Be a Kiwi, Not a Sheep

I recently saw Old Mout Cider's new ad. It focuses on going further for better things and to not follow the crowd. What initially got my attention was that – as shown below – the underground train advert uses two panels instead of one to illustrate its message. I took a picture as I thought it was an interesting idea I wanted to remember, but later I saw another of their ads showing a different copyline: "Be a Kiwi, Not a Sheep".



This got me thinking about not only how quirky a line this is, but also how I should be applying this into my life.

As a designer I am required to come up with idea after idea after idea. Sometimes it feels as if I'm on a conveyor belt, just going through the process throwing out mass-produced ideas one after another because that is what is being asked of me. And I don't want to be the sheep, I want to be the kiwi. I am the kiwi deep down, and my mind boggles with crazy ideas 24/7. But because we're so restrained, either by brand guidelines, or because you're told "the client won't like that", we start to lose faith in our abilities as creatives. We start to become a little embarrassed by our own ideas, thinking they won't be accepted. I'm proud to say that I am making changes in my life to ensure this is no longer how I feel, and will power forwards to show every quirk, every 'mad' idea I have, because you never know where they'll take you.

I am a kiwi, not a sheep.

Horse & Road Safety Awareness Infographics

In light of the recent events and the launch of a petition calling to make it the law that drivers must abide by a horse rider's hand signals, I wanted to aid the cause by creating some simple infographics that could be shared across social media to help raise awareness and inform drivers why horse riders do certain things. These are to be displayed on the Horse & Road Safety Awareness website along with their Facebook page. We are currently waiting on confirmation from the BHS (British Horse Society) regarding the official way the 'stop' sign is represented.

The infographics were based on the HRSA's logo which uses simple vector horse silhouettes in different tones of blue. These will be developed into a short animated video in order to combine all 4 messages into one. In the near future I would like to develop another series of infographics aimed at the horse riders to show them how they be safer on the roads.









I had a vague idea of the 4 facts I wanted to cover from the start, but the copywriting and visuals began life in my little notebook (always thinking on the go!) as illustrated below.

JustFred Logo Design

This is the logo design for the knitting club and what will be an online store; JustFred.



The original brief started out very open, as the client was unsure what her business name was going to be. She had initially begun her knitting club under the name 'Just Fred' but she was open to new suggestions. She also stated that if possible she'd like to use a dragonfly emblem as her brand's icon. I began by brainstorming many different potential brand names, as well as trying to implement the ideas that had been requested. Below is the result of this!



This then developed into loose mock-ups in Adobe Illustrator, which was submitted to the client to hear her thoughts on what direction we should go in.



After receiving feedback I began to develop the initial ideas into something more solid. My client wanted to keep the name 'Just Fred' and selected some design elements, fonts and colours that she wanted to be tried out next. Below is the result.



A few more tweaks later, and the design was complete. I created a presentation deck to show how the logo could be used in different formats on digital and print items, as well as some guidelines to show how the logo was put together (font faces, colour specs) and the minimum size the logo should be used at.

Santander Infographics Collection

Please find below a collection of just some of the infographics I created for Santander in their original iconic style. The statistics were given to me and then it was up to me to scamp out a series of ideas before designing them digitally.

SCCB Infographics

The Santander Corporate & Commercial style is very minimalist, which meant that when I was asked create some infographics for them, the style of the designs came easily.

Using the statistics given, I created three different ways of presenting the information in order to send the messages in clear but also aesthetically pleasing ways.

Santander HR: Career Choices

Santander proposed the brief from Human Resources to promote their 'Career Choices' campaign internally. They required a range of collateral, from print to digital to animation. The following is a selection from each.

Intranet illustration
Firstly I was asked to illustrate a series of real Santander branches which were going to be featured on the company's intranet. These were then put together into a webspace connected by cartoon streets featuring objects and characters. When the viewer's cursor rolled over an individual branch, the red sections of it were activated to show that it was clickable.




Design for print
The illustrations from the intranet were then translated into print onto both large-scale (toolbox) and very small-scale (jelly-bean box) boxes, as well as further design for an associated Z-Card.




Storyboard for animation
Finally, I was provided with a script to which I had to use the street designs to create a storyboard for an animated film. Although the script was very precise, the illustrations provided great flexibility into what transitions could happen and how. A voice over was later recorded which explained the journey to the viewer.

Santander HR: Screensaver Storyboard

Following on from the Community Engagement Toolkit, the style was then extended into a new brief of a screensaver to promote the '3 e's': Education, Employment, Enterprise. I then designed each slide and created a storyboard that would explain in detail how each piece was to be animated. The animations needed to be simple as the client's computers had limited memory space.

Santander HR: Community Engagement Toolkit

On a very tight deadline, I was required to create a 28 page A4 brochure in the HR cartoon-people style to promote how branches could get involved in their communities. The client wanted the design to focus more on the building illustrations, so I set about using the provided copy to inform the viewer in an exciting and refreshing way on each spread.

I used various methods and illustration to help me highlight headlines and pull out important point within the text, as well as introducing cartoon polaroid images to hold small photographs that were required on specific pages.





I later created this animated presentation of the brochure in Adobe After Effects in order to promote our design work on a large screen within the business. I used the illustrations themselves as a backdrop so that the brochure could be placed within that 'world' and subtly animated objects such as the car and the clouds on brochure's front cover.

Santander HR: British Heart Foundation

Santander's charity of the year was announced as the British Heart Foundation and we were invited to create their internal collateral to promote their new charity and events.

They required a series of large-scale posters, stationary, as well as digital banners for Santander's intranet. All these had to be created in the brand's then current HR style which was cartoon people. This style had great flexibility and meant all manner of ideas and designs were possible.

I pushed the concept of doing so many 'steps' for charity by using a series of characters all 'stepping' in various ways. Some were images we already owned, some were tweaked so they all looked different and others were drawn from scratch. Placing them in a heart shape to push the charity's image further as well as keeping the colour scheme strict worked to both brand's advantages.

HIV (REVAMP)

I created a poster series for HIV awareness when I was in university. I had already become very attached to design for advertising and wanted to pick a tricky subject which had been done many times before, but to do it in a different way. I chose a new angle on the subject, researching statistics and realising that a lot of the spread of the virus is ignorance and a plain unawareness that they have it at all. Whilst this was the right way to go, I originally had too many ideas all rolled into one and what I really needed to do was the keep things simple.

In this revamp, I continued the target audience (as those who are simply unaware of their virus, and of course the suggestion that they could very easily pass it onto their partner without meaning to), but looked at some great use of stock imagery which could help me to send the right message in a very 'romantic' way. The three poster ideas were chosen as typical 'coupley' images, using photoframes, flowers and cards as a basis for the copy "You're the reason I live, and the reason I die."



These ideas could easily be translated into design for a website, digital banner, leaflets within a doctor's office, at student unions, fresher fayres or in freebie packs.

Below are just some of my initial ideas and rough scamps that I needed to get down on paper. Not only are there notes and drawings for concepts, but also ideas the angle of photography, and how a leaflet design could work.



Please note that all photographs belongs to Shutterstock.

Skin Cancer Awareness (REVAMP)

This self-initiated brief began back in 2007 at college as a simple idea for an advertisement to raise awareness of skin cancer.

I set out to do it in a way that at the time differentiated (and may still do) from the norm which was to use shock tactics in order to translate the message to the viewer. I instead wanted to use humour and memorable imagery to capture the information and I was very happy with the result. Even now, years later, I am completely in the 'less is more' boat and I feel that the simplicity of the metaphor carried off by the copyline continues to work, which is why I wanted to revamp the design and to expand the collateral into other formats.

Using Cancer Research as my hypothetical client, I used their colour palette within the design to ensure a direct link to the branding.



Poster series:
Although I took inspiration from the positioning of the original posters, I introduced some more up to date facts to base the images on. I have also created a new method of displaying the bodycopy through use of a coloured strip, with the copyline contained within a breadslice vector shape.




Leaflet design:
I continued the style into a leaflet, using a simple square design and allowing the bright colours, layout and photography draw the viewer in.




Light-Sensitive Billboard:
Expanding the idea onto a bigger, and more interactive scale, I looked into a simple billboard design, but with a twist. Parts of the image would be printed using a light-sensitive ink. This would mean that when the sunlight shines upon the print, the bright blue sky and the burnt texture on the toast would be revealed. This would be not only a reminder, but also a warning to passers by that they need to be careful with sun exposure to their skin on that day.


Because of the simplicity of the design and the flexibility of the imagery, I have no doubt that this idea could be translated into all sorts of formats – whether that be other print items, digital banners, a website design, or even an advert in motion.

International Women's Day/No More Page 3

I've been avid follower of the No More Page 3 Campaign for a long time now, and I wanted to contribute creatively to the cause. I spoke to the creators of the campaign who said that they would only be interested in ideas that do not focus on using women's bodies to draw attention - as it would be contradictory - so with this is mind, I set about coming up with an eye-catching design that could also integrate itself in 'real-life' e.g not just printed collateral.

With International Women's Day (IWD) approaching (March 8th) I decided to combine both causes with a focus on the objectification of women.

Working backwards, my final designs focused on the use of paper-chain women, which were used in different ways to reflect the three messages for my poster series. I thought that these paper-chain women not only represented the joining of people and of society, but could also be used as an eye-catching and decorative piece. I set about decorating an area near Southbank, London, which was chosen because of the various events in the area focusing on IWD.



My scamps and initial ideas follow, of which I found there could be quite a scope for flexibility of the original idea, given more time, a team, and a slightly bigger budget for materials..!

Fun fact: the 250 paper women took me 2 weeks of evenings/weekends to cut out by hand (I work full-time anyway), and were made from a roll of white wallpaper since it needed to be thicker than regular paper to stand up to being hung on railings in the wind.

Je Suis Charlie

As a big supporter of free-speech, I was one of the millions shocked by the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris - particularly after having left Paris less than 24 hours before it happened.

Eyeka then set a brief for creatives simply "to show your support to creativity and freedom of speech" which is what I did.

I went through a mass of various ideas (see ideas and scamps below) but as a huge believer of 'less is more', I finally settled on something that seemed poignant yet simple.

Shrek the Musical Typography

So I first saw Shrek the Musical when a friend bought the DVD round to watch. I had seen the animated films and thought they were great stories, but didn't see how it could work as a musical.

OH MY GOODNESS. I fell completely in love and finally went to see it live in Oxford in September. Everything was perfect; from the costumes, to the music, the characters, the acting, to the astoundingly creative sets, to the very toungue-in-cheek humour which worked for audiences of all ages. But behind all this was still a great story about learning to love yourself for who you are.

The lyrics in particular for me I found very beautifully written, so much that I was inspired to use some of my favourite lyrics to create some typographical visuals. Credit for the fontface goes to Kevin Wilson.

Hidden Spire

Just before Christmas time I was commissioned to create some tarot card character designs for the play Hidden Spire at the Old Fire Station in Oxford. Above are the finished products.


They needed to be realistic representations of each character in the play, but digitally illustrated to match a particular chosen style. I was given some reference photos of the characters to work with (see above), and had to add their costume in at a later date once it was confirmed what they would be wearing for their performances. I completed my designs by handdrawing the outlines of the characters, filling in colour, texture, tints and tones in Adobe Photoshop.

Given more time to work on this I would have loved to have created different background clock-related designs (as the play is set in a clock shop) reflecting each character's personality.


The above set design was created by the amazing Lisa Thomas.

Credit Scoring Leaflet

The Credit Scoring leaflet began life as a Santander branded item, which after a short amount of time was changed so that it was going to be a governmental piece outside of Santander. This meant we had to come up with an entirely new style for the layout, with new fonts and colours. We had to source new imagery that could illustrate 'small business' but make sure that these industries did not clash with the ones we already used for Santander. I'm proud to say we got great feedback, so please see the inside pages below.

Santander SCCBB

As I mentioned on my website, the Customer Charter was an opportunity for us to expand on the new Fuelling Business Ambition brand, which up until this point had been very strict and 'templated'. We then decided to experiment by enlarging headlines, mixing images with text, pulling out quotes, using full bleed images and more.
Below are some more samples of the inside pages.




Above is an example of an emailer invite created for Santander Corporate & Commercial.

Santander Infographics

One of the great things about working on the Santander account is that it has opened my eyes to the world of infographics. The simple ways of illustrating information is something I love coming up with and certainly reinforces the 'less is more' theory. They've even inspired a lot of the design on my new website. The following were all created for Santander's Facebook pages.

Two options for the 'The least expensive towns to refuel' infographic. The first one was chosen.

'The most expensive towns to refuel' infographic. Unfortunately I live right between 2 of those places.

To the left is how my petrol infographic ideas were born! Various doodles on my notepad depicting roadsign shapes, roundabouts and other related icons.

These infographics were based on tips quoted from customers on the Santander Facebook page.

This scamp shows my thinking through from 'pie' charts to chef hats, and the original brainstorm that led to my idea of the 'fuel guage' on the trolley depicting how hungry someone is.

The Chinese New Year infographic was created for the Santander Student Facebook page. It was required to show where and when in the UK you could celebrate Chinese New Year, and also that you could travel by train (and therefore that you could use your student discount to do so).

I did so by brainstorming different classic Chinese themes and icons and then came up with the Chinese calendar, which is when I worked the information into my own version.

I was asked to do these presentation slide infographics to illustrate the facts and figures of work that we do at Hogarth on the Santander account. I wanted to join together these facts into a 'journey' of information and so created a line that should be followed with highlighting icons throughout.

The infographics were born on my notepad as above.
P.S Please ignore the great dark twirly thing, I think I was waiting for something to load/uncrash.

And finally, a simple infographic showing how house prices have risen over the past few decades.