Happy New Year!

Wishing you all a creative and prosperous year ahead.

The Very Best of Enya

I was thrilled when asked to work on the booklet for The Very Best of Enya album, a wonderful retrospective of her musical career spanning 20 years released this Christmas by Warner Records.

The commission involved hand lettering key lyrics for the CD which were then dropped over these sumptuous photographs by Simon Fowler. A very collectible Limited Edition Box Set of deluxe CD/DVD and 12" vinyl picture disc has also been released in which all the lyrics are hand lettered. Her original logo has been retained and my hand lettering used as a visual link throughout the inside of the booklet.

Anyone who is familiar with my work will know that I started freelancing as a lettering artist in the 1980's working primarily for the record industry. Enya released her debut album in 1987 to much acclaim and it's been great to get the opportunity to work for her after all these years.

If you'd like see who else I've worked for click through to my music folder on my portfolio site and if you'd like to buy The Very Best of Enya you'll find it available on Enya's official website.

Speak Out For Understanding

It was great to be was asked by the Southern Poverty Law Center to illustrate an article in their magazine Teaching Tolerance. It talks about a powerful and moving film created by a group of students at Vermont High School, USA. Made on a tiny budget, Speak Out For Understanding, the award winning documentary gives viewers a close look at the real lives of four students who have learning disabilities and tries to teach a new way of talking about people who have them.

My work included a full page opening illustration, title lettering and a spot illustration for the magazine article. You can see how the illustrations work in their page layouts in my editorial folder in my portfolio. It was such an inspirational subject that I put together several roughs - this 'note pad' style proving to be the most popular with the design team at SPLC. The casual marker pen lettering, scribbles and doodles echoing the students enthusiastic approach to their subject.

If you'd like to learn more about SOFU, you can go to the projects webpage.

CAFOD Posters

Primary School Poster

Secondary School Poster

Collection Envelope

I was delighted when asked to work on the hand drawn lettering for the Catholic Agency For Overseas Development's Harvest Fast Day Pack - comprising of two posters and a collection envelope. The packs are distributed to primary and secondary schools and draw the attention of both teacher and pupils to the current fund raising theme. This year it's the rights of the child and the focus country is Brazil.

It was great to work with the creative team at CAFOD, who made the job easy with an organised, informative brief and thoughtful art direction throughout. The stunning poster photography by Marcella Haddad also inspired my choice of lettering, spot illustrations and colours - a playful approach to a serious subject.

To learn more about this worthy project click through to the CAFOD site where you can find videos and downloadable resource materials (including pdfs of the posters!).

Eid Mubarak!

The festival of Eid starts on the 20th September this year and if you'd like to celebrate by sending a card I have this one available for sale with 12% of the order value going to charity.

Aruba Revisited!

Following the success of the first campaign earlier this year, Lowe NY asked me to develop some more lettering and spot illustrations to promote the beautiful island of Aruba.

The lettering is created specifically to give each Aruban a distinctive voice - personalising the poster campaign in keeping with it's central theme: 'ARUBA - 90,000 FRIENDS YOU HAVEN'T MET YET.' These large format posters can be seen throughout the US on subways and bus shelters. See the first campaign in the advertising folder on my portfolio site.

Map for Wall Street Journal

In a month when I've been working for the UK, Germany, France and the US - I was delighted to receive an e-mail from Hong Kong requesting a map for the illustrious Wall Street Journal, Asia.

A piece for their travel section, the brief was to illustrate a walk around the vibrant city of Brisbane, picking out key features from the accompanying article and tracing the path of the walk through the city. It was great fun to work on - having never been to Brisbane I now harbour a burning desire to visit - and I shouldn't have any problems finding my way around!