Mistakes are Beautiful is the portfolio of designer, Marco D’Andrea.

Behind every mistake is something beautiful. I am a design student at the ripe and fertile age of 21, i spend my hours high up in my nest situated in a city once valued at twenty shillings. I enjoy crisp paper, fine inks, poscas, organic substance and my squishy mind.

He has a blog too.

Manuela Voigt specialises in branding, print design and web design.

However, the pic above is from one of her free design projects and is called ‘Casette Fashion‘:

Have you ever wondered what to do with all the audio cassettes that are hiding in the back corner of your cupboards? There are several things you can do with them. One option is transforming them into fashionable items, all you need is someone with great knitting skills and the tape. It can be transformed into socks, shirts, jumpers and even bags.

James Parslow is:

a passionate and talented photographer/designer hailing from Birmingham England. He’s worked as a Graphic Designer for a wide range of clients and also as freelance photographer on various projects. He also enjoys creating more personal work and is always looking to channel new creative ideas and concepts into his work

He’s also available for commissions/freelance work. Contact details here.

This is nice. Creative Review are doing a thing on creative workplaces for their November issue so they asked their readers Where do you work? with the most interesting reponses to be used in the Nov issue.

The Jewellery Quarter-dwelling Life Agency have answered with this.

‘Apart from being the most criminally underrated city in the UK, it’s just two hours from London and about the same to Manchester so there’s no excuse not to visit.’

Their extensive portfolio reads like a who’s who of creative and cultural Birmingham, they have created clean, functional and stylish websites for: The Drum, Fused Magazine, Hello Digital, The REP, New Generation Arts, Fierce Festival, Maverick and Town Hall.

They are currently looking for people to help them in a usability study into some websites by spending an hour clicking around some websites, and there’s a £75 gift voucher in it for participants which that relates to the study. So if you are an average web user, not a techy, and have got an hour spare in central Birmingham between 1pm and 9pm next Monday (30 March) get in touch with Jake Grimley on 0844 581 1374 and leave a message.

Paul Willocks is a graphic designer who makes digital art. He also produces music under the name Tech Star – he designed the above CD cover for the release of his most recent single ‘Switchblade’.

There’s quite an in-depth interview with him on Abduzeedo.

(Found via Behance)

David Gonçalves moved from his native Portugal to do an MA in Science in Design and Transport at Coventry Uni. Having passed that with distinction, he now works in Birmingham as an industrial designer.

The picture above is of The Scarab, a single-passenger urban transporter that received a write-up from Wired.

(Found via Behance)

David also runs a blog at David Louis Product Design where he unveiled this little short, stop-frame animation made using his ‘Flip Top ‘Beer Cube’ Bottle Opener’:

Random, but I like it.  More please.

Deborah Mingham is a freelance artist and costume designer/maker.

She graduated from UCE Fine Arts degree course and has gone on to work with Shoi Productions, Friction Arts, the Godiva Carnival (see pic above), Pentabus and Kindle Theatre.

These Punch & Judy costumes, produced for Imagineer Productions and inspired by Rab C Nesbitt and Tony Clifton, are particularly good:

Over the past couple of years he’s amassed an impressive client list that includes 7 Inch Cinema, Flat Pack Festival, Supersonic, Birmingham Uni, Jibbering, Moseley Folk Festival, New Art Gallery Walsall and others.

As well as traditional design and illustration he’s also designed DVD interfaces, built websites and sold his own original artwork.  You can see some examples on the Dave Gaskarth website and including these portraits, from a set of 12 produced for 7 Inch Cinema’s showing of Gangsters last year: