See the posters on Flickr » The old site, via the Wayback Machine »
Novl Cuisine was the first of my daily projects — the one that started the habit. Me and Dave Pannell, my boss at The Design Mechanics, plus the odd special guest, set ourselves a challenge: design an A4 poster every single day for a year and stick the lot online. A daft daily battle over who could make the better one.
It kicked off in 2009, which makes it the granddad of Nice Smile Sir and Gramophoney — the photo-a-day and sleeve-a-day projects that came after. It’s also the only one I ever actually finished: me and Dave both did all 365, no gaps. The habit it kicked off is the one I’d eventually write a whole book about — Extreme Production.
There are days I’ll never forget. Sat at a party, a few drinks in, suddenly remembering I hadn’t done that day’s poster — legging it home for my laptop, then designing one in the middle of the room while everyone carried on boozing around me. Every single day, for a year.
We exhibited the favourites at Barnsley DMC. I’d gone looking for somewhere to show them while the project was still going:
Anybody got any links with art galleries that might be willing to exhibit my massive 'Poster a day' challenge?
2 October 2009
They went up at the Creative Network launch event in Barnsley in early 2010, and I stood up and talked about the whole daft thing:
The creative network launch event in Barnsley - my 365 day poster project will be exhibited, and I'll be chatting about it too. #cr8barnsley
25 February 2010
There were 120 of them on the wall. I’ve still got them, or what’s left of them:
I've just found the 120 original posters I had on display for my exhibition. They're tattered and some torn, but I can't throw these.
12 December 2010
The best evidence I’ve got of the show itself is the posters stuck back up on my office wall afterwards, gently flapping in the wind.
And a few of the posters:
