Our industry perpetually challenges us to generate original, creative, effective and sustainable ideas. Yet it’s riddled with as much imitation as it is innovation. I created this piece for the launch of Adformatie’s new podium section of their magazine.

Titled “Inspiration lies in the eye of the beholder”, it’s a variant on the classic quote “Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder”. Beauty will always remain a prominent theme in our industry, it’s what we use to create desire for our products and designs.

Inspiration is personal and private, what and how we find it is unique to our own sensors, and then what we do with it influences our work and creative expression.

So, where do you get your source of creative food?

Welcome to our scrumptious new website full of mouthwatering, lip-smacking, fresh and flavoursome new work!

We’ve updated the site with some delectable new design and functionality features, particularly in our Projects section. ← Look left! You’ll notice our work is cleverly presented for visual storytelling, giving you an overview of each project with bigger juicier images of all the detail shots. You can read about every project by clicking the ‘Show info’ link within the Project titles.

The greatest feature is that you can see the best of our work in all screen sizes! So drag your browser window and enjoy the fluidity and motion as the images move and adapt to your viewing preference. Nice hey.

We live the culture we create for and our band has expanded, so we’ve got more content about what’s tickling our passions than ever before. You can follow all our blog entries or choose one particular band member you dig the most.

We love sharing and hope you do too! So if you like what you see in any of the projects or blog entries, just share the love… and spread the word that Dolly Rogers are indeed The best creative folk in town! Or don’t be shy about telling us what you think, contact us.

A huge thanks go out to all the awesome clients and collaborators we’ve been working with over the last two years. We love challenging ourselves and working together with those who stimulate our desire to imagine beyond what we know!

Peace and love,
The band

Dolly Rogers is excited to announce that our typography work created for MADE-BY will be featured in The 3D Type Book. The book is due to be released worldwide in April 2011 and is the most comprehensive showcase of three-dimensional letterforms ever written. It features over 1,300 images of more than 300 projects by over 160 emerging talents and established individuals and studios. Amongst others who made the shortlist are; Sagmeister Inc, Vaughan Oliver, Milton Glaser, Alvin Lustig, Louis Danziger, Roger Excoffon, Paul Elliman, Marian Bantjes, Geoff Kaplan, Clotilde Olyff, Italo Lupi, Marion Bataille, Antoine+Manuel, Frost*Design, Mervyn Kurlansky, Non-Format, Oded Ezer, Rowland Scherman, Post Typography, Rinzen, Underware’s Type Workshop, J. Kyle Daevel, Ji Lee, Pleaseletmedesign, Strange Attractors Design and Dolly Rogers!

As well as pioneering milestones from as far back as the 1940s, this book focuses on recent and brand new typographic projects. 3D type specialist Andrew Byrom explains the context and motivation behind these innovative works in an insightful foreword.

The 3D Type Book conceived, compiled, written and designed by FL@33.

Alongside Dolly Rogers, I’m also founding partner of The Museum of the Bohemian. We started with a group of friends who shared the simple philosophy that creativity is for everyone, and the more people participate the better our society becomes! So…with nothing more than a shoestring budget and grandiose fantasies of inspiring the world through creativity…we set off on our magnificent dream adventure to build a travelling art Museum…for the people, by the people.

It’s nearly two years on and we have been busy creating, sharing, performing and spreading our Bohemian happiness. For me, one of the most exciting things about being part of such an initiative, is all the inspiring, curious, eccentric, magical, peculiar, exceptional, extraordinary, fantastic, odd, strange, uncommon, unexpected, unusual and wonderfully creative characters we get to meet and collaborate with!

Recently the Museum hosted the March Fourth Marching Band, a mobile big-band spectacular from Portland, Oregon who did a special performance for us as part of their  FUN-raiser tour of Europe to spread JOY TO THE WORLD!! They have performed at Burning Man Festival and other venues they played in Amsterdam included Ruigoord, ADM…oh and umm PARADISO!

As the remarkable composer Merlijn Twaalfhoven explains, “If you want to change the world, you need to break through the expectations of people. Because only when you break expectations and you create confusion, then you create openness. And openness is the only place where contact can take place.”

The Museum moves location four times per year in a big colourful parade through the city. You’re invited to come along, participate, get involved…make and create. ART is LIFE…so let the music of the real world enter your reality!

I took a plunge into the depths of Amsterdam’s thriving underground society to watch the show PUT, by theatre group AARDLEK. Created in the construction site of the Noord Zuid-Lijn just beneath the Rokin.

The performance takes you on a time travel through the raw layers of Amsterdam’s underbelly, with upside down gravity defying, acoustic and physical theatre. The resonating sounds of rumbling trams overhead and emergency sirens screaming along the street, all combine to accentuate the storytelling experience. A highly stimulating location theatre production that I can only liken to the spirit of DogTroep.

The Amsterdam Fringe Festival spreads over the city with politically kinetic theatre, sweet-voiced punk, poetic rock violence, self-torturing quests for honesty, inside-out migration theatre, international gems and an uninhibited love!