R + J

A late Merry Christmas to you all! And a happy Boxing Day to my Brit readers. Today I wanted to share with you a gift I made for my friend Lily (the recipient of my home made Hogwarts letter) for her Christmas present. She adores the works of Shakespeare and I happen to know that this was one of her favourite quotes - "Did my heart love 'till now? Forswear it, sight! For I ne'er saw true beauty 'till this night" from Romeo and Juliet. I have also wanted to do a typographical poster for some time, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity. I wanted to keep it a mix of my typical favourite victorian style typography (which in this case I designed from scratch) and a calligraphy style type. I also included a surface pattern behind (the one I blogged before Christmas) and I chose roses as they are also referenced in the play (a rose by any other name, you know the line!)

I gave Lily the blue and white version of the print, which was only a print thanks to my great fellow illustrator friend Kat who kindly let me use her A3 printer! (She is simply fabulous, her blog is here check her out). The pink version of the poster below however still doesn't have a home, though I might put it into my portfolio if nobody takes a shine to it soon. Hope you like it guys!

(and here's a sample of the type up close)

quizlet

Just a quick one today to share a poster design with you all that I worked on this evening. My dad is running the local pub charity quiz in a few weeks and wanted a little advertising so I thought I would step in! I have been feeling very Christmassy of late and got a little bit excited searching for typefaces, as I had to get this done quite fast and didn't have time to draw out my own font for a change! The festive type I used here is from this website though it's not entirely the same as the designer intended as I did edit out parts of the original type design. The candlelit background is some collage paper that I scanned in, I think it might be by papermania.  Overall I was going for the whole Tom Smith's crackers victorian postcard style aesthetic. Hope you like it!

wightwick

Just a quick post today. Been busy buzzing around to London and back last week so I couldn't post, hopefully some exciting promo stuff inspired by that trip coming up soon. But in the meantime, today I was working on another chalkboard design,  this time for the 'malthouse' tearoom at Wightwick Manor in Wolverhampton, an amazing mid 19th Century mock-Tudor building that was once home to the enterprising Mander family. If you, like me, love Pre-Raphaelite art and the Arts and Crafts movement, it's definitely worth a visit as they have loads of amazing William Morris patterns and a few pretty incredible drawings by Rossetti. 

Wightwick Manor, Wolverhampton

Anyway, the tearoom there was in need of a large display board for the wall so I offered my type skills for the job. I kept the main body of the type as close to the National Trust's standard font as I could by hand, but the main title was inspired by an old book I once got from the Falmouth uni library about Victorian typefaces.  It'll be up there in the tearoom some time this week I believe!