I recently took part in a competition through 'TinyPrints', a Californian based card company who set the brief of designing a range of Valentines Day cards for 2011. Here are a few of my entries!

Here is the promo for the pilot of the business weekend I recently attended 'Bootcamp For Entrepreneurs'. It was a really good experience, the people running it were brilliant and I think it will be a great success!!!

http://youtu.be/-zaiLUcqGA8

Making the most out of the recent weather, here are some photos of a concept for a piece of lighting. It was made using icicles and snow and created some unusual light and shadow contrast in the room.

Recently I've been working on some designs for an American condom company called 'ONE'. It was a really open brief and the general idea is to create an unusual and fun response to a condom wrapper. I decided to focus on some word play and try to create some powerful imagery which would brighten up someones day. Here are my final 3 images for the 2nd round of the competition:

Vote for this at:

http://onecondoms.com/design/designs/design/2592

Vote for this at:

http://onecondoms.com/design/designs/design/2518

Vote for this at:

http://onecondoms.com/design/designs/design/2570

PLEASE VOTE FOR ME!!! I need as many votes as possible to get to the next stage. THANKS!!!

I was recently given a 'Make your own sweets' pack from Japan. I'd never tried this before so thought i'd give it a go! Not really a project but a bit of fun! Check out the fruits of my labour!!!

They looked pretty bad but tasted even worse!

Over the next few months I am aiming to carry out some small 1-2 day conceptual projects based around everyday objects and generally anything I can get my hands on. These projects will hopefully allow me to experiment with ideas in their rawest state and may lead to some concepts worth developing. This will be a nice change and should fit in well with a few other longer term projects I currently have on the go.

Several of these mini projects are going to be based around light and my first idea was to get myself to 'Poundland' and pick up some stuff and bought a few packs of 'glow-sticks' to play around with. Here are some photos of my creations...

Over the past few years I have become very interested in photography and felt I could capture some pretty cool images of light with a slow shutter speed.

I used an old jam jar to encapsulate some of the glow-sticks to create a temporary, colourful light source on my desk.

I liked the idea of creating a light source installation so created several of these (similar to above) and hung them around town. It was a pretty windy night which helped me get some pretty cool photos.

From the 26-28th November I was packed off to Boot Camp at the Calvert Trust in Kielder. The weekend was run by 'Enterprise Made Simple', funded by Newcastle City Council and was a great opportunity to network and get some help with the business side of setting up a company. Highlights of the weekend included the climbing wall, midnight walk and the 'King Swing'. All in all, it was just fun to meet people in similar stages of setting up their business plans and talk to them about their experiences.

So I've finally given in and now have an account on twitter. I'm a 'newby' to this so take me under your wing and add me!

My username is: Richard_J_Bell