Sex and the City Merchandise on sale

Its interesting to see my designs applied to a product other than clothing. This Sex and the City giftware range features graphics I designed earlier this year

Dinosaur Print Tee at Next

Drawing dinosaurs from scratch is never a walk in the (Jurassic) park, particularly when the client is Next, who are scrupilous about copyright law and insist that all images generated are completely original and bear no discernable resemblance to any source material.

I was pleased how this one turned out though considering dinosaur drawing is not exactly comfort zone work and I managed to acheive the painterly effect that the brief required. And, unusually for Next, my first draft, completely un-amended design went straight to production. Although that was probably more of a timescale thing than a design-perfection thing!

See it online here.

I've seen the Pink Light

I was lucky enough to have been recently selected to be represented in the US by design studio, Pink Light. Mary Beth, Pink Light's founder and creative driving force is developing her company's remit by bringing together artists from all around the world to take the US surface pattern market by storm and it's very exciting to be a part of that.

Today is particularly thrilling as not only has my bio gone live on the Pink Light site, I've also had my work featured for the first time on design blog-stroke-bible Print and Pattern, what an unexpected honour!

I've been trying to undertake a more self-directed route this year which has been quite a struggle when I've been really busy with my existing clients. Now it feels like I'm finally managing to find a balance between the heavily brief-led commercial fashion work which I love and the freedom of more personal, unrestricted surface pattern design. Below is a 'holiday' theme design from one of my first Pink Light collections.

New placement graphic T at Warehouse

Its a while since I designed this gothic graphic for Warehouse while I was still working in-house for a clothing manufacturer, but its now available to buy. It appears that since I last saw it the buyers have had their usual input and had some wings added and amended the central crest but theres no mistaking the print. It was always tricky to design for this client as the imagery they were prepared to use in the graphics was extremely limited, they wanted to acheive a gothic, etherial, All-Saints style without using skulls, crucifixes or other similar emotive imagery. I think this design strikes the balance though.

Some more pyjamas in production

I'm particularly pleased with the way the check turned out on this set as the idea was to emulate a cosy, aerie/Jack Wills style plaid and I think we've acheived this. It makes a nice change to incorporate some sketchy florals into nightwear

Two new lines I designed for Camille. Commercial, but still quite fun and very strictly to brief.

Nuts

I have been working on lots of lovely hand-rendered girlswear designs for Adams recently. Its nice to have an opportunity to incorporate some original illustrations. This is one of my sketches I have been working with:

Photography Class

I've enrolled in a photography class at my local AE College. I'm not sure if its for me, as I primarily wanted to learn step-by-step how to use my digital SLR, and this course has more of a creative, compositional leaning to the teaching. I'm trying to extract from it what I think will be useful though, and its good in that it gives me the discipline to take the camera off of its automatic setting and try and take better photos every week.

This is one of my favourite images I've made on manual settings on the course so far...

Animal Print Pyjamas at Peacocks

One of most challenging things I get asked to design is original animal all-over repeat prints. Its extremely difficult to come up with something fresh and unique, which is why I'm really pleased with the way this nightwear mix and match set has turned out. I think the print looks really contemporary and on-trend while still commerical.

New Strictly Come Dancing Girls' Clothing Range At Mothercae

I do all my licensed placement graphics via a third party, so I'm never sure where they could end up as the style guides containing my designs may be sold to anyone. Designs from the Strictly Come Dancing range I worked on last year have found their way to Mothercare which is a great retail platform for the collection.

I've found the perfect kitchen wallpaper...

We're having our kitchen refitted in the spring and I'm already getting excited about fixtures and finishes. All of my kitchen accessories follow a red and duck-egg blue theme and I've been on the lookout for a quirky wallpaper to tie the scheme together. I was thrilled to find this "Brigton" paper from Harlequin and even more thrilled to find it at a knock-down price form S&A supplies where I got my bedroom wallpaper, also by harlequin in picture 3 below......

New designs at next.co.uk

I've not blogged for a while as I've been completely swamped with work, and much of it consists of things that can't be released in the public domain yet, so I've not had much to share.

The new season collection is now online at next.co.uk, and here are some of my graphics that feature:

Seaside Photo Fest

I'm back from my holidays and full of inspiration. Last night I enrolled on a photography course at college and I got chatting to the tutor about what it is that I like to photograph. Generally I like to take photos which document my life, and the people and places in it. More specifically though, I love taking photos at the seaside. Probably because I just love the seaside full stop.

On my course, I will be doing a photography project every week so I decided to get organised on Flickr so I would have a place to keep all my projects. I thought I'd start by going through all my old photos and collecting together the seaside shots. It was only then that I realised just how many seaside photos I've taken over the years!

What I Wore Today 07/09

Dancing all day

Tomorrow I'm literally going to dance all day for charity. I'm doing dance classes back-to-back including ballet (eek) in aid of the Variety Club Children's Charity. I'm not particularly fit but I do love a good dance class so it'll be a fun challenge.

Tea time

I went to see my Grandma today to watch the video featuring my Granddad tea tasting. It's great! I found out a lot about his career with the Co-op and how he progressed from a mail-room boy aged 14 to head tea taster and being involved in the commercial development of the teabag.

I was also lucky enough to have been given the Wedgwood commemorative plate my grandparents were presented with to celebrate 100 years of Co-operative tea manufacture. They really were pioneers of Fair Trade.

The original Co-Operative head office in Leman St, LondonThe purpose built tea factory at CreweA tea clipperTea pickers

What I Wore Today...

I've joined the ranks of some of my illustration heroes, the likes of Gemma Correll, Amy Blackwell and Kate Wilson on Gemma's 'What I Wore Today' Flickr Photo stream. What a Wheeze.

Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbour's Shoes

I'm working on Miffy licensed girlswear this week which unusually for licensed is quite a lovely brief.

I spent the weekend visiting friends in London. While mooching about the usual haunts (Urban Outfitters/Shoreditch/Angel) I came across the work of James Hamilton Butler which I find very inspirational. I'd like to think its the style of illustration I'd be producing if all my time weren't spent on commercial projects. And I was interested to find out he also studied at Manchester.


While in london I also did some digging and found out that the Ash Viper trainers I so covet are sold out worldwide but will be available again in January. Counting the months...

I feel honoured to have been mentioned in a blog of a designer I admire, Jen of Frilldesign. I've been a fan of social networking online for almost 10 years now and I love that you can connect with likeminded folk so effortlessly

New Lost My Dog Designs

We've added a couple of new designs to the range of merchandise I've created for my chums at record label Lost My Dog. Its really nice to work on something completely self-directed but still within a commercial famework. This tote features the new abstract design, which I'm really pleased with as I think its the most 'me' thing I've done in a long time.

More S/S 2010 Girlswear graphics...

I'm almost finished with this tribal brief, perhaps another half day.

First I had to create some summertime situations for the characters I designed yesterday. Its a while since I did this kind of work so I really enjoyed it. I had them shopping in Miami, taking surf lessons and going to the beach...

I had to come up with a friend for the tribal zebra I did earlier in the week, and I'm quite pleased with how the feather-hair girl turned out as the brief actually said "this could be a tough one"...

I'm in-house at Next tomorrow on older boys jersey for the first time in ages. I've got used to working at my own pace (which usually means late into the night) so it will make a change to be working directly with the client and finish at 5pm!

And one day I might actually figure out how to size my jpegs so the resolution is better on here...