Lettering for Four Four Two Magazine Messi Issue

It was great fun working on the hand lettering for the July issue of FourFourTwo Magazine with guest editor Messi. 

The work extended beyond the double cover to the opening article title lettering and can also be seen throughout the magazine in the form of smaller playful notes and jottings.

Guest edited by celebrated footballer, Messi, the design team at FourFourTwo wanted to give the magazine the personal touch with casual handwritten elements to complement the bold design.

As with all magazine work, the timings were tight so I worked closely with the Deputy Art Editor as the copy evolved and the design was finalised, both to the satisfaction of the design team and Messi’s sponsors, Adidas. It was a fast and furious job but a satisfying one - plus, I know a lot more about Messi than I did at the start of the project!

If you'd like to see more of my lettering and illustration for magazines, head over to the editorial folder on my portfolio site where you'll see an interesting variety of commissions for different publications.

Latest Welcome Campaign at Heathrow Airport

I have to confess I was pretty psyched to see the wonderful Tim Peake standing in front of my lettering at Heathrow … This is one of a series of large format posters for the latest Heathrow Welcome Campaign featuring my hand lettering. 

The posters can be seen looming large across the walls at the airport’s arrivals and departures areas and is one of the jobs that people tend to mention to me most, normally seen when returning from holiday. 

As with the Tim Peake’s poster, real people rather than models were used and a zoo keeper, a town crier, a Red Arrows pilot and even Santa (yes, he’s real!) amongst others, stand alongside the famous astronaut. See the full set of posters on the advertising page on my portfolio site.

I was commissioned by Chaos Design to create different styles of hand lettering to capture the personalities of the featured people as they welcome travellers to London. 

As you can imagine, the Welcome Campaign at Heathrow Airport is always a great project to work on but the added excitement of Tim Peake's inclusion made it an extra special commission.

Spring forward with Country Living plus Paper Mapping

The start of British Summertime means the clocks have gone forward an hour here in the UK, so with lighter evenings and the promise of finer weather, Spring-inspired news seems in order. 

Few magazines do Spring better than Country Living, so here’s an update on some of the work that I’ve been producing during my ongoing project with Country Living over the past year.

If you’re familiar with the magazine, you’ll be used to seeing my tonal watercolour lettering throughout its pages. Designed to work within the page layout, the bespoke brush lettering complements the elegant typography but is still bold enough to sit across a photographic background. The work itself is produced by hand, scanned and dropped onto the page for fine tuning. This kind of attention to detail ensures the lettering perfectly matches the article’s colour palette and remains legible over any background texture.

Aside from pullquotes, I also work on logos related to the magazine. Generally these are looser and more expressive, while still being carefully designed to fit within the space available - a fine balance between freedom and control.

If you’d like to see more of my magazine work, click through to the editorial folder on my website.

Paper Mapping

Since attending a creative mapping course at the British Library earlier this year, I’ve been enjoying exploring handmade books, playing with paper and experimenting with folds - see below my London map fold.

If paper is your thing, you can see more of this experimental work on my Mapmaker FB and Instagram pages.

Hand Lettered Illustrations for Nebianax plus Journaling Addict

I was excited to work on this challenging job for Mass Agency, creating hand lettered illustrations for a brochure for Nebianax, a new treatment for Cystic Fibrosis.

Attention to detail and constant revision helped me build up a series of word as image illustrations to get across the problems related to the illness. 

The restricted colour palette and clean design work well as a foil to the intricately expressive imagery. You can see the rest of illustrations, along with a larger detail view, on my portfolio.

Journaling Addict

Since the beginning of year, I've been enjoying playing around with imagery in a series of journals, which I post sporadically on my dedicated RR Mapmaker FB and IG pages. A chance to flex my hand skills and experiment with new media, it's great fun and an opportunity to hook up with people with similar interests. Head over to my online accounts if you'd like to see more of the work ...

Sarah Billing Logo & My Map of You Hand Lettered Book Title

It was a pleasure to work on the lettering and illustration for Sarah Billing's logo commissioned by Work Design Creative Partners.

A qualified ‘Colour Me Beautiful’ consultant, Sarah approached Work Design to develop a logo that would reflect the bespoke nature of her new personal style and colour advice service.

Sarah’s expertise means ... Read on 

Sneak Peak: My Map of You Book Title Lettering

I was delighted to work on the titling for the debut novel of author, Isabelle Broom published by Penguin Michael Joseph. Hats off to the design team for coming up with such an entrancing cover, I loved working on this loose brush lettering. There are more titles to come, so once I can, I'll post the set in the publishing folder on my website. Meanwhile, for a quick hand lettered book title fix, head over there now ...

Vintage Malamud Book Title Lettering

Vintage Classics has just released a series of Bernard Malamud novels with new covers designed in-house by Matt Broughton. I was delighted to be asked to work on the title lettering and designed some crisp vector drawn script to work with Matt's painterly,  retro-inspired illustrations. 

I like to work with a variety of media - both traditionally with brushes, pens and ink, as well as digitally. Recently I've been working on the possibilities of combining my hand lettered ink work with vector based drawings, opening up some interesting new avenues of exploration.

If you'd like to see more of what's interesting me at the moment, take a look at my side projects folder on my newly designed portfolio. If you're interested in book design you can see more of this work in my publishing folder.

Pilot Pen Advertising Campaign

I was delighted to be asked by the Zimmerman Agency in the US to work on their latest Pilot Pen Advertising Campaign.

A lettering artist's dream - a huge box turned up in the post stuffed full of Pilot pens in every colour of the rainbow. As you can imagine, I had a lot of fun working on these characters, developing different styles of handwriting appropriate to each ad.

Don't forget to double click on the image if you want to see it at a larger size.

Midsummer Night's Dream

Recently I've been working on a personal project inspired by Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream.

The beautiful language is an ideal subject for the word-heavy imagery, which is influenced by my love of expressive typography. My aim is to get the feel of the spoken word across by combining letter and image.

I'm about to set up a blog dedicated to my personal work - read more about it in my next post.

Green's Cake Mix Lettering

Anyone who knows me will know I'm partial to a nice bit of cake - so when this job for Green's Cake Mix lettering turned up in my inbox I was delighted to accept. The client was based in Australia but in this digital age distance makes little difference to a job, as long as you keep track of time zones.

This lettering had to be simple and bold for stand out on the shelf and I've added a touch of mixing bowl swirl and flow to the letterforms - of course it was only professional to sample a few of the cakes as inspiration ...

You can see more of my packaging work in my word>packaging folder on my website.

Ruth Rowland Interview

This month I was interviewed by my agent, Illustration Ltd. We discuss how I became interested in hand lettering, starting out in the record industry, the creative chaos of my East London studio and secret obsessions! The interview also includes a free download of the specially designed poster you can see below.

If you like to read the entire interview, they've posted it on their site here.

Talking Business!

Letter Exchange, the society for professionals in the lettering arts, has asked me to talk about my work this Spring. I'll be giving a brief overview of my career to date - concentrating on the fields of music, publishing, packaging, editorial, advertising and corporate design. I've been working as a professional lettering artist for over 20 years and have been commissioned by a wide range of clients. In that time there's been a radical change in the type of technology used which has meant I've changed from being primarily UK based to competing in a global market.

If you'd like to come along, the talk is on Wed 16th Feb at The Artworkers Guild, 6 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AT. It starts at 6.30pm and tickets can be bought on the door - members £6, non-members £8 and students £4. I'll be sharing the evening with talented calligrapher Mary Noble who'll also be talking about her work. There will be drinks afterwards if you want to ask any questions or just say hello. If you've never been to the Artworkers Guild, this beautiful building is well worth a visit.

Hope to see you there!