The lucky winner is James Taylor.

Congratulations to James Taylor for winning a bunch of Visual Aid goodies including a Visual Aid bag, a copy of both books (Visual Aid 1 & Visual Aid 2), a colouring book (with a pack of pencils), 3 x ‘Know It All’ Coffee Mugs and 3 x ‘Kitchen Companion’ Tea Towel’s. Commiserations to everyone else who entered, but you can still buy your own from the Visual Aid Shop.

Remember to keep checking back for more competitions and give aways in the future.

Huge thanks to all the folks at Visual Aid Publishing for donating all of the prizes and for getting in touch with us about running this competition. That goes for the rest of our readers as well. If you’re interested in working with us perhaps by kindly donating competition prizes then get in touch with us via Twitter, Facebook or email at submissions@formfiftyfive.com and set the subject line with Competitions & Giveaways.

Thanks for all your support folks.

Glenn enviously mentioned this exhibition the other day on Twitter, but today the 10 hot young MA grads-to-be dropped by to say hello and give us a copy of their press pack. Laced with innuendo their promo viral (which you can see on their site 10collective.com) sets the tone for the included flyer and booklet-cum-poster (no pun intended) by describing a bit about each of the 10 exhibiting girls through questions relating to ‘doing it’.

The show is on at the trendy Rag Factory just off Brick Lane (16 Heneage Street E1 5LJ), running from 17-19th December 2010 (Friday 12:00-21:00, Saturday 10:00-21:00 and Sunday 10:00-18:00) with the P.V. on Thursday 16th December 2010 from 18:00-21:00. If you’re in the London area try and pop along and see the show at some point before it closes on Saturday. Like always if you see us on Thursday why not say Hello!

In the meantime if you can’t wait to see some hot design action then have a butchers at the obligatory blog.

Employing an unusual way of illustrating, Peter Crawley’s work is created through continuous pieces of thread sewn directly onto paper to create very graphic and geometric images. It’s no surprise that some of his best pieces of work are of logotypes and buildings as the simplicity and line work the thread creates lends itself beautifully to plan-like architectural drawings.

We’ve teamed up with Visual Aid again this year to offer you a booty of Visual Aid prizes. Since we last caught up with Visual Aid they’ve been busy fact finding once again creating a plethora of new merchandise for you to buy from colouring books to tea towels.

We’re giving one lucky reader the chance to win special Visual Aid bag, a copy of both books (Visual Aid 1 & Visual Aid 2), a colouring book (with a pack of pencils), 3 x ‘Know It All’ Coffee Mugs and 3 x ‘Kitchen Companion’ Tea Towel’s.

For your chance to win answer the following question correctly.

Which animal lives the longest?

A. An elephant.

B. A parrot.

Send your answers to win@formfiftyfive.com. Don’t forget to include your full name, postal address if you win and a contact number. The competition closes at 11:59 GMT on 19th December 2010. We’ll pick a name out at random entry from email submissions shortly after closing date and announce the winner on FormFiftyFive. The lucky winner will be contacted once they’ve been picked out of the entries ahead of announcing the winner on the site. If we’re unable to get in contact with the 1st choice and receive a response within 3 days then the 2nd choice will be contacted and so on. The competition is open to UK residents only, and only one entry per person.

However if you can’t stand the thought of not winning any of the prizes though you can buy them direct from the Visual Aid Shop.

Best of luck.

Being a self-proclaimed knitter for the majority of my life, as soon as we see the technique used in visual communications I’m always intrigued. TBWA Brussels, Olivier Babinet and Lovo Film have used the technique in this advert for Natural Gas to capture the warmth created from gas in a visual way to great effect. Surprisingly, using yarn based fabrics to lends itself well to stop motion as shown in the Making of (below), each pieces is knitted in it’s final size and shape and then slowly it’s unravelled back to a single thread and the animation is played in reverse.

Quite reminiscent of PES’s work, the choice to knit everything evokes a real sense of homeliness and warmth just what is needed on a cold winter’s day like we’ve been having recently. By far the best bit has to be the shower head streaming water i-cords.

There’s a diverse mix to Luke Whittaker‘s style of illustration which makes for an interesting portfolio across both print and animation. His animations tackle some tough topics but the featured watercolour one has been really well executed. Luke’s talent as an illustrator have put him in good stride to create video games with a number of releases available on the iPad created under www.stateofplaygames.com.  Spotted at the brilliant Blackout Blisters exhibition last week.

Dot, the character in the world’s smallest stop-motion animation, a tiny 10mm tall character which fuses both technology and technique to illustrate the innovative microscope-mobile phone attachment CellScope. Brought to life by the talented team at Aardman by using rapid prototyping machinery from CGI models to create each frame of the characters movement as a separate sculpture. The end result, shot on a Nokia N8 using the very CellScope the animation advertises (a product being use to provide life-saving technology to remote and third world countries) see’s Dot traverse an unwiddining landscape with a menagerie of familiar objects from coins to bumble-bees. Aardman
Brilliantly shot and executed to demonstrate the innovation of the product were tasked with advertising.