Kingsley, April and Tom Are Ten Years Old.

The Design Conspiracy are ten years old this year, and are spending the year partying! Well, they spent one Wednesday night partying at least; with ten pieces of artwork to celebrate, one from each of their mates, some bowls of my favourite chickpea-coloured mush hummus, and some pop and jelly.

Kingsley, April, Tom and the late Ben (he left actually, I realise that sounded very grim and possibly libellous) set up TDC a decade ago, from their humble quarters at Garden Studios in Holborn, to their own studios and gallery space now in Stukeley Street, Covent Garden. They were some of the earliest people to trust me with a proper advertising job, and I've done bits and bobs for them ever since - selection below. They're all from the North (April's from Loughborough, which is sort of The Middle), so I understand their accents, and they understand mine. And every time I see them, I know I can flop down in a chair, talk about anything from pies to serifs to home-made 'specialist' films*, and it's all in the course of a weekday discussion at TDC.

And they've now been drawing for clients like Sainsbury's, Sodexo, Jemma Kidd and 3 Mobile for ten years. Where's that time gone, then? I picked 2006 as my year to illustrate, since it not only had real significance for me but it had some whopping news stories too that I was completely gripped by.

Ahh...I like posting new things, but there's nothing like a bit of reminiscing too. Kingsley, April and Tom: here's to you, my friends in the big noisy town.

*that isn't a randomly-generated item: there is a story attached.

1 of 10 illustrations, 2005, for Sodexo...

The 12 Days of Christmas...2006

3 Mobile, 2007...

The TDC's new gallery window, 2008...

The Gang.

Happy Birthday...

Jelly!

Ten!


A selection of other ten pieces...



The Design Conspiracy

A little something for the weekend?

In time for the last few hours of Valentine's Day, I've just received the final copies of the ads I worked on for KY's ads shown on VH1 this Valentine's weekend.

One or two little tweaks were made to the final art used, but these are some of the original drawings, including the Inkymoled VH1 logo (not used, probably due to its fine detail) all of which were created super-fast in fineliner and ink, and animated by the team at VH1. Enjoy!







also: http://www.ky.com

The Design Conspiracy are 10 years old on 2nd February 2011.

I'm very fond of the TDC gang - Kingsley, Tom and April - and have contributed a special piece of work to this show, entirely hand-drawn and just 10" square.

They're inviting people to come and celebrate their birthday with them at 12 Stukeley Street, London WC2B 5LQ, from 6pm.

There will be drinks and nibbles and an exhibition of specially commissioned works by me and other people they've collaborated with over the last 10 years.

Fancy going?

RSVP to April at - april@thedesignconspiracy.com
020 7405 0875

If you can't make the opening night, worry not, the show will be up for a while.

Wood.

I was at the wood yard the other day 'helping' to prep wood for the wood burner. I was snapping bits of wood into kindling by kicking them in half, when I looked down at my mud-caked, sawdust-embellished Caterpillar boots and mucky coat and thought, 'Hm. They don't tell you about this when you buy a wood burner'.

They don't tell you about the filthy boot of the car, the sawdusty clothes you went out clean in, sawing in the cold, the endless dusting. They don't tell you about the fact that yes, you do have to keep getting up every half hour to put more wood on - or it'll go out and you'll have no hot water or heating.

No. What people envisage when you say 'wood burning stove' is a romantic, whimsical picture of an immaculate range in a country kitchen with three perfect logs piled up in some woven basket. There'll be a cat sleeping nearby and a picture-perfect cake fresh from the oven. Now you'll frequently see cakes emerging from my oven (if you read my blogs you'll already be painfully aware of this) - but the reality is more like four stacked old apple crates heaving with wobbly, mucky freshly-sawn wood, burnt splintery fingers and a permanently dusty floor.

But.

It's wonderful. It honestly is. Taking some of the wood out of the car ready for burning the other day, we noticed these magnificent textures. I've recorded this wood as I collect textures for use in illustrations, but also because this is the magic stuff. This heats the studio (built it, in fact), makes the water hot, keeps us clean, cooks the dinners and dries the washing. It's amazing. Because of that, I don't care if I have to dust every day of my life till I leave here in a box made of the stuff myself. They're accompanied, incidentally, by an equally mesmerising smell - fresh-cut wood is different depending which tree it came from, but is always magical. In these shots you can see the hundreds of rings of its life, its knot root, its curves and weaves as it grew and formed over time.

Our wood is rescued from demolished buildings, which would otherwise be destined for pointless bonfires or skips. The trees from which these particular pieces come are hundreds of years old - they might have seen kings deposed, queens crowned, wars fought and won, been home to birds and sheltered wildlife. Our present government wishes to sell around 350,000 hectares of our Forestry Commission-run forests to the highest-bidding private companies, paving the way for 'golf courses, adventure sites and commercial logging operations throughout Britain.' No thank you.


The point is, the trees don't belong to the government. They don't belong to me or you. They do belong to everyone, including those not yet here to see them; after all, to quote an ancient American-Indian saying: 'We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children'. Once sold, the forests are gone forever. I don't want more golf courses. The only 'adventure sites' I want are the ones nature's already provided. I want trees. What kind of bald-earth nightmare vision could their destruction create?


Read about the government's plans in more detail:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/countryside/8082756/Ministers-plan-huge-sell-off-of-Britains-forests.html

Sign the petition against this motion:
http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/s/save-our-forests#petition


Read about the government's plans in more detail:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/countryside/8082756/Ministers-plan-huge-sell-off-of-Britains-forests.html

Sign the petition against this motion:
http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/s/save-our-forests#petition

Additional linkage:

http://www.handsoffourforest.org/
http://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/en/Pages/default.aspx
http://www.forestry.gov.uk/

Decide for yourself:
http://ww2.defra.gov.uk/news/2011/01/27/englands-forests/

The Robert Burns Museum.

In April 2009 I was contacted by Charlie at Studio MB about whether I'd be interested in producing some illustrations for the new Robert Burns Birthplace Museum in Alloway, Scotland. A frantic one-day trip to Edinburgh revealed that this was going to be big - but I didn't appreciate how big until the end! For the uninitiated, Robert Burns is Scotland's national poet, and they're immensely proud of him. For around eighteen months I worked on this project, the biggest to date both in terms of scale, quantity of work and challenge.

The Burns' family cottage, Alloway.

The Museum had received an award of several million pounds for re-design and build. The existing museum consisted of the cottage 'Rabbie' grew up in, the landmarks he was associated with - the Brig o'Doon, for example - and a visitor centre. Studio MB, who also designed the Bosworth Battlefield Centre fifteen minutes from me in Market Bosworth, were charged with producing the creative elements. I spent the next year and a half working on a wide range of imagery for the £21m centre. I saw, for the first time in many years, my work rendered in three dimensions, and at a scale previously unseen.

The end result consisted of ten 2m high weathervanes, over 520 square metres of illustration, four wallpaper designs, 25 metal animals, three 3D cows, five metal-cut story illustrations and lots of other ingredients which combine to richly envelop and embellish the collection of artefacts which present Burns the man; the poet, the father and the farmer. On November 30th we went to the grand opening, through the much feared snow and ice.

Watching how people interacted with and observed the exhibits was fascinating. The main room is tall, dark, eerie, and atmospheric indeed, luring you in to look closely, and at first I felt a little bit teary at seeing so much of my work and at such a scale. It literally enveloped everything else, and created the continuity that held it all together.
The whole thing begins with a timeline of the poet's life paralleled with historical events around the world:

The main room had the feeling of completely enveloping you, which I liked - I felt this built on the suggestion of claustrophobia suggested by having been into the tiny cottage first. The entire Burns family and all their animals co-existing in that tiny space. Lighting levels were very low, but in parts very directional, so that, entire elements of the illustrations - particularly at low levels - disappeared. I saw people bending down to peer (good, nice bit of interaction) but also saw those unable to bend far struggling to see things - this applied to the imagery up high too. Children were at the right height to spot hares and cats, but due to the colour differences being very subtle in the print, combined with the low light, those things appeared to be overlooked. Here's what you see as you enter the dark and gloomy Intro gallery...

Section of the cornfields in the introduction gallery, containing quotes by Burns

The original artwork for one of the cornfields, much reduced!

Detail of the Poetry Perimeter wall (the nearest house sits around 4ft tall) - artwork...

...and on the wall.

Section of artwork...

...and on the wall.

Here's a shot of Rhona, landlady at the B&B, posing by the Trysting Tree, a metal tree composed of lines from Burns' poems on which visitors could hang messages of their own. This picture illustrates the difficult lighting - I'm wondering if this might get addressed in the future. (We stayed in her 'Robert Burns Suite' - how could we not?)



Behind the last picture with the tips of the branches showing, (with Jean on the foreground, Burns' long-suffering wife who outlived him by decades) you can see the start of one of the four wallpapers designed to fill the 'Inspired By' cases, looking at the the inspirations for Burns' poems: love, music, nature, books. Behind Jean is 'Love'.

And this one is 'nature' (artwork section below) and next, 'Words and Music'.


These little laser-cut metal pieces were literally leaping off and out of the books on the shelves - shown here is Don Quixote and Macbeth's witches, all from stories which ignited the young Burns' passion for writing.


The Man O'Parts exhibit showed the different roles he had to play in his lifetime indicated by a particular item such as hair or razor hidden behind a 'clue' illustration (note my 'entirely faked but accurate' Burns signatures!) The illustrations are tiny and done with a very fine nib and ink - but they were huge in print!


Outside, the ten weathervanes, telling the story of Tam O'Shanter, looked great against a very appropriate sky. I thought they were going to be bigger to be honest - I got the height and width confused though obviously - I thought the 'vanes were 2m wide! Nonetheless, seeing something I'd created at A3 in ink become a solid object spinning with the biting wind was wonderful.



Weathervanes on the path leading between the Museum's main sites (also available on the obligatory gift shop teatowel!)


The storytelling continues back in the cottage, with Su Blackwell's beautiful paper sculpture telling the story of Hannibal's War.

Cottage window: the family shared its living space with the animals, including the dairy herd next door. The snuffling cows would, I imagine, have been a comfort and a source of warmth.

Finally, not one of my creations, but an exhibit which brought a lump to my throat was the collection of floating embroidered babies' gowns over the little bed - it moved me suddenly and without warning, and illustrated with painful vividness the hard lives they all lived. That any of them survived is continually amazing to me!

The Burns babies' gowns seem to 'hover' over the bed in which they were all born.

My only regret is I wish I'd been able to come to the museum first before starting work. And maybe a couple of times throughout. Reading about Burns and his poetry wasn't, with hindsight, enough for me to really grasp 'the man'. Of course this would be difficult since the museum itself wasn't built as I saw it...but the cottage and the environment would probably have created enough of an impression. If I'm ever involved in something like this again, I'll insist on visiting for a couple of days first, camera and sketchbook in tow.

Speaking of which...Robert Burns' own writing set - a tiny quill and nibs, with ink and a sharpening knife.

It was an incredibly challenging job but I enjoyed it so much, and learned an awful lot - something which pleases me since it proves no matter how long you've been doing something, there is ALWAYS a ton more to learn.

The Guardian featured a some photographs of the museum on its website on 25th January.

There is so much detail at the museum, I'd recommend a trip there, whether you actually like his poetry or not! The sense of place and Scottish history is immense, and the surrounding countryside is breathtaking. Details are below.

Museum: http://www.burnsmuseum.org.uk/
In the press: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/dec/01/robert-burns-museum-opens-ayrshire
Where we stayed: http://www.scottishhospitality.co.uk/luxury-bed-and-breakfast-rooms.html