Mark Forrester - Independent digital designer and online entrepreneur

Hong Kong Apartment Living

It is no secret that space is extremely tight in Hong Kong. Tiny, box-sized apartments are the norm and high-density living has naturally resulted in the necessity to be innovative with the use of both public and private space. I have friends who have been very clever in manipulating interior design effects to enlarge the perception of a small space, but not one has gone to lengths as spectacular as those of architect Gary Chang. Creating what he refers to as the “Domestic Transformer”, Chang has managed to squeeze 24 individual rooms into a small apartment, measuring 330 square feet, by means of sliding panels and walls.

Man's best friend

I am a writer turned illustrator and I work from my home office/studio in a terrific little valley on the coast of Cape Town. After working in advertising for a little while (where i was in a creative team with my oldest brother Patrick – me copywriting and him art directing) I decided to go it alone and freelance. But a lesson I soon learned was that the best way to make sure of a steady income as a freelancer is to diversify. So I began illustrating as well as writing. Nowadays it’s mostly illustration for me, which is great – plus a bit of cartooning work in The Western Nostril. But I haven’t stopped there – I have recently completed my first children’s book called The Boy Who Cried Ninja for which I have an agent and soon (I hope) a publisher.

The Western Nostril is a cartoon that my brother and I started nine years ago while I was still at university. Somewhere along the line the good people at Business Day saw it and loved it and offered to pay to have it in their paper four days a week. Currently we’re gearing up to publish our second collection of Western Nostrils which will be out in South Africa in time for Christmas. We’re still patiently awaiting our breakthrough into the global market.

My work process: I don’t really like to put pencil to paper before I have a good/weird idea behind what I’m trying to illustrate (and the same goes for writing). Often a stroll up a mountain with my dogs will help that along (see picture) – fresh air and exercise does wonders. Once the idea is there, I return home and sketch it with pencil onto sheets of A4 paper and scan it in to my computer. Then in Photoshop I fix any skew lines with the liquify tool (it feels like cheating, but apparently it’s not) and I begin colouring and adding textures and shadows. I usually don’t know what an illustration will look like before it’s done – so the process is quite exciting as I watch strange people, creatures and buildings take shape.

I’ve lost the Digital Farm branding, seeing I am no longer freelancing under that intended name and it only causes confusion. I’ve changed my vibrant, bright colour palette for a more pastel, earthy one, and I collaborated with the awesome Cape Town based illustrator Alex Latimer to design me some header and footer graphics.

I gave Alex quite a detailed brief as to the illustrations I wanted, but the end result far exceeded my expectations. The illustrations portray my personality and half baked nationality to a tee. The little springbok and warthogs being chased by the big dinosaur from South Africa (represented by our lovely Table Mountain and the Johannesburg skyline) to England (represented by Big Ben) are all us South Africans flocking to the money, adventures and travel opportunities Europe has to offer, whilst the lone springbok that appears when you hover over my logo represents the urge we all face in wanting to go back to our fantastic country as soon as possible, especially in the winter months :)

I’ve definitely placed more emphasis on my twitter stream, as us lazy WooThemes designers are tending to micro-blog these days. The ajax powered sidebar module tracks not only my tweets, but the chit-chat I have with others.

The “underground” footer section represents my sometimes claustrophobic home office setup with news from the office and my latest photos.

My page and post content styling still needs some work, as does my portfolio. I also still have some ideas for my Web Startups pages, but after sitting on this design for a good month I think it is time to unleash it.

Please do let me know what you think and if you would be so kind share the news via a tweet.

Since March this year we’ve been working on the WooThemes re-design – code name Woo2. Looking back over all the mockups housed in our Basecamp account it’s amazing to see how it grew and matured. Having a team of 5 web designers working on the project, makes it sound a doddle, but this was certainly not the case! (more…)