Mathew Keller

This is the site of Mathew Keller an award winning Digital Designer and Web Developer based in Brighton, England.

If you would like to find out more about me please visit the About section of this site. To view some of my work please visit the Portfolio section or if you have a project that needs my skills please get in touch via the information supplied in the Contact section.

Thursday, 10th December, 2009

12 Alternative Christmas Films to Watch This Year

So it’s that time of year again and we start the inevitable ramp up to Christmas which, in our household, means the wife forces Christmas music on me 24/7, decorates the house from top to bottom, makes stacks of Mince Pies (which isn’t so bad) and insists on sitting through endless bad/boring Christmas films on TV or DVD.

Now you may or may not know this but I’m a bit of a film fan and let’s face it with the Quiff I often get compared to Mark Kermode so, to make this years endless torrent of Christmas spirit a bit more palatable, I thought I’d sit down and come up with a list of Christmas related films that I actually want to watch!

Of course, being the lovely guy that I am, and in the ‘true spirit’ of Christmas I thought I’d share that list with you in case you felt the urge to join me in the Season’s suffering cheer.

Without further ado then, here is my 12 Days of (Alternative) Christmas Films:

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Thursday, 12th November, 2009

A Deco Christmas? Non?

Whilst my mother-in-law was visiting us from her home in rural France recently she asked me to put together this poster for her local communities Christmas event. 

Now maybe it was the influence of all the Twenties and Thirties based television programs I’d spent the week watching (Art Deco Icons, Andrew Marr’s Making of Modern Britain, Glamour’s Golden Age: Hooked on Hollywood and High Flyers: How Britain Took to the Air) but I think this poster definitely has a distinctly Art Deco feel to it, don’t you? 

Wednesday, 4th November, 2009

Re-Enactors Take on the World Wars

Loving Jim Naughten’s new collection of photos; “The Re-enactors”, currently on display at the Hot Shoe Gallery in London until December 4th, 2009.

The collection is a series of individual portraits and huge battle-scenes depicting a group of history-obsessed men and women who gather annually to transform themselves into characters from the First and Second World Wars:
“Every summer thousands of people from all over the world gather in a Kentish field and leave the present firmly behind. They step out of their routine daily lives and transform into historical characters from the First and Second World Wars, often with such vigour and obsessive attention to detail that it’s hard to imagine them in contemporary settings. Taking on a different name, identity and sometimes even a different tongue, the role players re-enact battles and drills from an imagined past. It is something more than acting, a collective fantasy played out on a massive scale.”

To create the shots Naughten attended many of the countries large scale re-enactment shows, such as the War and Peace show in Kent, with a portable studio. For the group and battle shots he created composites from crane mounted cameras and location shots. I really love the posing and detail in these photos especially the way he does group shots… makes everyone look like toy soldiers.

From Time Magazine

Saturday, 31st October, 2009

London to Brighton Veteran Car Run

This weekend sees the return of one of Britain’s longest running motoring events to Brighton. The London to Brighton Veteran Car Run 2009.

The run will start at sun-rise from Hyde Park in London and the first cars should reach Brighton by approximately 10.00am.

What I love about this event is that it both captures and celebrates a particular moment in history: the Emancipation Run of 14 November 1896 which celebrated the passing into law of the Locomotives on the Highway Act, raising the speed limit for ‘light locomotives’ from 4 mph to 14 mph and abolishing the requirement for vehicles to be preceded by a man on foot carrying a red flag. However it also captures and distills a particular period in history, the transition from the Victorian era to the Edwardian era, by only allowing cars built before 1st January 1905 to take part. That fact these cars still exist let alone still run and can make such a long journey brings joy to my heart.

What particularly caught my eye this year is the rather lovely illustration that features prominently on the events website: http://www.lbvcr.com.

The site was built by MSO.net and i can only assume the illustration was done by one of their designers as there are no other credits visible anywhere.