June 16, 2010
· Filed under Commercial, My Work · Tagged illustration, magazine, Swiss Business
One of the best parts of my current role, the designer for the English language Swiss Business magazine, is creating illustrations for feature articles. The range of subjects is very wide, and I’m also free to use a wide range of styles. Here are some of the most recent ones (click on the images to see the full illustration in context):
Collage from newspaper and magazine clippings, for ‘Advertising or SPAM?’
Line art, for ‘Trends in Real Estate’
Illustrator composition, for ‘Multitasking Women’
Illustrator composition, for ‘Distance Learning Without the Distance’
May 10, 2010
· Filed under My Work · Tagged running, sports, t-shirt, Zurich
Every year, on the second weekend in May, there is a 126 km relay race in the hills above Zurich, organised by the University sports club, and simply called Sola. Over 800 teams enter, and with 14 runners in each team, handovers between the runners can be chaotic, especially for new teams that haven’t run together before and might not recognize the person they’re handing over to.
To avoid this problem, and help bond the team, the Sola Rainmakers needed a visual identity to use on team t-shirts, and their twitter page (one of the main means of communications to the team, and the diary of the build-up and the day)
Logo / T-shirt Front
T-shirt Back
The name ‘rainmakers’ was chosen by the team captains as they both come from the west coast of Scotland, and this was reflected in both the colours (blue and white fomr the Scottish flag) and the cloud design (which also served to emphasize the hilly nature of the Sola course)
It worked! handovers were smooth and stress-free, and the team loved their t-shirts!
April 2, 2010
· Filed under Commercial, My Work · Tagged card, christmas, logo
I designed Christmas cards for LINE Communication‘s Swiss subsidiary in 2008 and 2009.
The 2008 card used the logo and a simple line metaphor to create a simple, yet bold illustration. At this time, LINE was relatively new in Switzerland, so the Christmas greetings were written in Switzerland’s four official languages, to emphasize LINE’s new presence in Zurich and local knowledge.
The 2009 card was illustrated using pencil sharpenings in LINE’s four brand colours. The message: we’re getting ready to do sharp, focused work for you in 2010!
Rather than a conventional design, the card folded out into a long landscape format. This allowed for more flexibility in the graphic design, and helped it stand out from other next to other cards. It also meant that envelopes were not required, reducing cost, waste and admin time.
March 24, 2010
· Filed under Reprints
One of the magazines I sometimes do layout on is ‘Marmite‘, the leading, and oldest Swiss food and drink magazine. It includes a column ‘mein bestes Stück’ (My best piece), where people describe a favourite or unusual piece of cooking equipment that they own.
I featured in the March edition, where I talked about the Chicken Brick that Ian’s mother gave us in 2007 – these are quite common in the UK, but almost unheard of in Switzerland. You can read the article here (German) or read a completely different article about Chicken Bricks from ‘The Times’ here, if you prefer English.
July 25, 2009
· Filed under My Work
Stippling is the technique of using small dots to simulate varying degrees of 
solidity or shading.
This technique is similar to — but distinct from — pointillism, which uses dots of different colors to simulate blended colours.
In printmaking, this technique became popular as a means of producing shaded line art illustrations for publication, because drawings created this way could be reproduced in simple black ink.
Here is my latest work using this technique: mixed graphite pencil and colour ink on white card. The monochrome stippling works rather well to illustrate a typical window of the Swiss Region of Graubünden.
It’s a leaving card for our neighbours, who are moving to Pontresina at the end of this month.
May 31, 2009
· Filed under Competitions, My Work
CWS-boco manufactures hygiene solutions and work clothing. This year they launched a new line of towel and soap dispensers, Paradise Line, with interchangeable front covers, so customers could “…display images or text…, corporate logos, and communications of various kinds…”
To promote the launch, they ran an international competition to design a front cover for the cotton towel dispenser, on the themes of:
- Emotions – Lifestyle: nature elements, freshness, cleanliness, ecology, health.
- Technique – hygiene: The towels rolls are made of 100% cotton.
- Abstract: Visionary, controversial or critical approaches are welcome.
(translated from the Italian)
CWS products are everywhere – hotels, bars, airports, public building, etc, in many cultures and languages. So I decided, to base my design, on an internationally recognised format, that we’re already used to seeing in multiple languages – the washing instruction label!
This idea also fits well with the emphasis CWS put on cotton towels rather than paper.
Unfortunately I didn’t win this time – you can see the winners here.
April 25, 2009
· Filed under Crafts, My Work · Tagged bookbinding, illustration
‘The Little Prince’ is one of my favorite books, so I decided to bind and illustrate a copy, and give it to my niece on her 11th birthday. She told me that she really liked it. You can see more of my bookbinding here.
March 13, 2009
· Filed under Crafts, My Work · Tagged 3D, card
My niece Maria Fernanda is now 8 years old, and since she always liked snails, I made a little 3D collage for her birthday, inspired by her fascination for strange creatures…
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