The Christmas Radio Times Cover

Every illustrator of a certain age knows that a Radio Times cover is up there among the traditional bucket-list jobs - along with an album cover, a Royal Mail stamp or maybe a cover for a book by your favourite author. 

I've done the stamp and the album cover and the novels, but I'd never done an RT Christmas. I've got colleagues who've done them - Mick Brownfield being the most marvellous and prolific! - and once upon a 2015, I almost did too.

In 2016 I created the festive page headers for the Christmas RT, and a nice big bit of cover type and a hand-lettered DPS for the July edition too. 

But, before both of those, the 2015 Christmas RT almost had a dramatic, type-led cover bursting with stars (astronomically and celebrity-wise), over a night-time snowy horizon. It was different, for sure - but just a little too different for the audience. The art director and I were mega-keen, but sadly, in the end, the senior decision makers went with tradition and a beautiful image of a Briggsian snowman. And who can argue with that, albeit reluctantly?

These sketches are as far as it went and have lain hidden in my archive ever since, but I thought it was time they saw daylight - I like this idea that, maybe, this job will one day head back over Mole's way.

Who knows! After all...more unlikely things have happened after throwing a little cosmic ordering into the air...

Merry Christmas Telly to all!

  

Christmas Telly.

The last job I had in print in 2015 was this series of page icons for the legendary Radio Times in the UK. The RT is an institution, just as the BBC is and its famous annual decades-old Christmas programming.

I always buy a Christmas Radio Times, remove all the added leaflets, rip out the ads and turn it to the first day of the Christmas holiday. I’ve done this ever since I left home to live by myself, and sometimes I would tear off the cover and keep that too, impressed by the illustrations of the likes of Mick Brownfield who’s created many an RT cover in his long and distinguished career. The RT keep an archive, though it’s a little minimal, right here, and there are some more in this archive.

(OK this one isn’t Christmnas but it’s my favourite - Wuthering Heights!)

Lately the RT’s been using more photography, and this year’s edition was a photograph of a snowy Aardman tableau. The Christmas spirit always continues inside the magazine and this edition was no different; I was asked to create some hand-written titles for the tops of the pages, with Christmassy energy, twinkles and communicating the excitement as you turn the pages progressively towards Christmas Day.

I had under a week to do it, and submitted five pages of three different styles, which were reviewed and narrowed down, drawn in ink on paper with two favourite nibs:

These were whittled down very quickly, and in the space of a day turned into careful vector pieces - so as to retain all the bumps and natural swirls - and emailed off. A few weeks later there they were, in my newsagents!

I bought a copy for us, for my Mum and Dad, my bessie mate and Graham, and promptly made these cheesy fairy-light shots!