Gala Bingo Calendar - Bingo Call Character Illustrations

Eyes down for a brilliant bingo based Project

I've recently worked on a great project for Gala Bingo. working together with a fab design company from Leicester called Work Design. We produced a fun promotional calendar to hang on peoples walls and help promote Gala Bingo for the whole year.

I was asked to create the 12 illustrations used on the calendar, and they are all based on the most popular bingo calls. Any bingo officionados out there will know the common and quirky calls used in bingo halls all over the world, but if you need reminding of the full list you can check out this extensive Wikipedia page.

The final twelve we chose needed to be fairly family friendly as they have to appeal to a broad audience of Gala Bingo regulars. The final twelve bingo calls chosen are:

Legs 11, Knock on the door 44, Lucky7, Kelly's eye 1, David's den 10, Droopy drawers 44, Unlucky for some 13, Clickety click 66, Two fat ladies 88, Key to the door 21, Doctors orders 9, Two little ducks 22.

You can see the final calendar design in the gallery above. Work Design have done a great job with the graphics and the colours and background details really make the illustrations pop! You can see the early sketches and all the character illustrations below with plain backgrounds (lucky 7 above).

Let me know what you think if you fancy leaving a comment, or feel free to contact me about this project or any other. Enjoy :)

Suave & sophisticated fox character and logo design for Selection Fox

Sweet character and logo design project

*Selection Fox - Dapper fox in his stripy socks!*

I recently had the pleasure to work on a great new character and logo design for a fantastic new company named 'Selection Fox'.

The business is an online sweet / candy ordering service. You choose your favourite tasty treats and they'll pick, pack and post the parcel of perfection direct to you - Awesome!

The name is obviously a play on the traditional 'selection box'. Therefore with a small leap of creative genius 'Selection Fox' was born.

Our new character needed to be (a) a fox and (b) a suave, sophisticated and cool as candy old school dandy :)

The top hat and tails seemed an obvious choice, with the candy cane, sweet bow tie and liquorice pipe finishing off his sophisticated demeanour.

Purple was an obvious choice of colour next to the foxy orange hues, and all that was left was to add a giant liquorice allsort in his other hand. And lastly what dapper fox would be seen without his super, stripy socks?!

Check out the initial character sketches below, and some of the alternative poses and character styles we tried.

Lip-smackingly lovely logo

The 'Selection Fox' logo came next (which is unusual but not unheard of). The logo needed to have obvious design links with the character, but be a standalone identity in it's own rights.

We found a font that conveyed the right 'feel' for the brand, and added the top hat and fox tail to add the unique elements from the character.

A purple and orange colour scheme was used to continue the theme set by the character design. The 'classic' British sweets were added as a background with some liquorice allsorts, cola bottle and shrimp taking pride of place. The drop shadow effect was used to make the logo jump off the page a little.

A couple of variations of the logo were also created for possible alternative usage.

As usual I'd love to know what you think. Leave a comment or send me a message. Enjoy :)

Eye Kettleby Lakes Logo Design - Corporate Identity Branding

I created a new logo for Eye Kettleby Lakes a little while back. Eye Kettleby Lakes is situated in the heart of the Leicestershire countryside on the outskirts of Melton Mowbray. It's a family run fishery set in 150 acres which also has 12 luxury round log cabins and a tranquil touring park. A new corporate identity was needed and a whole new logo as we were starting from scratch due to there being no previous logo design for the company.

The brief was initially quite broad, and we were unsure whether to use an icon related to fishing, log cabins or caravans etc. Following several stages of design it was decided to be more broad in the choice of icon. We did not want the logo to be too restrictive with regards to the 'topic' of any image or icon used, and by being a little more open in our approach with the theme it would 'future proof' the logo as much as possible to cover all the various aspects of the business.

Below you can see several stages of the design proces, mocked up on compliment slips or business cards along with some slight variations of each theme. We actually went through many other designs, tweaks and colour schemes but these should give an overall picture of the project as a whole

The final design was chosen to incorporate a tree icon. This was felt to be broad enough in it's theme and covered the countryside and 'back to nature' ethos of the company. I've shown the final logo in black, but also a few variations with colour to show the diversity the logo has and how it can be displayed in different settings and colours etc. Let me know what you think and if you'd have chosen a different approach maybe. Cheers and enjoy!

Leicester Tigers - Welford character design - He's Grrreat!

If any of you good people are Leicester Tigers fans you might recognise this grrreat guy. It's Welford the official mascot for Leicester Tigers - the English rugby union team based in Leicester (obviously).

I've been illustrating the Tigers Family (#Tigersfamily) cartoon strip for the past two seasons, and you can see every single cartoon strip as well as sketches and even video on their very own blog.

This project however is all about Welford. Welford has been the offical Leicester Tigers mascot for some time now, but until recently he has only been seen in his physical form. He can usaully be seen on the pitch and in and around the Welford Road ground, meeting the fans and interacting with the kids. Now however he is also famous in his 2D, fully illustrated version!

He appears in many forms of promotional and marketing material both online and in print. You can see him in several places around the ground, on matchday promotional and fun (JTC - Junior Tigers Club) items and across the Tigers external marketing range.

Below you can see Welford in his claws out 'Thriller' pose :) You can also see him in several other classic poses as well as some early sketches of Welford before he was created in his final glorious full colour vector version.

Let me know if you're a fan of Welford and be sure to take a pic and send it to me if you see him around. Feel free to leave some comments below, but please keep them clean if you're not a Tigers fan ;) Cheers and enjoy!

If you'd like to see more of my character creations then click here and give your eyes a treat :)

Boardgame created for Northern Rail - Rambutan

"All aboard(game)!". I recently created this illustrated board game for Northern Rail whilst working with a great company from Market Harborough called Rambutan. The final vector based artwork was designed to replicate a generic roll the dice type of boardgame, with a beginning (GO - which represents now) and an end point (WIN - representing the future and beyond). The journey represents a train track and each 'place/square' represents a month of the year which also states a different company goal/target for that month. There were some success cards added to continue the boardgame idea which stated some important company targets etc. And to personalise the whole thing all the characters and surrounding artwork represents Northern Rail and/or the company in some way.

The end piece was printed up to A2 and used in their management conference to quickly and simply explain the companies journey for the next couple of years and beyond. Apparently it went down very well in the conference and hopefully helped explain the company vision in a fun and simple way.

The final artwork is below and some close ups to show you the details. I've also added a couple of the early sketches I created which were used to sell/explain the idea to the client.

As usual I would love to know what you think and any feedback you may have. Cheers and enjoy!

Sergeant SME reporting for duty

Attention! This is Sergeant SME or Sgt Sme (SME is an industry acronym for “subject matter expert”). He's a character I've created working with We Are Epic, the design, PR and marketing communications company based in Leicester. Nexus Defence was the client and they provide specialist security equipment and consultancy within the counter terrorist arena. Quite a serious topic!

The brief was to create a character that was 'quite anonymous'. This made the project a little trickier than normal as the brief totally goes against the usual reason for creating a character. When a character design project lands on my desk it usually requires a special, unique and stand-out character, quite the opposite to anonymous I think you'll agree :)

The service Sgt SME is promoting is a fairly serious one, so after some initial sketches (see below) it was decided to steer clear of anything too cartoony. We quickly decided to advance one of the sketches and create a simplistic vector version (see below) of the soldier in full kit holding a detector. We tried a few variations on the uniform and also tried adding some background colour, but finally decided on the colours you see on the big Sarge below.

As usual let me know what you think. Anonymous enough do you think? Cheers and enjoy!

Grr's 2 Purr's logo design - The cat's whiskers, the dogs...

I had the pleasure of working with a great client recently creating a brand new logo for Grr's 2 Purr's. Grr's 2 Purr's (as the name suggests) specialise in services and products for both cats and dogs. They're based in The Langton Farm Shop just outside Market Harborough and provide a premium dog grooming service as well as selling loads of high quality products, accessories and treats for our favourite four legged friends!

You can see the full logo below and how it works across several colour schemes including black and white and the companies corporate colours. I've also added many of the initial early designs I created as alternatives to the one that was finally chosen. As usual I would love to know what you think, and if you have any comments feel free to leave your thoughts. Cheers and enjoy!