Today, at work, we received a delivery of “Owly” Oyster card holders designed by Aric, the newest member of the TLD team! I had to blog about them as I love the illustrations and the look and feel of the card holders.

Have a gander at the finished articles below,  twit twoo!

Last week a few of the team from the Top Left Design were invited along to Calverts “Paper Jam Print Recognition Seminar”, at their workshop in East London. The 2 hour session was dedicated to giving designers, and Calverts customers, an insight into what happens, once print files are sent to them. They were also kind enough to show us lots of examples of print work, which proved very inspiring to us designers!

Calverts is run as a co-operative, and has been established for over 30 years. They specialise in design and print work, using digital and lithography print processes.

It’s been a few years since I have stepped into a printing studio, I think the last time was whilst at University. I have to say, it was nice to be back in one! I aways loved the atmosphere, smells and buzz around the printing presses, and Calverts is no different.

I was particularly impressed with their hugh litho printing machine placed in the heart of the print room! Arthur, who took the session, walked us all though the steps for printing and we also got to watch the machine churn out prints whilst there.

Now, I’m kicking myself, as I didn’t take any photo’s of the press itself so here are some images of Calverts business cards which are litho printed. I love them!

Check out their website for more examples of the fantastic print work they produce!

Yesterday I spotted some rather nice packaging by design agency B&B. B&B are the creatives behind all things “Bear“. As well as helping them with packaging concepts, they also worked on the logo design, stationery and their website (which I find quite fun!).

I spotted these colourful nibbles while out doing the weekly “big shop” with the BF, and took a few sneaky pictures for this blog post.

Bear are dedicated to “making being healthy easy”. They produce a variety of snakes from fruit packs, granola, and fruit yo yo’s, which are rolled up fruit strips!

Bear is the brain child of personal trainer Hayley. She came up with the idea after hearing lots of people complaining about their diets and exercise patterns. If you check out the site, there is an interesting bit about how she came up with the name for Bear.

I really love the whole branding! I think the use of illustration works well and has a fresh feel to it. The packaging is also recycled, so you get a lovely feel/texture when you hold them in your hand. The brand also plays on humour too, from the leaf which covers the bears bits to the funny creatures that dance around the site. Overall it makes me want to pick their products up and try a bit of their grrrrrrrrrrrrrrub!

Another fantastic Top Left Design newsletter was sent out this week!

As you may have seen, (from previous posts) each newsleter has its very own theme we like to explore. Last month it was “The time has come” the Walrus said… and this time we chose “Are you heading for extinction?” as our main topic.

As we’re all visual in the team, a lot of the time, the illustration ideas comes to us before we’ve even thought about the topics we’ll cover! Dinosaurs were at the top of Keren’s list and Tamlyn was asked to illustrate 2 new characters for the newsletter banner.

Michael also wrote a blog to accompany it, which you can read here.

Below are a few close-ups of the illustration Tamlyn did. I love it!

(All images taken from Top Left Design’s April newsletter)

As it’s Easter, I thought it would be a perfect time to blog about last weekends Fabergé Egg Hunt!

Just before I “eggsplain” about our day, I would like to tell you a bit about The Big Egg Hunt and how it all came about. Last year, some of you may have seen the highly decorated elephants dotted around London town (I even blogged about a few). Well, this year the Elephant Family and Action for Children charities decided to do a record-breaking egg hunt around London to raise money. You can read more about the egg hunt here.

Our  egg hunt started with an “eggciting” family briefing with Gemma outside Harrods, Knightsbridge. It was there that we were assigned our team names and “eggsplained” the agenda for the day. The Webster’s were called team “Eggcelence”, headed up by captain Lisa. And the Punshon’s, named team “Eggcitable” were lead by Ceri.

The plan was to find as many hidden eggs around Knightsbridge, Sloan Square, Piccadilly, Carnaby Street and Covert Garden. The race was on, and it’s fair to say that it brought out our competitive sides in both families!

As well as it being a fun filled, family day out we also got to see lots of lovely designed eggs as part of our hunt! Here are some I snapped along the way.

As you can see from my photo’s, there was an “eggstensive” variety of designs on display. We didn’t get to see them all, but you can see the full list of egg, artists and designers on their website.

We thoroughly enjoyed the day, and I’m already looking forward to seeing what the Elephant Family and Action for Children charities decide to do next year!

Here’s a new illustration I have been working on over the past few weeks. It’s inspired by the Beatle’s song “We all live in a yellow submarine” which has been stuck in my head for weeks. I decided it was time to do something with it, so I produced this!

Happy St Patrick’s day people! Here’s a little recycled illustration from last year! I designed it for Top Left Design and thought I should pop it up again as its rather topical!

This week, we sent out our March newsletter at Top Left Design. The theme was all about time, and we used “The time has come the Walrus said…” as inspiration for the illustrated banner and newsletter content.

This month Tamlyn, illustrated the newsletter.

As well as being a talented designer, she’s also a dab hand drawing Walruses, she found out! I love her characterisation and the 3d feel to this piece.

Tamlyn also mentioned that she had been inspired by my work, which is always nice to hear!

Have a gander at her work below.

(Images taken from Top Left Design’s newsletter)

Here’s a new tea related illustration I thought up today! It’s kind of based around the words “tea cosy” which inspired me to illustrate a cup of tea tucked up in bed with a few biscuits thrown in for good measure!

It’s quite a cosy scene, and I wanted to use pastel shades with the main colours coming from the tea and biscuits. I couldn’t miss the chance to illustrate a few of my favourite dunk-able treats. Here we have the Bourbon, Digestive and Custard Cream in all their glory.