This wasn’t the plan. For the Summer episode of Studio Snack, a food podcast about design that I make with former studio-mate Narcis Sauleda, our experiment has been to create a half-time snack for an obscure sport. I started by redesigning the brief, to make an imaginary edible finish line … Read More
For a creative collaboration (about which, more to come), I had signed up for a workshop at Hausprint with master lithographer Simon Burder, having picked the brains of two printmakers I know. There is so much value in learning in person from people who know their stuff; in experiencing the … Read More
My long-range personal project The Colour Trip involves visiting places which have associations with colour. I do some advance nerdery, I explore and I’m open to diversions. It will become a thing. What type of thing will be revealed in due course. But meanwhile, I give you the latest leg … Read More
It was like playing a harp… On a big sketch on canvas, I’d decided to show the way reeds glitter in the light by way of gold embroidery. Cody Dock is a favourite spot for a screen break tea break – so, tea bags for a colour wash. I had … Read More
Behind the scenes of the Vianne’s Confession illustration… Drawing used to be the part of my design work that clients never saw – the workings-out; the thinking on paper. And though my sketch illustration is now a visible thing, I still explore that way. Commissioned to illustrate a collaboration between … Read More
I bring my design head to my live sketching – I love an appropriate format. So for my meet the artist day for Hello, Petal, my exhibition of botanical work at a café in a park, I made seed packet sized sketchbooks. And they’re made from waste, which is entirely … Read More
You would think that a blogpost on sketches in an exhibition has no place here. But here’s a thing: one is on glassine paper made for packaging; the other takes a technique I use in short pose life drawing and applies it to something else. Both are unpredictable – and … Read More
Translation. That’s an odd word to use for visual communications. But one of the most interesting parts of my work is spotting a connection between two apparently-unrelated things and using it to invite people in to the words, or to an idea. Some of that work is subtle. Some of … Read More
I’ve run masterclasses on getting over a creative block. One of my top tips is going for a walk. Somehow, sprung from my desk, my view long, the ideas come to me that are not going to pop out of my screen, however long I stare at it. But I … Read More
Time travel. It wasn’t what I expected from my free-range Friday. But as I sketch walked my way from an exhibition recce at Springfield Park Café in Hackney, looking for a vantage point I found an information board about the geology of the view. On it was the logo I’d … Read More