If you haven’t bought your Christmas cards yet, I have some up for sale in my shop, with colourful washi tree or retro bauble designs. You can buy in packs of 5 or single ones.
P.S If you want to see my stuff in person, it will all be for sale at the Cabbages & Kings market at Stoke Newington Abney Hall next Saturday the 24th!
New in my Etsy shop, updated designs of my Wonder Cat and Printing Office posters.
You can pick up Wonder Cat here and Printing Office here.
Happy Monday! There are two new print designs up in my Etsy shop today.
I hate autumn for being the dreary gateway to the gloom of winter, but I can’t help but be cheered by the lovely leaf colours as they fall, so this print is a reminder that even dark times have their upsides.
I couldn’t carry on having a tea print in my shop without a coffee one too – both drinks have an equal place in my heart. I’m pleased with how the hand-drawn type and coffee-ink effect (made with real coffee) worked out on this one.
They’re both up for grabs in my Etsy shop right now. Hope you like!
I meant to visit loads of London Design Festival stuff, but ended up being quite lazy/disorganised last week and ended up just going to Design Junction on Saturday. Worked out pretty well though since it seemed to be all of the coolest stuff, housed in an awesome old sorting office warehouse.
Josh has been homebrewing beer for quite a while now – since I bought him this kit last Christmas. One early explosion disaster aside the brews have all been very tasty, and he’s quickly graduated from using a kit into buying individual malts and hops to make specific flavours and styles.
For his latest one – a summery IPA – he let me design the label. I hand-drew the whole thing and just adjusted and coloured in Photoshop. I got them printed onto clear vinyl by the nice folks at Diginate.
The brew was supposed to be a celebration of our new garden, but a lot of setbacks have meant that it’s still a work in progress… anyway, the labels came out nice and I’m looking forward to enjoying one in the garden when it’s finally finished. I just hope that summer isn’t quite over yet…
It’s been almost exactly a year since I went freelance – I’m not quite sure if it’s gone surprisingly quickly or slowly. I’ve done a quite ridiculous amount of work, had some rough months and been nearly constantly stressed from being over- or under-worked… but it was still totally the right decision for me and I’m really proud of some of the work I’ve completed – you can see it all in my portfolio.
Actually, I will be changing the way I work a little bit from next month because I have just accepted a part-time permanent job at the brilliant Sidekick Studios, so will only have two free days a week to take on select client work and personal projects. I’ve been working a lot with Sidekick over the last three months and their ethos, working style and client list are exactly aligned to the kind of thing I want to be doing myself. I hope it will let me focus more on doing what I like (designing!) and less on client management and emails, which are one of the big drags of being a lone ranger.
To celebrate a year of working for me, I put together this little infographic using data from my accounting software Solo. I haven’t put actual earnings in because I’m British, but in general it’s good to see I worked less and earned more than my last full-time job.
I just adore the authentically old-school branding of haberdasher Merchant & Mills. Classic useful products, well made in beautiful packaging at a reasonable price. Why can’t everything work like this?
You can see the range in person – and enjoy a great cup of coffee as you browse the fabrics and notions – at the charming Ray Stitch on Essex Road.
I’m so smitten with this Flickr set of 1960s library posters, unearthed by a school librarian. They’re inspiring me to make some more book-themed prints!
The folk at Blurb got in touch recently and asked if I’d like to try making my own custom photobook. I was already aware of their service so it was good to have a go at creating my own book.
The process is really easy: upload your photos, choose your book format, drag and crop your pics and send to be published. But of course if you want to spend more time on it, you can also upload InDesign files for a completely custom design. A few days later you have a lovely hardback book of your photos: much smarter and easier than a regular photo album.
I went for a mini-size square book, which I filled with photos of me and Josh for our anniversary. The print quality is great and the matte paper I picked makes the pages nice and tactile. I think this format would also be brilliant for immortalising your Instagrams: I like the idea of taking something ephemeral and sealing it in print.
But it’s not just photos, you could also upload illustrations or text and make a recipe book, notebook or portfolio.. the possibilities are endless. Prices are surprisingly reasonable too, with my baby book clocking in at about 20 quid.
Have you tried Blurb before? What would you print?
Scottish beermeisters Brewdog put up a little Twitter competition recently, asking for label designs for a new beer – a totally open brief right down to the beer type. The first prize was for a beer to made with your label – pretty cool! So I knocked up this little entry – involving cats, of course.
I think it fits right into their range, no?
Sadly I just missed out on first place in a public vote, but managed to get second place, which meant a lovely crate of Brewdog beers landed on my doorstep today. Not bad for a couple of hours’ work drawing kitties!
By the way, if you haven’t been to Brewdog’s Camden bar yet you really should – it’s got a great vibe, awesome beers and really yummy pizzas (the menu’s curated by Masterchef’s Tim Anderson).
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