It’s not the most conventional of festive repeat patterns. But bear with me… I love a pencil shaving. I make a lot of them, on live sketching assignments and on my own work. In a circle, they can be baubles or snowflakes. They’re general enough to be relevant to the … Read More
I’m an accidental illustrator… This loose, linear strand of my work was once the workings-out of my design practice. Before that, it came from a love of bande dessinée illustration. I studied at a time of specialisation, when you could be a designer or an illustrator but not both; before … Read More
It’s happened to me before: I’m working on an image, lift what’s supposed to be the thing from its background… and what’s left is more interesting. I’ve been reminded of this as I work on a new collection of illustrated garments and totes. I often wear my own designs for … Read More
In our Halloween episode of Studio Snack, we have monster feet, stories behind traditions, weird flavour combinations – and skeleton snack pictures made from the inside out. We’d come up with the idea over some properly spicy chai (digital conversation is marvellous but creatively, nothing quite beats throwing ideas back … Read More
On the face of it, I have three strands of work: design, creative direction and sketch illustration. But I bring my design knowledge to illustration formats and materials and my reportage eye to my work on communication design and branding. Here, two strands of my work are drawn together – … Read More
A by-product of writing a bio or summary information is the chance to wrangle the question I’ve often asked branding clients: “In one sentence, what do you do?”. On the face of it, my work has got more complicated as I’ve gone along. As I’ve gathered knowledge, graphic design has … Read More
“Held in lime, dipped in pink.” That was one of my notes as I made a colour swatch of a daisy. Why? Well, for our Studio Snack episode on edible flowers, because colour is what they so often bring to a dish, my creative experiment looked at that by way … 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
“It’s very green”, commented perfumer Sarah McCartney of 4160 Tuesdays of my selection for a taster set. Visiting to collect, I dropped off a copy of my Water, Colour zine of live garden illustrations. The result was a fascinating conversation about how green straight from the tube never quite tells … Read More
Most of my sketching work is reporting on things or gathering in people’s stories. But I’ve turned narrative illustrator for the latest episode of Studio Snack, the monthly podcast I make with collaborator Narcis Sauleda. This month’s episode is on fictional snacks and our creative experiment has involved making up … Read More