for the past week and the my verdict is that it is nothing short of impressive. Now if you are a BMTH fan you may disagree with me, but I prefer this new sound as oppose to "Count Your Blessings" (the first album - one which I never really liked). The second album "Suicide Season" was different and much more metalcore than the first album, but "There Is a Hell..." takes the genre to a new level.

With interesting featured performances from artists such as Lights and Josh Francheschi (Singer from 'You Me At Six'), the album's sound varies between songs. Despite this musical variety, the overall style is not lost and the musical quality is consistent throughout. This isn't an album review so I won't babble on about it but I would highly recommend giving it a listen, especially if you were never keen on BMTH's earlier stuff.

The song featuring Josh Francheschi, titled "Fuck" is possibly one of the best songs on the album. Listen to it here

I can do it, I just don't enjoy it THAT much...

In case any of you don't know this I am actually a graphic designer.
It's true, I have a company called Iscariot. Kind of like Judas, but with a Myspace page.

Speaking of myspace, I'm noticing that quite a lot of bands are changing to the new 3.0 format. Now I've already been asked to do a layout on one of these new 3.0 profiles and I'm pretty torn.

Myspace profiles were always such a hassle to edit. Anyone who had one knows, and lots of graphic designers can charge a lot of money to set you up with a flashy layout. Especially if they're any good, like those gifted people at Sons of Nero. The bottom line is, if you want to be good at making decent layouts you have to be a good graphic designer and you need to be pretty good at coding too.

Now when I say myspace layouts I dont mean cramming crappy images and clip art into a profile, I mean a complete graphical overlay of the profile. This means after you have made the overlay and then written out all of the code, you have to then alter the myspace code so that it fits, aligns and works properly. That part is somewhat of a nightmare.

And thats the reason I don't like making myspace profiles in comparison to other designwork; because you're constantly thinking about how the fucking hell you're going to code the bastard. Sometimes this means you limit your designs to make it easier for yourself. I had to teach myself coding from scratch and it took me three whole days of trial and error to finish my myspace page. I will openly say it was fucking hard, and very frustrating. But now I know one or two tricks, and I can do a layout that looks good, even if it is still quite simple. Because of the oppurtunity a myspace profile gives you (you can code pretty much anything, except for java. Real handy. NOT) I always have felt that I wasnt pushing the boundaries enough.

The new myspace profile has basically taken everything cool and unique about myspace and taken a shit on it. now it looks like facebook... with more colours. Now this is bad because all profiles have to conform to the same basic structure and layout, even though you can still make it look good with a header and colour templates. But the whole freedom that made myspace so flexible seems to have disappeared.

However, this does mean that when someone asks me to do them a myspace layout, I don't die as much on the inside. The new simpler profile will obviously be easier to code for, but of course it will have its obstacles. Hopefully I will be better at new profiles than i was with the older ones, but myspace profiles are still very popular with musicians so I guess I will have to adapt.

If you were thinking of asking me for a myspace layout and have now changed your mind, I would like to clarify that I am not bad at making layouts, I just don't always enjoy it. I have things to learn still, but practice makes perfect. The shame of it is, practising is also very, very annoying.


See my awesome myspace page here

Awesome threads for awesome people...

Now I am well aware of the amount of independent clothing stores and there are many good ones about, especially thanks to online store empires such as bigcartel and the like. However, not many of them offer threads as sweet as this...

The shirt sported in the picture is the newest line addition to UK-based clothing company Loyalty and Devotion. Phil Wilkey (pictured), who owns the company, is insipringly driven to offer affordable, high quality apparel to those who want it. Particularly popular in the Hardcore music scene and street culture, Loyalty & Devotion is all about "awesome threads for awesome people".

I have been lucky enough to work with Phil on a couple of projects, notably the "No Second Chance/Beater Split EP" which is available to buy on the L&D store. As well as being one of the nicest guys you will ever meet, he is extremely passionate about alliances with artists, musicians and anyone who wants to be independent. So check out the site at http://www.loyaltyanddevotion.com/ and see what Loyalty & Devotion is all about.

Become part of the family. Visit the L&D store here

I will try to be consistent...

I realise 90% of people with a blog abuse it by posting about three times and then never using the thing ever again. Well I'm going to try not to do that.

The idea behind this is, if i share whats going on with you then I will feel like im not wasting so much time. I'm planning to show you stuff that I'm doing as well as music or videos i find, other talented artists, designers, bands, clothing companies and basically anything cool I want to share.

That's what these things are for, right?