Looking back to Christmas, I completed the 2011 Jenkins Marine Christmas card. I started working for these guys in my last year of university, when we were set a professional practice project and had to bag ourselves some real clients for the first time. Since then it’s become a weird but wonderful Christmas tradition to illustrate a tug or a barge or a dredger and produce a nautical yet festive illustration for their annual card. Thankfully I was brought up in a little fishing town and as a kid I used to draw the boats in the harbour, so I have plenty of experience when it comes to maritime doodles!

I also took some time out for personal work and designed a Christmas card of my own. Entitled The First Supper, it is a loving parody of The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci. This was also featured on Illustration Rally’s Christmas Rally, which was pretty cool.

Aside from the Christmas stuff, I’ve been doing some more work for Lesa at I Heart Buttons. She wanted a sign to promote her new shop in Ryde on the Isle of Wight, where she sells many pretty things from button bouquets to vintage Betty Boop memorabilia. I thought it would be a nice idea to combine those two things on the sign with an illustration of Betty holding a button bouquet, and we were really happy with how it turned out.

It was also nice to be able to go and see a physical manifestation of my work, happily doing its’ job on Union street outside the I Heart Buttons Shop. I’m so used to only seeing my work on a screen that it comes as a surprise whenever I encounter it somewhere else!

You might also notice a new addition to the Illustration Booth; a stranger lurking in the navigation menus, an inauspicious cash register clacking away on the sidebar to herald a new arrival. You’ve guessed it, the shop is open! Don’t get too excited though, put your pocket money away – I know you’re mega keen for a spending spree but there isn’t much to buy at the moment. The main reason that I built the shop is because I’ve had quite a few people contact me asking for prints, and I want to make it easy for anyone who wants a print in future.

The shop provides a simple way to buy and pay using PayPal, which is one of the safest and most efficient ways to buy online, and I’ll occasionally add new products such as new prints and canvases, original doodles, zines, cards, badges, stickers and other fun stuff. I’m also open to requests, so if there’s a particular illustration that you would like to own in print I would be more than happy to accommodate.

Until next time, thanks for reading and have fun exploring the shop!

It’s September 2011 and the new website I’ve been agonising over for months is almost complete. It took a while because up until this point I had basically been cheating, using a template-based website builder to create my online presence quickly and easily without having to write any code. Consequently, I had to teach myself the basics of  HTML, CSS, Javascript and enough PHP to integrate a WordPress blog before I could begin. Quite an effort you might think, but curiosity will do that to you. I never liked having a website that I didn’t build myself because I didn’t understand how it worked or how to fix it if something got broken, not to mention the fact that I was always constrained within a boxy template of someone else’s creation.

It may have taken months, but my curiosity is satisfied, I know my new site intimately and gained a great deal of technical knowledge that can be applied to other projects in the future. If you haven’t checked out the rest of the site yet, there’s plenty to see so feel free to amble around at your leisure. There’ll be some new work in the gallery later this week, and I’ll be adding a little gift shop in the new year, stocked with prints and other illustrated shinies™

Okay now a warning, the remainder of this blog is wedding related so if you’re the kind of bloke/sane woman whose brain shuts down the moment a female mentions anything even slightly matrimonial, you may want to click that little x in the top-right now. For those who are still with me, we’ve reached November and I’ve just finished a brochure for a certain Isle Of Wight Wedding Photographer called Chris Cowley. Chris wanted to showcase some of his work to prospective clients, so I came up with this clean and elegant design to match his existing website and branding. Click on the image to see more, or follow the link above if you’re in need of an excellent photographer for your wedding – I really can’t recommend him highly enough.

Following on from this in December, I was also approached by a nice lady named Lesa from I Heart Buttons. Lesa makes lovely vintage button bouquets for weddings and beautifully unique jewellery and decorations for all occasions, and she was in need of an advertisement for her company, again to harmonise with existing branding and showcase her work – I only hope that I did it justice! Make sure you check her site out, especially if you’re planning a wedding and looking for a creative, original bouquet that will last a lifetime.

So that brings us right back up to date in December 2011, armed with a few more unrealistic resolutions and ready to embark upon a new year. I’m not sure how 2011 was for you, but it certainly wasn’t my favourite of the 26.41 years I’ve experienced so far. I certainly learned a lot, tried new things and hit a few snakes and ladders along the way – but I can’t deny that 2011 has been a melancholy orbit. We’ve had tsunamis, natural and nuclear tragedies, protests, strikes and economical disasters, civil war, dead dictators and mad men running around with guns, not to mention Frankie Cocozza and the fact that Jedward are still breathing. Add to that a few sources of personal sadness, and the new year becomes a very attractive prospect. With so much room for improvement, this is a year for positivity.

My resolution is simply to make 2012 a happy year, and I plan on sticking to it.

If I’m not working on a piece for a client I’ll work on personal projects, follow tutorials , research, learn, try new software and techniques, shamefully self-promote, read something interesting or write something uninteresting to stay busy. Weekends are the same, which is probably not healthy and the main reason why I’ll eventually need to rent some studio space and confine myself to more sociable hours. Being your own boss is a strange experience and not for everyone, but despite the work-life imbalance and occasional bout of abject poverty, I really quite like it.

Anyway I get an email from a friend of mine who makes and sells screen-printed merchandise; shirts bags and that kind of thing. He asked if I would like to contribute a design to his range and I thought it would be a nice way to get back on the wagon without having to worry about serious deadlines. I came up with this huggable, hairy character to be printed on a cushion cover – because everyone likes to cuddle a cushion right?

Next up came a request from my friend Maria of Bubble Fusion who wanted a logo and character design to encapsulate her brand. I came up a rainbow-inspired logo and this slightly sinister yet strangely alluring unicorn; cute and colourful with a twist. If you’re a fan of awesome, colourful things then check out the Bubble Fusion Facebook Fan Page and Etsy Shop where you can browse and buy Maria’s work.

This brings me nearly up to date, in early Autumn 2011 where I’ll pick up from in the fourth and final instalment. Before I go, here’s a final reminder to get those presents wrapped and the turkey out to thaw – you don’t want to spend Christmas day tangled in sellotape, defrosting the old bird with a hairdryer and sobbing into the tinsel while everyone else is happily snoozing to the sound of her majesty’s annual lullaby.

It turned out that, behind all that environmentally friendly attire and nude frolicking, were two brothers who had built the business up from scratch and were expanding to make jobs for unemployed young people on the Isle of Wight. To cut a long story short; I moved from Online Marketing to Operations Management after a few months, stayed on for a little while beyond my initial contract and probably learned more that year than I did during three years at university – without racking up an enormous student debt!

I say this not to devalue my degree, but to emphasize the value of working at the core of a real-life, rapidly-growing business with supportive and knowledgeable mentors at the helm. I didn’t realise how little I knew until I joined Rapanui, and I will always be thankful for the experience and the knowledge I took away from it.

Aware of my interest in design, Rapanui’s creative director gave me the opportunity to collaborate on a number of creative projects alongside my marketing and operations work. I had a great time working with him on all sorts of things from packaging and product design to animation, including the examples below.

Watch this video on YouTube.

I’m happy to report that Rapanui are bigger, better and more sustainable than ever, and will be opening their first high street retail store in Sandown this year so if you’re interested in fashion or passionate about the environment I recommend paying them a visit. If you’re more of a virtual shopper, check out their website instead and stay up to date with all the latest news on Facebook or Twitter.

I didn’t have a lot of time to work on freelance projects that year, but I did help a friend with some branding for his new business, Overhaul Security. Plus, I couldn’t turn down an invite to take part in Illustration Rally’s European countries themed rally, in which the participants were randomly allocated a country and asked to create an illustration based on it. I got France, which is a galling prospect for any Englishman, but I did my best and came up with an illustration inspired by the French flag. I also wrote a short artist feature for the Rally, which can be found here if you need to read a bit more twaddle.

And with that, we arrive in early summer 2011, a freelancer again with a website to redesign. More about that in part three, thanks for reading!

As promised, this is the first of four retrospective blogs in which I try to recall some of the work I’ve done since November 2009 when my old blog ground to a halt. Being a considerate fellow, I’ve separated it into four manageable chunks to make it a bit easier to swallow between all those hot mince pies and cold turkey sandwiches, and included as many pictures as possible to punctuate the waffle.

We pick up in late ’09. A call from a man with a dream, a dream about a world without wrapping paper. He had invented the Evergreen Wrap; a reusable fabric wrap designed to replace conventional wrapping paper, reduce the number of trees felled in the name of celebration and basically help our poor old planet a little bit. The thing was, there were loads of traditional Furoshiki techniques – different ways of tying fabric to wrap gifts of all shapes and sizes – but he needed someone to illustrate them in a contemporary way that matched his branding. The finished illustrations feature on the packaging, but you can also see them here.

I went on to complete a number of projects for the guys at Evergreen Wrap, from brochure illustrations to greetings cards and animation assets – it was a great experience and I can certainly recommend their wraps if you don’t feel like wrestling with wrapping paper this Christmas.

Watch this video on YouTube.

It was shortly after this that I was approached by Claire Sambrook, who I had previously worked with on the Southsea Deck Your Chairs project, who asked me and fellow illustrator Ken to produce a bookmark and poster for her new project. Visual Libraries was a project designed to stimulate interaction between communities and their local library, encouraging collaborative creativity and self-expression. Participants could borrow a visual diary from their library and make their mark on its’ pages before returning it for the next person to interact with. We designed the posters to promote the project, and the bookmarks to mark the pages of each diary.

Following on from the Visual Libraries project, Claire asked if we would like to submit some work for another project of hers – Love Your Bike Portsmouth. I may as well come clean now, I haven’t ridden a bike since I was ten and even then I spent more time bleeding in the gutter than on the saddle, but it was a good excuse to draw something so I happily obliged. We each designed a spoke card to promote the event, and as usual I went for the most uncool approach possible – taking inspiration from the Victorian school of cycling. Jeeves, ready my velocipede!

Thus, we arrive in early summer 2010, concluding the first part of the retrospective. I’m hoping to get these wrapped up – excuse the pun – before Christmas to clear the decks for a new year of blogging, so keep those eyes peeled for part two. Until then, good luck with your Yuletide preparations!

When I first started writing blogs, during my final year at university, I thought to myself that this was probably a massive waste of time. Nobody will want to read this rambling prose, it’s not really making a point about anything in particular and so far I’ve yet to be visited my a smiling Mr. Pulitzer or his prize committee – and yet, blinded by youthful naivety, I persevered. Alas, experience (and Google Analytics) soon taught me that my instincts were probably right, and the thought that I was writing for nobody in particular made it difficult to find the motivation to continue – hence the gaping chronological void between this blog and the last.

Anyway, that was then and this is now. Now I realise that what this blog really is, and has been from the start, is a sort of career diary. It doesn’t matter that my mother makes up 50% of the readership, it’s just nice to throw up a quick blog about my latest project or something that I found particularly inspiring, because then I’ll always have a record of my creative journey to look back on.

One day, when I’m old and drunk and homeless, I’ll pack up my chalks and leave my paving-slab canvas to the rain, stagger into an internet café and hand over my hat-full of change to the clerk. I’ll pour my creaking bones into a plastic chair, warm my hands with a coffee, visit my old blog and smile, sans teeth, sans regret, at past glories and silly doodles.

Therefore, as not to deprive my destitute future-self, I’ll be writing a series of short retrospective blogs covering the two-year blackout since my last blog. There have been a fair few projects since then, but I’ll try to keep it short sweet, painless and picture-packed for the brave few who choose to read. If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you’ll see a notification whenever a new blog is posted, which should alleviate any niggling worries and bouts of insomnia caused by the thought of missing one.

That’s all for now, thanks for reading, enjoy the new site and I’ll be back soon.

Well, so much for regular blog updates. It’s not my fault, honest, I mistakenly purchased a Playstation 3 and lost a month’s worth of free time to Metal Gear Solid. Blogging has suffered, but on the bright side I’d probably be able to infiltrate an enemy base armed only with a chloroform-soaked hanky and a swanky bandana – if ever I needed to…

Thankfully however, the design work has continued parallel to bouts of virtual espionage. Mostly I’ve been working on small commissions to try and raise a bit of cash, but there has been time for personal work too. It’s definitely important to keep the fun stuff going alongside professional commissions, as it helps to maintain and develop your individual style.

Early last month I was cordially invited by my talented friends Chrissy and Leanne to collaborate on a fun little project for Peperami, who were looking for innovative ways to advertise their new ‘Peperami Bites’. Leaving the expert character designer to work up some expert character designsand the expert storyboarder to produce an expert storyboard, I set to work on a couple of print campaigns to support the main concept.

I thought the combined results were fantastic, but only time will tell if the Peperami-folk agree!

So overall I suppose three lessons have been learned this month:

1) Personal work is good, make work for fun not just for money.

2) It’s good to collaborate, different people have different strengths and you will learn a great deal by working with them.

3) No matter how much time you waste playing games, you will never be as cool as Solid Snake.

In celebration of all things horrific, I’ve submitted three new abominations to the Threadless Loves Horror II Competition.

Nyctophobia II is the sequel to my original Nyctophobia design, Lily is a more subtle approach to the theme taken from my old project on Phobias, and Elemental Rapture is a re-imagining of the old biblical concept of apocalypse.

If you get a chance, swing by and cast your vote.

Thankies!

Well, I don’t really know where to start with this one folks. I’ve had quite a lot of work on this month, continuing my work for Clooci alongside a few other freelance endeavours.

For starters I designed a counter-top point of sale stand for Mimobot EU, to display their wonderful products in stores nationwide. With all the calculations involved I was glad of my long forgotten GCSE Maths classes. Two things surprised me about this: 1) I was able to recall enough of it to complete the task with brain intact and 2) You really do need maths in everyday life! Sorry Ms Allen, I thought you were lying.

Next up was the catalogue, which had to be designed from scratch and made ready for print within quite a tight timeframe of two weeks, hence the broad chasm between blogs of late. It was quite a challenge, but I learned a great deal about designing marketing collateral and everyone was pleased with the outcome. The pages have been blown up to cover a Clooci exhibition stand at this years Autumn Fair, so pop along and have a look, if you happen to live in Birmingham!

Ken and I also had the chance to make some more 3D anaglyphs for the Clooci press kit, which is always fun even though hours spent staring at a computer screen in a pair of red and cyan shades invariably culminates in a spectacular seizure.

Following all this, we were each asked to design a Mimobot of our own for the European market, and potentially for the US market too, as long as enough people like it! If you have a spare few minutes, all votes are gratefully accepted, and all voters will receive virtual cookies for their efforts*

In other news, my design for Southsea Deck Your Chairs has been made up into a proper deckchair, and is currently posing for photographs all around Portsmouth. I hear it’s even going to be in a few shop windows, which is very exciting! You can see most of the photographs on Flickr, and it’s definitely worth checking out the website, where you can even buy one of the chairs if you fancy a nice sit down.

And finally, I worked on a Logo design for a Hampshire-based company called tecVISION recently and I’m heading up there on the 10th to interview for the role of temporary art worker. Wish me luck, and I’ll let you know how it went upon my return!

Meanwhile if you want to get in touch, you have many different options available thanks to my shiny new Contact page, but for now I’ll give my fingers and your eyes a well deserved rest and bid you goodnight.

‘Til next time!

*Subject to terms and conditions. Virtual confectionary is not transferrable to the material realm and therefore not fit for human consumption.

Thanks to a kind invitation by my good friend and indigenous industrialist, Ken Leung, I’ve been collaborating on several freelance projects for Clooci, a cool company concerned with all things contemporary, collectable and geek-chic.

It’s been a great experience so far, striding out of the old pen and paper comfort zone to work on, amongst other things, a Mimobot exhibit for Top Drawer Autumn and a point of sale display stand for retail stores. They’ve even been kind enough to promote us on their website alongside some fantastic artists, ba-zing!

Also, I finally got around to designing a logo for illustration booth, which inspired a new header for the site.

All I need now is a catchy tagline to go underneath. I was thinking something like, “Illustration Booth: let your spirit soar!” but ideally I’d like something slightly less poop. Any suggestions?