SA Innovation - black book snaps








Some quick snaps of the book we designed for the Innovation Summit held in Jozi's over this week. More images and words to follow – we like to explain our thoughts and this is going to be an interesting one…

Muizenberg BLACKOUT - 60 sec shutter speeds


Around 4-ish pm yesterday the electricity in our block of streets went out, needless to say we had an easy day at work. It was pitch black from the vlei to Albertyn road. These 2 shots were taken on 60 second shutter speeds with some pretty warming results.

theBOMBsurf - how to make a surf mag cover, old school

A while back, the awesome SA surf mag 'theBOMBsurf' where going to run an art issue and looking for a once-off cover - concept and execution. In addition to the cover they were also after DPS artwork for the editorial pages, representative of the ‘surf art through time’ theme.

Unfortunately this issue has been put on the back burner for the time being, John McCarthy told us that they have some plans to get it back on track though - so all you art and water lovers out there, watch this space!

Attached are some images we presented to them along with a bit of blurb on our thinking… hit us with some feedback.




Inspiration for the submission was taken from artist/designers Robert Rauschenberg and David Carson.

Rauschenberg was born in 1925 with productions around the 50's. His art, which combines a mix of graphic design and fine art, involves a lot of cutting and pasting of found materials and photographs. He also uses paint and texture to create some superb pieces, his work is truly amazing.

Surfer and graphic designer David Carson, born 1952, still designing and giving lectures was inspiration for the graphic design side of things. He's all about blurring the boundaries between design and fine art. I can remember reading somewhere him being referred to as a 'graphic artist' and not a graphic designer. He also says "don't mistake legibility for communication" which became the premise for the artwork.

The whole idea was to create an art piece that evokes emotion and feeling. We did this by doing some pretty bad photocopying of waves (all on purpose of course) at our local library. We then tore up the photocopies and stuck them down to recreate our own wave. It was painted over in all different shades of blue and then photographed and boshed into the macintosh for some designing.

PS if you look closely the figure of the surfer is made up of text, it repeatedly reads 'the bomb surf, every surfer gets it'.







‘Surf art through time’ theme - again, artists Rauschenberg and Carson where inspiration for the editorial intro DPS.

We researched and collected images on all different disciplines of surf art, from when it all started until today. We lined up the images from oldest to the most recent on the computer. These include images of; petroglyphs, cave art, bas-reliefs, sculpture, pop-culture, surrealism, painting, graffiti, graphic design, photography and installations.

As the computer and camera play huge roles in todays surf art, this inspired us to create the initial artwork on the computer and then take a photograph of the screen. The photograph went through some post production and then re-worked in InDesign.

Below are some further cover submissions we sent through. We played around with projected images and experimented with digital drawing - check out the close-up to see the pixelation.

Illustrated T-shirt prints for Element SA

We had the privilege in illustrating prints for Element SA's 2011 generic tees for Africa and South Africa. Check out our website for more photos. On sale now!

Take a hike - Enchanted forests










South Africa is totally amazing, if you dig the great outdoors that is.

We set off from home in Muizenberg on our two best feet and joined a gentle path from St James that heads up and over the mountain on Saturday. The path takes you along beautiful fynbos which leads to Spes Bona forest - indigenous trees flourish with amazing greenery everywhere. It's definitely something comparable to 'Lord of the Rings' and quite good for smaller people like us hobbits as there's a fair bit of crouching/ducking to be done with all the overhanging trees. Exiting the forest takes you on path which forks a little later, we followed the path to the top of the mountain where we found an awesome natural amphitheatre. We continued our walk which takes you down towards Kalk Bay via another forest - Kroon se Bos, also called the Amazon Forest.

From the bottom of Kroon se Bos you get a good view of Kalk Bay harbour, at first sight of the harbour memories of crispy fresh fish and chips came flooding back. With salivating mouths and Kalkys fish and chips being the the only thing we could now think of, we made a speedy descent and exited onto Boyes Drive at Kalk Bay. It was a great walk, highly recommended and the fish and chips stop afterwards…

Check out our tumblr account for some more pics of lichen and beautiful fynbos.

Monday Morning Monster


What a weekend - Yzerfontein

A massive thanks goes out to Jacques & Dani from Noon Gun for an awesome weekend away in Yzerfontein. We had the most beautiful setting for a traditional South African braai one could ever imagine.









The Black Book made for makers

The Black Book has been signed off and proofed! We are super thrilled with the result and can't wait to see the real thing! Will upload to our issuu account later.

African Masks

Some sketches done for Element SA. Our 'Love your Home' Tees are out now! Soon to be added to our website, stay tuned...

Letterpress & 100% Cotton paper






The most beautiful paper we've every touched (and we've touched a few... some might say we have a problem). Richard Johnson at Neenahpaper sent us these samples of Crane paper for us to get excited over, and we did! We are already dreaming about our next set of letterpress items... Watch this space.