Firstly, apologies for the lack of updates, but I am now back in the office and the work is streaming in. A nice welcome back present was YCN favourite Stuart White's hand-drawn 'S' poster which arrived this morning. Lovingly hand-rendered in coloured pencils it's now straightening itself out next to some squash rackets...

To show the diversity of what's being made for the project I thought I'd post Thorbjorn Ankerstjerne's marvelous mould for his 'T'. What it is yet cannot be reveaed but all sources point to a complete one-off outcome. Watch this space.

A little bit of exercise for you this morning - tilt your head 90 degrees to reveal master constructor Vaughan Ward's 'X' draft. To be made from hand crafted card shapes and lovingly pieced together, we're all waiting with bated breath for the final object to arrive... and if you've got a sec Vaughan's got a great selection of work over on his website - just click the picture above.

A great submission from the ever prolific Kate Moross. A bit of a teaser above in the form of a close up crop, Can't beat some isometrically projected primary colours. Lovely stuff.

Monday morning always throws up a few nice e-mails and none more so than this sneak-peak at Ed Davenport's contribution to this year's alphabet project. Using his tried and tested Phono/Graph decks (which incidentally will be on show at the RCA show) he's creating the condensed letter 'O'.

Fresh from the printers is Michael's invite design for our big RCA show coming up on the 30th of August. 3 Different versions printed in different fluro colours will be sent out next week - lovely stuff. Click on the picture to look at some of Mike's other work...

All of the drafts for the project are finally in!
To give you a taster of what's going to be coming through the door over the two weeks I'm expecting letters made from (in alphabetical order of course) - beads, books, cake, card, concrete, hundreds and thousands, jelly, paper, silicon, and wax to just name a few...

Working (cutting) his fingers to the bone across the channel is the very talented Mr. PIerre Vanni. The French paper cutter and assembler extraordinaire has the task of creating the supremely important 'Y' as part of our alphabet.
Not fazed by the pressure he's already gone to work and I've got a feeling the outcome's going to be a bit special.

Yesterday saw some lovely drafts coming in and none more so than this sneak preview from Gerard Doolan who's managed to dig out his scalpel and scissors with great effect.

The time has come for my first post from YCN HQ...
Over the coming weeks I'll be posting updates on the 'YCN Alphabet' project that I've been drafted in to art direct. All 26 contributors are confirmed and the line-up is a very exciting one indeed - bringing some of the finest young talent together for one big letter love-in.
Keep checking back for very regular updates...

The YCN Alphabet is starting to take shape. 26 Designers, Illustrators and Image makers will be crafting a letter based on a template we've produced. The letters will then be photographed to make various words throughout the book. You can see a rough draft of these letterforms over at the Serif website by clicking on the image above.

Part of Alex's 'wall and tape' based organisational structure... er, thingy...

Thanks again for all the quality applications we received for the Art Direction placement advertised earlier. Last year we had Holly Wales helping out on Art Direction duties with Steve Wilcox and Simon Whybray supplying some quality Graphic Design.

This year we've been lucky enough to draft in Alex Bec (one half of the 'If you could do anything tomorrow' team) to help out, Art Directing the YCN Alphabet capsule project that will be featured throughout BOOK 0708 as well as helping out with a few other bits and pieces. More names will be added soon.