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.

Rewriting History - Teaching Tolerance Magazine Lettering

I was delighted to be asked by Southern Poverty Law Center to contribute to their magazine, Teaching Tolerance.

The article, Rewriting History - for the Better, highlights how the US social studies curricula fails to tell the tragic and complicated story of the nations original inhabitants.

After working through some initial ideas, this fluid, mono linear pen style was chosen to complement Julie Flett’s atmospheric illustration on the article’s opening double page spread.

See more titles and pull quotes like these in the editorial folder on my site, as well as mastheads, maps and letter-heavy illustration.

Pixar Lettering for Wired Magazine

It was exciting to be asked to work on the lettering for Wired Magazine’s fascinating article on Pixar’s John Lasseter.

Referencing early animation titling and sign writing brush script, I was asked to develop a sympathetic style that would work with the dynamic opening page photograph. It’s always great when an art director gives you this sort of challenge, short on time and with quite a bit of copy, I immediately started experimenting with a variety of brushes and papers to get the feel I was after.

Finally settling on this softly textured brush stroke and controlled script form, I completed the title as well as additional lettering throughout the article. As ever with Wired Magazine, it was a pleasure to see how the hand drawn forms complemented the abundant colour photography and vibrant design of the piece.

Click through to my editorial folder to see more of the project.