Alongside featuring a new interface, the dimensions of the website have been enlarged from the original width of 800 pixels to a new larger size of 1000 pixels. This new size has allowed more scope for bigger graphics and more information to be displayed on the screen at once.

The Brain Aided™ Archive section has been greatly expanded into relevant categories print, websites, identity & display graphics, along with the addition of a clients list page, design services and contact details pages.

I hope you like the new changes to the main site as well as this blog.

Shields, is the man behind the band My Bloody Valentine, one of the finest bands to come out of the late 80s and early 90s music scene, alongside fellow luminaries The Pixies and Dinosaur Jr.
2008 should be a great year as MBV are touring again, along with some brand new material which is rumoured to be appearing. Can’t wait, it’s only been 17 years since the last album!

Shepard, the creator of the OBEY brand, has designed some truly beautiful pieces of work over the last 15 years. He has a fantastic art style using a very limited colour palette, which is something I like to do in my work, which in turn creates a really strong graphical image.

Recent work includes posters protesting against war, the Walk The Line movie poster and numerous album covers for artists like DJ Shadow and Smashing Pumpkins.

Here’s a selection of some of my favourite Shepard Fairey pieces produced in the last couple of years…

Tony Wilson, AKA Mr. Manchester, put Manchester on the musical map through setting up and co-founding both Factory Records and then The Haçienda (FAC51) nightclub. In setting up the Factory record label, he discovered some of the greatest music acts Britain has ever produced, namely the Happy Mondays, Joy Division and then New Order.

He will be sorely missed by me and millions of other fans of the Madchester music scene in the 1980s and early 1990s. As a small tribute to him I’ve modified the background of this blog, reflecting the classic poster designs created by Peter Saville for The Haçienda.

You can read more tributes on the Manchester Evening News website.

Yep… this is me, David Kingsnorth, in The Simpsons Movie… well not quite but this is what I’d look like if I was. To help promote the film, Burger King have commisioned a website, which can turn everyone into a Simpsons character!

All you have to do is upload a photo of yourself to the website Simpsonize Me and by magic it will simpsonize your mug. You can then customize your creation to your hearts content.

This is something no Simpsons fan can resist I’m sure! Click to see me at the Kwik-E-Mart.

Brain Aided™ Design is proud to announce it has signed up with CoCo2 to help offset the Carbon Emissions generated by the server that brainaideddesign.com is hosted on.

CoCo2 will use the money donated by Brain Aided™ Design to fund various projects, from purchasing carbon offsets to offset the impact of registered websites (including brainaideddesign.com) on the environment, to planting trees in the UK and supplying energy efficient lighting to low income villagers in South Africa amongst other things.

According to CoCo2 “Carbon Offsetting is a method by which you can minimise your impact on the environment. For every ton of CO2 your activities produce you can reduce somebody else’s activities by the same amount.

For example, if the electricity generated that your website consumes is equivelant to 1 ton of CO2 emmitted per year then we could plant trees that take 1 ton of carbon out of the atmosphere.”

To make your website carbon neutral and/or to list your site in the CoCo2 directory please visit CoCo2.org.

The development and design process began in April 2007 as has been on going over the last 3 months. Aimed to appeal to children along with parents it features bright, colourful graphics and fun features for kids to interact with such as downloadable activities.

The most challenging aspect of the website was the interactive map of the farm. Featuring a navigation tool with scrolling and zoom facilities, alongside interactive buttons with sound FX and educational information overlays for the animals and farm activities.

Keeping up her great history of highly original and album artwork is this, Björk’s latest album Volta.

The album artwork created by m/m along with photography by Nick Knight, both of whom have also collaborated with her last couple of albums Vespertine & Medulla.

Cat Power (real name Chan Marshall) is still a relatively unknown artist, but those that have heard her beautiful, soulful voice would struggle to think of a better female singer than her at the moment.

Hurrah! finally a comprehensive book by the great contemporary designer, Jonathan Barnbrook, is due later this year and is simply called ‘Barnbrook Bible’.

Barnbrook is responsible for some of the most creative typefaces of the last decade such as Delux, Moron & Bastard available from his type foundry Virus.

Not only that, he’s also repsonsible for some great political design works, particularly against the Iraq War and also notable work for Adbusters, fighting against the corporations stranglehold over everyone of us.

Due out in September 2007, you can pre-order it from Amazon.co.uk here.