STOP PRESS: Asiago Award Winners

Top left: Shailesh Khandeparkar, top right: Gail Armstrong, bottom: Russell Fei

Watch Gail Armstrong create her stamp

We are delighted with the news that three of our illustrators have won the prestigious Asiago International Award for Philatelic Art.
Commissioned by the United Nations Postal Administration, Gail Armstrong, Shailesh Khandeparkar and Russell Fei were asked to create stamp designs to mark the UN's Conference on Sustainable Development which took place in Rio last year. Along with some background material on the conference, each artist was given the theme of either Land, Sea or Air and encouraged to go and create something beautiful.
Gail, Shailesh and Russell have not only achieved this but have been crowned with an award which is given annually under the patronage of the President of Italy.

Open for Business

Gail Armstrong has finished a super commission from Bader Rutter recently.
Asked to create two linking images for the cover story of Impact Magazine, Gail's creations were to illustrate the implications of moving to more open-plan office environments for an article entitled Open for Business. Gail says "The first image is of a closed box, the sides of which are reminiscent of the classic, textured partition walls often used to divide up and enclose workstations in offices. The word OPEN is cut into one side of the box. In the second image the word becomes freestanding, the walls fall away and the office workers are seen interacting in a more pleasant and free environment". A partial animation of the second image can be seen here.

Engage

Commissioned by Flourish Agency in the US, Andy Council completes this poster for Cleveland State University.
The design is one of a series based around the word 'Engage'; with a student and the project they are working on featured in the artwork. Andy's illustrates a type of wind turbine currently in development.

Green Wednesdays

Nick Murray Willis  produces another witty animation, this time for Nice and Serious . Used as a promo for Green Wednesdays  - an idea 'to connect influential people with the best environmental and ethical films in order to bring about change', the animation carries the message with Nick's wonderful line drawings and characters. See it here.

Care For Our World

Alexandra Ball has been busy working on a commission from Compendium Inc. (a US publishing company who specialise in inspirational ideas). The brief was to illustrate a children’s book, the text being a beautiful poem by Karen Robbins with an environmental message to Care For Our World. Alexandra says "It was a wonderful project to work on as they gave me pretty much full rein of the content and with the environmental theme, one which is very close to my heart, I couldn’t have asked for more. My initial sketches of the animals gave the brains behind Compendium Inc. the idea to create a play-set to go along side the book. This consisted of a number of punch-out animals and habitat box that children can play with to stimulate their imagination." The play-set has proven a success with quite a collection of awards so far; 2012 Mom’s Choice Awards, 2012 Playset of the Year; Creative Child Awards, 2012 Top Toy of the Year; Creative Child Awards, 2012 Runner-up in the Children's Books Category; Green Book Festival and a silver in the Moonbeam Children's Book Awards. Super work!

UN Stamp

Launched in June, this wonderful stamp has been created by Gail Armstrong for the United Nations.  The job was to create a paper sculpture based on the theme of 'land' to mark the UN conference in Rio, Brazil for the International Summit on Sustainable Development. It has been high-profile and also hugely successful leading Gail to put together a movie showing how the piece was made, giving an amazing insight to her creative world! Watch it here.

Suez Environment

 

Working with MC Saatchi GAD in Paris for Suez Environment, Sam Bevington has completed this ad to illustrate water challenges. Sam says "...there were about 29 versions I sent through as the project progressed, I decided to throw together a little video to show it building up step by step..." See the video:

Greenpeace Poster

Laura Dollie’s powerful image has won the Applied Art Magazine Student Awards. Entered on her behalf by her former professor, Laura’a anti-pollution poster is featured in the November Issue. It’s a striking, beautifully composed piece, well deserving of a winning place. Well done Laura!

Unilever's Value Chain

Nick Murray Willis, expert in art that moves, has completed a short animation for Unilever's Sustainability Living Plan. This unique animation explains their environmental footprint in an accessible way. Watch it here.

Shailesh Khandeparkar - D&AD Judge

We are very proud to learn Shailesh Khandeparkar will be joining D&AD as a judge in the Illustration category. A little about Shailesh and his acheivements: "...Shailesh Khandeparkar, a Graduate from ‘The Goa School of Art’ is a renowned Freelance Illustrator and Designer, based in Mumbai. He prefers to work on styles that fall in Indian-Urban genre, which means a mix of classical Indian styles and modern techniques. He likes the unique starkness of black & white. Shailesh’s work for WWF was selected as In-book at D & AD for 3 years in a row. He won a Gold Pencil in One Show Design, Bronze at the Clio Awards, and several nominations in Cannes, London International and other major international awards. Shailesh’s work was selected in the 200 Best Illustrations by the Luerzer’s Archive magazine. Shailesh’s work is regularly featured in reviews on illustration and design. His work was published in The Work Book, WPP Cream Book, idn, Communication Art, Computer Art and Indexbook...."

Shailesh’s Sanctuary

Shailesh Khandeparkar has produced these magnificent illustrations uniting beautiful imagery with a serious cause for Sanctuary.

Commissioned by Mudra Communications Shailesh conceived, designed and created the illustrations with the humourous line ‘only idiots cut down trees’. They were worked in a reverse style with the result being almost mosaic like. Such exquisite creations.

Diplomat Wrap

This month sees the very talented Chris Ede reaching out across the globe with this incredible cover wrap design for Diplomat magazine.

This exciting image which perfectly illustrates the Climate Change issue, will be landing on the desks of every Embassy in the world with high praise indeed from the Art Director who declared it "the best illustration she had ever commissioned".