Merry Christmas

It has been an incredible year. I remember and can still smell 2008, let alone 2009. A lot happened this year. I setup my first studio, worked on a number of exciting projects and got to experience parsons in NY which has largely influenced my design career. This christmas also marks my first year of having been back in Nigeria, and boy has that been a roller coaster.

I hope to work on more exciting projects next year, fall deeper in love with typography and launch Nigerians Behind the Lens the first ever showcase of Nigerian photographers. See you in 2010 B*s. Here's to a wonderful christmas. 

Cat Love

I love cats. Technically I'm all feline, ehem 100% Leo. It's no question that cat's are famous for chasing after random moving objects. Butterflies included. These were all pastimes of my Leo - sleeping cat above. Not to mention the string of presents she'd bring back home with her! I eventually had to fit a bell unto her collar to warn her poor victims.


Leo is a 4 year old tortishell, I remember bringing her home the first day as a kitten in 2005 and she sure was my feline sister in crime until my big move in 2008 at which we point we had to find her a new lovely home. So today I felt like making a poster in her honour and so I did. I hope you like.

Dévoilement de L'artisan

Christmas is slowly approaching! And soon it'll be a year since my move to Nigeria from London.


My darling sister who you can learn about just by following her rather detailed twitter profile @NekuAtawodi, just bought me an early christmas present. I loveee chocolate and so this was rather delightful. Now I didn't know it would be all the more elegant, with a fancy box and a selection of scrumptious chocolate delights. Here are some photos I took whilst unveiling my box of L'artisan du Chocolat. Hence the title. Enjoy the mouth watering experience :)

Thank you Uneku, love you lots. x o x o









More photos on my Flickr

Procrastination (FREE desktop wallpaper)

Happy Saturday...well Sunday, I've had an interesting week to say the least. Lots of design work done which is always good. However if you follow me on twitter you'll see that I've been planning to bake a sponge cake forever. When I realise I'm doing "something" I tend to look up quotes on the subject. Yesterday I spent a great deal of time looking up quotes on "Tomorrow". Today it's "Procrastination".


So I made a poster/wallpaper on a quote I quite liked (unfortunately it's by an unknown author). The wallpaper is FREE and you can use it for whatever, just be sure to reference this page. It also features a new font I discovered called Matchbox - it's also FREE. Hope you like my poster.

Download from Flickr here

Baba Obanikoro

Thank God its Friday! This week seemed to sweep by so fast. I don't seem to remember a thing.

I managed to get some drawing this week, still working on concepts for the Salamander Cafe website and then I made a drawing of a friends photograph. It's a portrait called Baba Obanikoro.




Photograph by Folarin Shasanya

Hope you like it. I'm working on a poster version of it, so stay tuned.

Nigerians Behind the Lens

It's tuesday, post mundane monday and I've just had a bunch of meetings about Nigerians Behind the Lens. I then realised I had written absolutely zilch about this project aka 2 years of sweat and still going. To summarise, NBTL is a showcase of Nigerian photography and the country itself. Nigeria from the Eyes of a Nigerian. You can find a more formal introduction on the website http://nigeriansbehindthelens.com. 

It's been one incredible journey. We now have 14 photographers and counting, including Amaize Ojekere, Ty Bello, Yetunde Baba-Eko, Folarin Shasanya, Uche Okpa-Iroha and the list continues. We finally put together a draft of the book and we're currently working on the exhibition which should be in the 2nd quarter of 2010 and a bunch of other things. Well people, I'm certain I will write a lot more about this later. Have a great week.

100 Brands of Interest Vol III

My Butterfly logos have been featured in Vol III of 100 Brands of Interest by David Pache. Quite flattering and I'd like to thank David for the feature. I thought I'd make a quick post about my butterflies and what they represent. 

My name is Ebi, it's pronounced like AB in ABC, or A Bee. Plus my mother always called me BeeBee as a child. I have always had a thing for flowers, bumble bees and butterflies. So when I started out to design my logo it was only natural amongs other options that i try something with Bees and Butterflies. 

I write in cursive, this basically means my handwriting looks like something out of the 18th century and is quite hard to read. But pretty. lol. And when you write the cursive upper case E, B and I, the E and B look like the wings of a buttefly and the I like the Thorax. I also had another option which was a bumble bee, quite like the BEE in the IBM poster by Paul Rand. However I replaced the eyes with lower case "a"s.  I settled with the Butterfly and so my butterflies were born. I hope to do a poster with the Bees soon.

Some Logo Sketches

More Thessaloniki

I still haven't gotten round to upload all my pictures from Thessaloniki and Athens. Although the former was much more memorable. I promise you this is not within my power but due to the fact that we have extremely slow internet here in Nigeria. (a 44mb file takes about 3 hours to download, yes I tried downloading skype and gave up). Here is one I managed to upload whilst still in Thessaloniki. Hope you like.

V for Veda

This is going to be one of those very fast but very slow weeks. I can see it coming. 

I've been working on some designs for Veda Technology since April this year (2009). We launched a holding page version http://veda.com.ng in May. Veda is an innovative computer manufacturer company (like HP, dell, etc) in Nigeria. We're just finishing off the last few pages. It's been a tricky one but we managed to end up on the same page in the end. Here are some of the pages. What do you think?

NB: Logo not designed by me.

Happy Birthday K!

Photo courtesy Alba Arquitectos

Today is a very great friend of mine Kelly Sylvia's birthday. She's one of the reasons I'm a graphic designer today, a great art director and an even more fabulous DJ known by her pseudonym Kellilicious. Kelly is a bit of a coffee addict, I mean she drinks espresso out of a mug! I love her so much and I noticed that everytime I think of her I think of coffee. Happy Birthday Kelly. Love you.

Meanwhile this reminded me, another really good friend of mine and also one of my favourite designers Shoko Tagaya, made me this lovely paper cut pop up card on my birthday in July. She's amazing isn't she.

New Blog: Design Nigeria

I created this illustration quite some time ago. Doodling, as you do. It seemed perfect for my new blog Design Nigeria - a blog on design in Nigeria. Follow on twitter! http://twitter.com/designnigeria or @designnigeria. Will be great to get your opinion!

Xristos Xraniotis

I just got back from Thessaloniki, which I think is one the most amazing cities I've visited. I stayed with a great friend of mine Xristos and his housemate Yiannis who have the most amazing, inspiring flat. Xristos is a journalist/copywriter and as a thank you I wanted to make him a car that emanates the epitome of Xris. Here is a concept I worked on, on the 5 hour journey from Thessaloniki back to Athens.

New Vecktor

I've been meaning to redesign the logo for the parent company of the Apple store Vecktor for ever. Here is the new design. The logo is based on a modified version of the font Asenine and a completely different K which I think emphasises the definition of a "vector". What do you think?

B for Bye...

A friend of mine is leaving for Atlanta this weekend. She might be back. She might not. I made her this card print of my butterfly papillon01 on Fabriano watercolour paper and made a wallet to hold it using, using some decorative paper I got from Utrecht in NY and some black butterfly cut outs using a cut out I got from this letterpress store on fulton street in NY. I shall edit and add the name as soon as I remember.

B for Butterflies

Hope you had a great day.

Mine was quite productivity. Productive days rock.

So I'm working on a series of watercolour Butterflies.

This is the first one.

I wasn't sure if I'd like outlining it with white acyrlic ink.

So I scanned it, printed it and outlined the print.

Here it is a few brush strokes in.

And here is a picture of it finished.

I think my BB gives a better representation of the colours.

Hmm need a new scanner.

Portraits from the Past

I love wednesdays, they are what I like to call the "tipping point" of the week, when you feel like you've hurdled over dreaded Monday and indifferent Tuesday and look forward to the day before friday and friday! Yay weekend.

My friend Ebewn or "@xanod" as we call her in twitterville drew a set of self portraits of herself, in turn I decided to - dig up - and scan some pencil sketches I made some time in 2006. I do remember these two quite vividly.

On the one night I was locked outside my flat and didn't want to bother my flat mates, so I took a picture of myself with my trusty camera phone and sketched away in the freezing cold.

This second night is more complicated than the other so I'll leave the - possibly boring - details but I woke up one morning and felt very androgynous so I took a picture of myself still in bed and made this sketch of it, accentuating my more masculine features.

Product Parsons: 60 days of art

I was in New York May-July this year for a short course at Parsons.

It was quite the experience - the Brooklyn Bridge, Lower East Side, Cupcakes, The Empire state building, Lights - just a few of the things I love about New York. Here is some of my art work part of the "60 days of art" collection.

Miniature accordion book covers. Measure roughly 2.5" x 2.5".

By Ebi and Shoko Tagaya

What a B* really needs.

Linoleum carved stamps for postcards.

The lovely talented Shoko Tagaya

Hand made business cards for "Unfamished".

A fictitious brand I made up serving 24/7 home made organic food.

Today is Electronica and Ink day

I just ordered alot of supplies from Blick. Including some 100% hot pressed cotton paper and a new pen holder. I'm a little bit upset as a few of the pen nibs went "missing in transmission" so I have just two out of 8. Anyway here is a picture showing my first try with the new holder and nib.

Five electronic tracks for Saturday

Hand to Phone - Adult

Devil's Trident (The Big Pink Reality) - Telepathe

Sandwiches - Detroit Grand Pubahs

Marble House - The Knife

Feel the love - Cut Copy

B for...

Bobbi Brown, Baby-T, Bitch, Beautiful, Brown, Babe, Bebi, Blonde...sometimes, Busy, Busy f*cking Bee, Black Barbie, Bronze, Boobs, Bookworm, Bacardi, Black, Boozeee, Bum - ok wait I'm not a Bum, Brush, Bag - Prada Bag, Bag Lady, BoHo, Bank, macBOOK, Bi, Bumble Bee, Butterflies, plan B, Bagels, Boobs, Booze............Bloody Hell!