Owls are in the Air

logo for Little Owl Urns

ad for Rockwood and Perry

Kathryn Rathke completes two beautiful owl commissions using her confident and stylish line.
Custom-designed urns maker 'Little Owl Urns' asked Kathryn to create a logo for the bottom of their ceramic and wooden pots; made for beloved pets. The second was for the wine merchant Rookwood and Perry in the Hudson River Valley to use as an advertisement for their shop. With the image of the nocturnal bird being used quite widely right now, Kathryn says "Owls are in the air!"

Wendy's Hidden Message

Kathryn Rathke enlightens us on the talk recently of a hidden message in the Wendy's logo.
The Huffington Post observed that the word 'Mom' was written in the collar of the girl in the new Wendy's logo, which Kathryn created with the team at Tesser agency. She says "Although it was not indeed intentional, my mother noticed and remarked on it, way back at the unveiling last fall,.....when she pointed it out to me, I did let her think that I did it just for her."

The word 'Mom' can be seen clearer here

The Accessory Hunter

Chrissy Lau was recently commissioned to illustrate the 'ultimate accessories lover' for fashion blog 'The Accessory Hunter'. Adriana (the brains behind the blog) is draped in all her beautiful luxurious accessories including her love for skulls, drawn with Chrissy's intricate lines. The illustration is used across the brand as a logo, on the website and stationery.

Wendy's Logo

Kathryn Rathke has been keeping a secret for over 3 years! But now with the unveiling of the new Wendy’s logo, she can finally reveal her part in the project.
Back in 2009 Kathryn was approached by Tesser to aid them in re-designing the Wendy's logo. She worked with them very closely; sketching, getting feedback and revising over a period of months. Tesser were very happy with the animation and expression that Kathryn was able to distil into a few elegant lines, and Kathryn was honoured to be a part of such an iconic job working with such a great design team.

Websters Pen Shop

Ruth Rowland uses her lettering talents on a commission for Websters Pen Shop. She explains "As a great lover of writing tools of all shapes and sizes, it seemed appropriate for me to be asked to work on a strapline for Websters Pen Shop. The British company is celebrating 40 years in the business and commissioned a new logo for the event. Hand lettering was chosen over a font to express the uniqueness of the written form - something Websters promote with their impressive range of pens. The lettering was used in a one and three line format along with the designer's logo across both printed and online advertising. The loose but legible style reflecting the soft flow of a fountain pen."

Longleat House

Ruth Rowland was recently asked to work on some lettering to promote Longleat House, an impressive example of Elizabethan architecture, set in beautiful Wiltshire countryside in the UK. Home to the 7th Marquess of Bath, the house is surrounded by 900 acres of ‘Capability Brown’ landscaped gardens and parkland. The lettering was designed to work with the hospitality side of the business, so as well as the site, it will be seen on wedding and corporate events brochures, stationery and promotional material. It needed to reflect the elegant, historic surroundings with a contemporary flourish, so Ruth focused on a soft italic hand, aiming to keep a fine balance between the flow of the line and the legibility of the form.

Read For Good

Keith Robinson's work for the charity 'Read For Good' continues with this latest set of illustrations. The images which are for a variety of uses such as bookmarks, certificates, sponsorship cards and posters, are to communicate the pleasure kids can get from reading. Last year, Keith designed the mascot and logo for the charity; Jamie and the orange balloon can be seen 'unifying' this set of images.
"'Read for Good' improves children's lives by encouraging and enabling children in primary and secondary schools to enjoy the powerful positive effects of reading for pleasure. In doing so these children also fundraise fantastic sums of money - to help seriously ill children across the UK."

When In Rome

Published by Anova Books, "When in Rome" is a comical gift book illustrated by Willie Ryan. With over 65 images, the book is a "cultural etiquette guide to help travellers from embarrassing themselves, and their country when holidaying abroad". Willie's stickmen illustrate the scenarios perfectly in this alternative guide, due to be released next month. When In Rome on Amazon.

Skins Logo

Ben Tallon's vivid Skins logo and graphics have been airing for the new season on E4. The fresh, 'just painted' logo is also being used on the Skins Twitter account and Facebook page.

Raid 71 and Steve Jobs

We are thrilled to be representing Raid 71 (aka Chris Thornley), an artist with a wealth of design experience behind him, whom after a typography degree has chosen to take the illustrative path. Both experimental and playful, exhibiting worldwide and with a number of awards under his belt, Raid 71 has worked for Levi, Mercury Records, Lego and many more high profile clients. 

His more recent fame came with the death of Steve Jobs, and an image Chris created back in May this year. He says "an editorial I did sometime ago has been involved in an International news story relating to the death of Steve Jobs; (I'm) getting a ton of requests for newspapers to talk about it." It turns out a student in Hong Kong created an almost identical 'tribute logo', which has been 'creating a buzz in cyberspace'. The student admits his is not the original but neither a rip off. Read more here from Reuters and also from Macworld.

Def P & Beatbusters

Eric Van Den Boom of Boom Artwork has created the artwork and logo design for the new album by Dutch musicians Def P & Beatbusters.

Eric’s aim was to reflect the double meaning of the title, so he cleverly illustrated it as an ambigram, he says it’s a "typographical design which reads exactly the same when viewed upside down, while the decoration in the background shows a positive or negative image at the top depending on orientation. The colour scheme – black outside, gold inside – and two inlay illustrations continue the theme."

John Lennon's 70th Birthday

More lettering mastery from Ruth Rowland who was thrilled to create the lettering for John Lennon’s "Gimme Some Truth Campaign" to commemorate his 70th birthday.

Overseen by Yoko Ono and EMI Music and using many samples of Lennon’s own writing, Ruth developed hand drawn lettering for use across the album to capture some of his light humour. The logo for the campaign was inspired by the small calligraphic self portraits that often accompanied his signature.

Neat Logo

“Simple” and “elegant” often work out well together, so proves Adam Larkum and this simple and elegant new logo for Edinburgh based publisher Bookspeed.
Utilising a neat lino cut effect, Adam’s series of oyster catch birds also features on book display stands.