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My friend came to visit me the other day. He walked from the train station to the Bull Ring to meet me. This is the first thing he said upon meeting me:

Birmingham makes me hate people

+1 for us :-D!

Flooding in Stirchley, originally uploaded by hellocatfood.

I had to take a 10 minute detour ’cause of the flooding! Argh!

Gomez, originally uploaded by hellocatfood.

This is how I spend my time, seeing the amazing Gomez! They played an awesome set and it reminded me how much I love their first album

I had a sudden breakthrough today concerning my artwork. I’ve always found it hard to brand it and find some sort of logo or common theme to represent it. This isn’t to say that all artists should have to brand themselves, but having some sort of consistency in your artwork/style(s) can help people relate to it and understand it better.

Today I finally created a sort of avatar to represent myself artistically. It’s a very simple avatar, but then why should it have to be complicated (just like that sentence structure)?

With this I can now finally push ahead with creating branded promotional material *sigh* and just generally feel good about my practice!

I was reading through the 1000 rss feeds I’d accumulate since Reading Festival and I stumbled across this post about doing work for mates. It’s all too true. So many times I’m asked by friends to do ‘a quick logo’ or a poster design, usually with little time until it has to be complete. This is why now, even with friends and family, I go through the same process I would do with everyone else.

Queens Of The Stone Age, originally uploaded by hellocatfood.

I was at Reading Festival this year dontcha know. It was a great lineup this year, though I’d seen most of the bands already so didn’t both seeing much after RATM and QOTSA on Friday.

What I always find funny is watching the gates to the arena open and the rush of people dashing to the stage:

Also known as Social Media Experts or everyone who uses Twitter to talk at length about Twitter

Dear Birmingham.

In response to your recent plans to demolish the Flapper: I do not want any more fucking shops or luxury apartments or restaurant. Seriously, how many H&M’s or Nando’s’ do you need within a mile radius? Please, just go away and leave our entertainment venues alone!

He is a genius! And here’s why:

I’ve been in the freelancing game for about 7 months now and one of the major problems I’ve found is in managing my time effectively. It’s so easy to just do nothing all day and frantically rush around trying to do too much in the evening. This is why I’m attempting to map out how each day could be spent. So far it looks a little like this:

09:00 - Do some digital artwork
11:30 - Check e-mails, blogs, twitter etc
12:00 - lunch
13:00 - Do some traditional artwork
15:30 - Read magazines and blogs - 4Talent, Computer Arts etc
16:30 - End of the day!

I know that I haven’t allowed much time for checking and responding to e-mails, but I don’t get many (yet!), so that’s more than enough time.

Am I being overly optimistic with my time allowances?