I’m giving it my best go in a tough industry. Been supporting other Scottish brands for the past year as part of our relocation to the Barrowlands for the regeneration of the area.

Getting ready to launch my new label at the end of this year, most of my inspiration comes from Glasgow, taking hard lines of the tower blocks currently being brought down all over the city and turning them into something soft and feminine.

1. Event: Shoot Your Shot – HI-NRG/Italo-Disco/TAKING YOU HIGHER!
One of my favourite club nights, the promoter Bonner is insane in all the good ways. Next party is 27th of May at The Art School.

2. Music: Sofar sounds: While they haven’t happened too often in Glasgow, these secret intimate gigs are pretty relaxed, the extensive acoustic playlists on youtube lets you really explore and discover new artists.

3. Music: Bigg Taj – Superstar Sardar – Spoken word artist, singer and beat boxer extraordinaire kills it again with his latest EP. Genuinely one of the coolest guys around.

Bigg Taj, Superstar Sarwar

4. Music: Etta Bond – I’ll try not to gush, but I am in love with her sound and attitude. Soulful spoken word and sing speak with a feminist edge, she is out of this world and HAS to be checked out.

5. Website: Braw Wee Emporium – Our neighbour in Barras Art and Design in the Barrowlands, packed full of excellent music and gifts from exciting artists and designers. Definitely worth a visit, especially during the Braw Wee Fair, on the 1st Saturday of the month.

More: Website | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook

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For more recommendations on what to read, watch or listen to, go here.

Make Works are factory finders for designers and makers. Originally started out of designer, Fi Scott’s frustration with not being able to find suppliers or workshops where she could to make things; the platform sources local manufacturers, material suppliers and workshop facilities that are all too often hidden away in industrial estates. The aim is to make local production more accessible and inspiring.

Fi has given us five of her recommended ‘hidden’ Make Works factories.

1. William Love – Woodworker

Willy Love is an incredible cabinetmaker based in Maryhill. You won’t find a website on him – but he makes pieces for Glasgow artists such as Martin Boyce and Simon Starling – Jay Z even has something made by him. He has been there for the last 18 years, his attention to detail is impeccable and he is brilliantly passionate about what he makes.

2. Andrew Muirhead – Leather Tannery

If you didn’t know it was there you would walk past this place. In the middle of Glasgow, we still have a working tannery that supplies leather for companies worldwide, including the seating on British Airways, Emirates and SAKS Fifth Avenue. The best part is that individuals can equally walk in there and purchase a singular hide; or have pieces bespoke dyed to colour.

3. William Johnston and Company – Gaskets

When Sandy first got in touch with us, we were unsure that anyone we knew was using Make Works would have a use for ‘gaskets’ – it just seemed like a very industrial process for an artist or designer to need. Once we walked in there however, we realised very quickly that manufacturing gaskets was simply pattern cutting for flat rubber, in any shape or size. We were impressed by the craftsmanship in the work that goes on in this place – and can’t wait to start seeing sculptures, flooring or even fashion come out of here!

4. Jamiesons of Shetland

Down a one track road in the middle of Shetland, you’ll come across Jamiesons. Visiting here was like finding a Willy Wonka factory of wool in the middle of nowhere! In the middle of a field, the factory is filled with wool, vats of dye, and noisy spinning and knitting machines everywhere. The company are still family run; making jumpers and yarn that sell across the world for the likes of Selfridges, Oi Polloi and Japan.

5. Halley Stevensons

Right in the city centre of Dundee is waxed cotton factory Halley Stevensons. Again, if you didn’t know it was here you could have lived in Dundee all your life and not be aware that this the city where the fabric for Barbour jackets comes from. Taking cotton fabrics from just 5m and having it weatherproofed through bubbling pots of  wax – this manufacturer has a unique process and supplies high fashion rain-wear and luggage brands in Scotland and across the world.

Find out more about how Make Works got started on Central Station here.

More: Website | Twitter

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For more recommendations on what to read, watch or listen to, go here.

Suisse is a multi-disciplined agency situated in the very vibrant Merchant City area of Glasgow’s city centre. There are only two of them – Paul Gray and Lyn Cunningham. Here’s a bit more about them and what they love.

We are small and we like it that way. We get to touch and manage the work. We’ve both been around a while and have seen most things. Some 50 years joint experience between us. We have won a fair few awards over the years and we are delighted to have the admiration of both peers and clients. Safe to say, we love the industry. We love the challenges. We love the work.

Books:

The Piano
Jane Campion’s book / laterally a film
A beautiful story of a fateful romance that could never be. Beautifully shot with fantastic performances from Holly Hunter and Harvey Keitel.

Perfume
A novel by Patrick Suskind (the story of a murderer and a perfumer )
All consuming passion of a man chasing life through his sense of smell. A bastard child born into the slops of a fish market. Quite brilliant in the images it creates. A gift to me from Ross Hunter at Graven Images. One I’ve read time over. A fantastic bit of writing.

Films:

The Proposition
Directed by John Hillcoat / Nick cave screenplay. Ray Winstone stars in it. One of my all time favourites. Kill your brother or I will kill your other brother. Great tension. Super acting.

Sexy Beast
First time out as director – Jonathan Glazer (the Guinness white horses ad) directs a masterful film. Ray Winstone is superb.

There Will be Blood
My all time favourite movie. Daniel Day-Lewis is outstanding. Fantastic film. Great ending too. The closing line is a beauty.

Music:

The Smiths
A seminal band and a huge influence on my youth. “Meat is murder” – I’d never heard lyrics like that before. They don’t rhyme, don’t fit the beat but they get through. Clearly courageous and certainly of their time.

This Will Destroy You / Mogwai
Masters of the big-build white noise. I think they are both quite brilliant.

More: Website | Facebook | Twitter

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For more recommendations on what to read, watch or listen to, go here.

Toad’s Caravan is a creative agency based in the west end of Glasgow. They specialise in film, animation, illustration and motion graphics. Founded by Joanna Susskind in 2010, Toad’s Caravan has worked with many happy clients including Enable Scotland, The Citizens Theatre, STV Creative, Glasgow Film Festival, The Digital Design Studio, The Commonwealth Games, Creative Scotland, Shed Media and lots more. Here, they take you through what they suggest you do if you find yourself in Glasgow for the day.

We recommend (in Glasgow):

First thing

Pay a visit to the charming Rocco and Santino at Smile Cafe on Queen Margaret Drive. Their coffee is dynamite. We often pick up a round for the team at TC – hard to get going without it, we’ll tell you that for free!

Image from Yelp

Morning

Be productive and listen to super blank rain noise while you respond to emails, read the news and plan for the day.

Mid-morning

Check out what Parisien Lucien Zayan is up to by following @TheInvisibleDog on Instagram. This arts centre in Brooklyn, NYC is host to all sorts of amazingly weird and wonderfully creative things. We paid many a visit to this spot whilst working remotely in the states. Glasgow would lap up an Invisible Dog, so it would. Come visit Lucien!

Midday

Make things and be creative whilst listening to this excellent Electronic Concentration compiled by Spotify. Thanks guys!

Lunchtime

Give Rachna a call and order in or go pick up some seriously good curry from Babu Bombay Street Kitchen.

Post lunch

Turn designs in to REAL THINGS YOU CAN TOUCH with PushPrint for fast turn-around times, sound advice and general all-round great quality (service, staff and product).

Late afternoon

Continue that conversation across the street over a pint at the ever impressive Ubiquitous Chip where fires roar around the clock, dogs are welcome and drinks are served in the sunshine on the roof terrace. Heaven.

Later on

Listen to Kate Bush and Roxy Music, neck some cheap lager and draw with the wrong hand to take the focus off your lack of skills at All The Young Nudes life drawing club (Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee).

Find out more about Toad’s Caravan founder, Joanna on Central Station here. Toad’s Caravan are currently looking for new residents. If you’re a small business or creative freelancer, get in touch with Joanna by emailing joanna@toadscaravan.com.

More: Website | Facebook | Twitter

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For more recommendations on what to read, watch or listen to, go here.

Hungry Sandwich Club are a small design studio based in Leeds, UK. Their services include Graphic Design, Illustration and Animation. They love fun, colour and super nintendo.

Here are a few things they recommend you check out:

Podcast

Reply All is ‘a show all about the internet’, packed full of funny stories about the people behind some of the internet’s most popular sites. A great compact podcast perfect for studio listening.

Shop

Colours May Vary is a fantastic independent shop based in Leeds. Stocking a large range of books, magazines, prints and stationery, you will always get chirpy service from the lovely owners Andy and Becky!

Blog

Animated Review is a blog posting a range of stop frame, vector based and 3d animations. Great for getting inspired during your morning coffee or lunchtime sandwich.

Book

The Jaunt is a beautiful book ‘combining the two best things in life’ art and travel. The book collects the photographs and stories of 11 creatives who travel to a country they’ve never been to before to gain inspiration. Once home, they produce a print based on their experiences. A cool idea and an excellent read!

Visit

Part of the Leeds indie network, Leeds Indie Food Festival have managed to gain funding ,through kickstarter backers, to put on Leeds’ first independent food festival. Running from 7 – 24 May 2015, this festival is packed full of events from Leeds’ best independent food and drink businesses – well worth a visit!

More: Website | Blog | Twitter

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For more recommendations on what to read, watch or listen to, go here.

Playdead is a design studio based in Glasgow, Scotland. They specialise in the creation of motion graphics, working on commissions for television and film, architectural firms, corporate clients and the public sector. Skilled in animation, 3D, 2D, visual effects and live action production, they tailor their approach and mesh techniques to tell stories through moving images, also developing and experimenting with new techniques through their own projects.

Here are a few things they recommend you to look at:

Website

We’re loving the continuously looping sci-fi inspired GIFs on 30000fps. Feels like you’re trapped inside an old arcade machine!

Music

Bonobo‘s Black Sands has been out for a while now… a true Playdead studio classic.

Film

Birdman – The cinematography in this film is amazing.

Book

George Monbiot’s Feral is a fascinating read about Rewilding – helping us to research our Wildless project.

Food & Drink

Coffee from Piece. Pizza from Firebird.

More: Website | Twitter

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For more recommendations on what to read, watch or listen to, go here.

New Realities is an exhibition curated by Alpha-ville and powered by Mobile Word Capital that takes place at the Mobile World Centre in Barcelona. The exhibition which is part of the Music+Arts showcase explores the current art and cultural landscape through the work of 30 artists, designers and musicians from around the globe. It reflects on concepts brought by the integration of digital and the Internet into our society. The artists involved use new technologies to express their interests, perspectives and visions of a new cultural reality that is breaking boundaries.

For New Realities, artist duo Varvara Guljajeva & Mar Canet have been commissioned to create “The Highest Human Tower” – a new interactive art project inspired by the Catalan tradition of Castells (human towers). The onsite installation and a dedicated website collects the measurements of participants, creating the highest human tower ever made.

Photo: Manuel Portela

Hangar (ArtSpace)

This is one of the core spaces for art in Barcelona. Hangar is an art production space by the Catalan artist association.

The Plague (Movie directed by Neus Ballús)

The Plague is a film of intertwining stories, that offers a moving portrait of life in the outskirts of Barcelona. The main characters are not actors and it was shot in the hometown of Mar. Watch the trailer here.

La Central Macba (Bookshop)

This bookshop attached to MACBA museum is a place we regularly visit in the center of Barcelona. It offers a good variety of art books.

The Influencers (Festival)

The Influencers is a festival about unconventional art, guerrilla communication and radical entertainment. It happens every year in November and is hosted at CCCB. This is the kind of festival you don’t want to miss. We travel a lot and we missed it several times but luckily for us they have a nice online archive with all the talks for each year.

More: Website

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For more recommendations on what to read, watch or listen to, go here.

IfLooksCouldKill is a close-knit team of graphic designers and website developers, problem solvers and imaginative thinkers. Founded in 2002, they’ve formed a strong reputation within the arts, culture and education sectors. Their studio is based in Summerhall, a creative hub for the arts. Here, they recommend some of the things that fuel their inspiration…

Event

LongLunch is a not-for-profit organisation that’s been staging informal talks for the design community for more than 10 years. These talks offer insight into how other creatives live and work and provide a great opportunity to mingle with other designers. We recently heard from Marina Willer and Paula Scher of Pentagram and the latest event introduced Paul Barnes, a unique breed of graphic designer specialising in typography, type design, lettering and editorial design. Check out the LongLunch website for upcoming events in Edinburgh, Glasgow and London.

Publication

How To Be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul by Adrian Shaughnessy is still serving the studio after years of publication. It’s taught us to listen carefully to clients, create meaningful work for them and has supported many of the business decisions we’ve made.

Blog

We’ve been reading The Fox Is Black (formerly Kitsune Noir) since the Radiohead Desktop Wallpaper Project. It’s primarily curated by Bobby Solomon, a designer based in LA who previously worked for MySpace, and is now an Art Director with Disney, responsible for user experience, design and social media.

Bobby’s blog is a great source of inspiration and covers a good mix of art, design and technology. We also enjoy downloading the latest wallpapers, contributed by talented creatives from around the globe. We particularly like this contribution from Julie Lee, a Los Angeles based artist who creates amazing food collages.

Video

TED is an organisation that’s devoted to the spreading of ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks of 18 minutes or less. TED launched in 1984 as a conference where Technology, Entertainment and Design converged, and today covers topics from science and business to creative thinking and global issues. We enjoy watching the talks online and from time to time attend local TEDx events, which are designed to help share ideas in communities around the world. My favourite talk is Stefan Sagmeister’s “Happiness by Design”.

More: Website | Twitter

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For more recommendations on what to read, watch or listen to, go here.

LuckyMe Studio is a creative agency working in film, design, art and live production. Grown from a collective of artists and designers, the studio works on international creative projects across a variety of disciplines. It now boasts a worldwide collective of award winning talent who are helping define a new generation of visual representation in film and the music industry. Here is what they recommend:

Documentary

Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell, this is such a beautifully made documentary that will make you simultaneously respect Matt Wolf and fall in love with Arthur Russell.

Magazine

Travel Almanac, super indulgent, impeccably designed with great photography. It’s a bit wanky but also amazing.

Music

LuckyMe Rinse FM, the now monthly LuckyMe show on Rinse FM …for the cool kids.

Photography

Toshio Shibata… man versus nature.

Video

Bronze 56K: Enron, this is what’s going on in skate videos at the moment… and it’s pretty great.

More:  Website | Facebook | Twitter

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For more recommendations on what to read, watch or listen to, go here.

Alpha-ville EXCHANGE is a one-day event on 17 January at Rich Mix, London designed to offer the art, tech and creative communities the opportunity to connect, exchange ideas, get inspired and discover new talent.

Participating in Alpha-ville EXCHANGE is visual artist, Shantell Martin who is expanding conventional definitions of drawing and animation to transform visual experience in the design, fashion and music industries. Here is what she recommends:

MUSIC:
I’m excited by the release of Sasha Perera’s debut LP called Everlast. I’ve been listening to Sasha’s music for years actually even back when I lived in Tokyo, mostly in the form of the group Jahcoozi.

You can get the LP on Vinyl, CD or as a digital download via Bandcamp or Boomkat or iTunes.
Stream ‘Everlast’ via Soundcloud.

MARKER:
2013 would have looked very completely different to me if it weren’t for the Krink K-51 marker. I make sure to have a few packed in my suitcase on all of my adventures.

FESTIVAL:
The Eyeo Festival is probably one of the best festivals I’ve participated in and would love to return to in the future as an attendee. The Art Walker centre in Minneapolis is a great venue and the vibe of the festival is super open and fun with the caliber of people speaking is very hard to match.

Image source

MOVIE:
An Oversimplification of Her Beauty feels more like getting very close to someone thoughts and dreams without personally knowing them. Always want to ask Terrance Nance how much of it is real.

ARTSPACE:
More and more people are collecting art and I really enjoy how Artspace is apart of this new way or seeing, buying and sharing artworks. They have some great pieces including some of my own; two of which are rare in the sense that there is colour in them.

Only One YOU by Shantell Martin

Please visit here for the full Alpha-ville Exchange programme.

More: Website | Twitter