On the face of it, my painting This ship has sailed is part of my visual art practice – but it has its own space somewhere between design, illustration and sketching. It’s of the massive, empty greenhouses in West Ham Park once used to grow plants for City of London events. … Read More
Well, 2025 – you’ve been quite the year creatively… Here are four projects where I’ve been able to get involved from the very beginning: My work on Vianne’s Confession for independent perfumer Sarah McCartney of 4160 Tuesdays started before the perfume existed, smelling its ingredients at Sarah’s studio. Designing a … Read More
I get in touch with clients from time to time to see where we are on their projects. It’s part of the choreography in getting processes to work, individually and around each other. Which would suggest that every project is dancing the same steps, to the same tempo, in the … Read More
Thinking it through This month’s Studio Snack podcast episode is about tea breaks – their history, changes in business thinking and how we might cure our creative industry habit of skipping them. In illustrating a tea break alarm for this month’s creative experiment, I was reminded of something different: the … Read More
We learn something from each episode of Studio Snack, a collaborative food podcast about design. And this month, exploring seeds and sowing has given us much to discuss about the how and when of a design project. I’ve used type to illustrate stories from my inexpert gardening that make good … Read More
You might think these look a bit rough and ready. And you’d be right. That’s the point. For my live sketching work, I think about format just as I do with design for events. What’s the character of the event? What is the style of the venue? What’s going on? … Read More
Post text. The latest Studio Snack, a five minute food podcast about design, started with a suggestion from collaborator Narcis Sauleda that we plan our next episode over coffee and cake. Fika. Kaffee und Kuchen. Kettle on and a snack for elevenses. In my head, they’re one thing. But to … Read More
For Bowen Craggs & Co, a pair of video backdrops. A surprising amount of work goes in to making something simple, for seated and standing use (Enthusiastic arm-waving in a test video, anyone?) that also works when the room is in use as an office and meets a range of … Read More
I could just answer the brief… There’s a venerable oak in Bruce Castle Park that I’ve drawn over the course of designing a visual identity for Bruce Castle Museum & Archive in Tottenham and returning as a visitor and a researcher. It’s been just part of growing my knowledge about this … Read More
“How does Lydia do this!”… It’s always a delight when a client enjoys the work from a live sketching commission, here, an assignment for long-time client Ideas Foundation covering the Disrupt Space exhibition at The Department Store, Brixton. And this time, my client Heather’s comment set off a stock-take of … Read More