I painted this in ‘93 on a piece of driftwood, while on holiday in Pornic, France.

One of my favourite short stories by Marcus Sakey. The photo, last exposure of the film, was taken 13 years ago with a dirt cheap throw-away-camera. Pictured is Wiesje, one of my daughters. This picture to me is as heartbreaking as Marcus’ story. You can buy it here - read it!

From Newscientist comes this inspiring infographic.

America, are you happy? The emotional words contained in hundreds of millions of messages posted to the Twitter website may hold the answer.

Computer scientist Alan Mislove at Northeastern University in Boston and colleagues have found that these “tweets” suggest that the west coast is happier than the east coast, and across the country happiness peaks each Sunday morning, with a trough on Thursday evenings. The team calls their work the “pulse of the nation”.

Second of three snowflakes. This one has a definite New Zealand touch, with the koru at the end of the gun’s barrels.

Marcus Sakey reads As Breathing

Like the other short stories As Breathing is available from amazon.com. To hear Marcus read the story, click here for the audio version.

Gravity and Need, a Marcus Sakey story, is available from amazon.com now. Four of the covers I designed for Marcus carry my photography. This is one of them.

University of Otago wayfinding design

While working as creative director at Gibson Rusden Wellington I did a brand survey for the University of Otago. One of the conclusions was people got lost quite easily on the Dunedin campus and didn’t understand which buildings were part of the campus and which not. As a result I designed a wayfinding system, including Meeting Points with a complete map of the grounds, so students, staff, suppliers and visitors would be able to easily find their way outside (and inside buildings), saving time, limiting frustration and increasing a sense of security. At the same time the Otago brand became prominently visible, increasing brand awareness and creating a positive brand perception. The system has been implemented on all the university’s locations around the country.

Ebook covers for Marcus Sakey

Award winning and best selling author Marcus Sakey is putting his short stories online. The Desert Here and the Desert Far Away is the first of six covers I created. As with the covers for Blake Crouch Marcus’ covers are clearly part of the same series, using straight forward and powerful photographic images, with a layout and typography to match.

Random Statistic 07

Now also available from amazon.com

A great benefit of ebooks (and their covers) is if something needs updating it can be done in a matter of minutes. A few weeks ago Blake’s latest novel Snowbound was launched (you can buy a signed copy here). The title now features on the banner on the cover of his ebooks.

Previously some of Blake Crouch’s short stories were only available from his website. With amazon’s changed royalty structure all are now available there too. You can buy *69 here.