'A Cure For Sore Eyes'

I've won second place in the Altpick Awards (USA) for my
"Old-Fashioned Service" images in the 'Ad Campaign' category.

This series of six ads was created for Rita and Ilinca at AIA Advertising in London, for the the Sainsbury's supermarket chain's Pharmacy department.
The copywriting was brilliant and made it very easy to create funny and appropriate illustrations for each ad - a sarcastic slug, a crying baby, gammy eyeball, diseased foot and so on. It's all about miracle cures and old wives tales...or are they?

The same series has just been chosen for the Images 33 'Best of British Illustration' book and touring exhibition, out next summer.

Please click on the link to see the whole collection here: Sainsbury's pharmacy ads

Shirley Hughes

This evening I went to the Egmont Authors and Illustrators' Party at the London Transport Museum, Covent Garden. I walked back to the Tube Station with Shirley Hughes, who I'd spent the last hour plucking up the courage to speak to, but she was surrounded by people most of the time. She was collecting her amazing bright pink coat and dapper hat from the cloak room at the same time as me, and we walked to Covent Garden tube together. She told me about a talk her daughter once gave about her new Christmas story - to a class full of Jewish schoolchildren! - and I told her she was one of the reasons I ended up being an illustrator; her books filled the house through all three of our childhoods. I did get a bit starstruck. She's 81. I hope I look and sound as good as her - and am still drawing - when I'm her age!

Plus Type Festival

Earlier this month I did a talk for the Plus Type Festival in Birmingham. I was chuffed to be on the same bill as Steve Bell from the Guardian, Jonathan Barnbrook, Jamie Wieck from Airside, and Ollie Leggett from ie Design, who was there to talk about his magnificent job management tool called Periscope.

The festival is organized by designers and aimed at creative professionals, focussing on typography. Agencies, freelancers, professional organizations and universities can all exhibit, and speakers come from all fields of visual communication - typography, type design, illustration, web, motion - who amalgamate type into their work. This year's theme was 'Hybrid', a label I can legitimately give myself in both a creative and business context. The word also reflects the current status of Birmingham, where the festival is held.

There were few photos of my actual 'speaking' (I have no idea what word I was ever so carefully enunciating in the photo below) but the room was jam-packed to satisfying/nerve-tweaking levels. There are photos of the event on Smile's website and here.