Decades of experience in design, artwork and print

I am known as a stickler for 'house style' within a brand's guidelines and across all elements including continuity within copy. It's imperative that the design and information is easy to understand for the reader/customer.  I will, if engaged to do so, read though and edit your supplied copy, and amend as necessary in order to achieve the best results. (To be honest, I usually suggest these things anyway.)

I can work from home taking briefs via telephone, Skype/Zoom or email, or I come to you and work closely with you and your team.

In addition to the design and advertising work shown here, I have also worked on and managed many art desks within large publishing houses, producing layouts, templates and designs for magazines and their supplements and spin-offs.

2020-21 – two tough years

It's been ridiculously quiet on the graphic design front due to Covid-19. Prior to lockdown and the problems associated with the pandemic, a lot of my jobs were updates and progressions of projects already shown here, such a catalogues, ads, brochures etc. This shows that clients stay with me because I understand their requirements. But unfortunately most of those clients downsized their print requirements considerably and focused instead on online advertising that they managed themselves through social media and other channels. 

Prior to the pandemic, I was working on various projects including revamps and tweaks of old projects, new product launches and a lot of things I can't show here, such as work for private customers who do not want their commssions in the public domain. It's a big shame that I can't show you some samples here because it's small projects such as these that produce some of the most inventive results, with flap down pages, pull-out maps, unusual page layouts and interesting typography.

One company I have occasionally assisted is Richard Allan London. Richard's marvellous 1960s silk scarfs/scarves* archive has been relaunched for today's market by his daughter Cate. The gorgeous patterns are availanble to be worn or as framed art prints. Cate has also made integrations with well-known companies, magazines and High Street brands such as H&M. It's been a delight to help out with this.

With so much free time I applied myself to my private projects. I started researching and writing about two sites in Islington with the idea to produce some books. This is still a work in progress and I am hoping to return to it Winter 21/22. 

And I created promo and leaflets for my own guided walks (see below) and for the walking associations I am involved with (see below) including this eye-catching London promo

*it turns out that both are correct!

A 6pp gatefold DL leaflet for Footprints of London

Footprints of London is a company of tour guides leading walks in the London area.
FpoL's Literary Festival takes place during the month of October with at least one walk available every day on a subject linked to writing, books or authors.
A fellow guide (for I am a Clerkenwell and Islington guide myself) asked if I'd design something for them. There was a lot of information to squeeze in and the final printed product shown below bears scant resemblance to my first draft, the problem being that elements kept changing or being added to and graphic devices such as the quill and river were supplied mid-project. Nevertheless I waved my magic designer's wand and found a way to make all the disparate elements work in harmony. The calendar is colour coded with morning, afternoon and evening walks. 

Now I need to set do the design and artwork for my own guided walks...

A real estate brochure

Imagine having a house on the Mediterranean that's so big and gorgeous that you can afford to engage a photographer to take some aspirational images and have them put into a short-run 250mm square 20-page saddle-stitched brochure with wrap-around flapped cover...

Above are the initial designs. Not all the spreads shown, but you get the drift.

Epsilon poster, flyer and 2-production programme

Epsilon Productions puts on small, award-winning thought-provoking plays.
With two productions coming up one after the other, my initial brief was to create the poster and flyer for Chicken Shop using Park Theatre's standard templates but to make them look different from the already-created Crystal Springs print.
Part two of the brief was to design and produce an A5 20pp programme that would cover both shows with two front covers and a common centre.
I introduced a dirty pale blue to Chicken Shop poster that worked well with the poster image supplied. The blue and black theme then contrasted well with the reds and beiges of Crystal Springs and helped to delineate the two halves of the programme.
All other elements within the programme also needed design input; ads, general info, blurbs etc.
It was a bit of a jig-saw, but we got there!

Hand-Painted Signs of Kratie book

Sam Roberts and I became friends through our interest in London's ghostsigns (faded hand-painted advertisements on brick walls). Sam was recently out of the UK for two years doing voluntary work in the Far East. He started to notice that some of the lovely hand-painted signs in Cambodia were gradually being replaced by modern versions, so he got his camera out and started taking snaps. The end result is this 140pp book, that I designed and artworked for him applying his words and pictures onto a simple, and very adaptable square grid.

Sam has written a fabulous recommendation regarding my work on this project on LinkedIn. It reads;  "Jane took my idea for a book and turned it into a well-finished piece of design that now proudly sits on mine and many others' shelves. However, it wasn't just the design that impressed. It was also Jane's guiding hand throughout the whole process that helped me to learn and make considerable improvements throughout the project. It was very much a team effort, done across two continents and seven time zones, me in Cambodia and Jane in London. This was only made possible by Jane's positive and flexible approach. Thank you Jane, I look forward to our next project together. 
Service Category: Graphic/Web Designer – Year first hired: 2010 (hired more than once)
Top Qualities: Personable, On Time, High Integrity

Motorcycle magazine and press ads

If you have ever flicked through motorcycle magazines you will have noticed that most ads are loud, packed with images and over-colourful.

For MotoEvolution's diverse range of bike products we wanted to make the ads a bit classier but without looking out of place on the same page.

CoreFiling icons, ads and info sheets

Here is an update on the initial designs for CoreFiling ads.
As you can see by the two pairs of ads below, the final versions were much stronger and more colourful.
The colourful branding continues across other items – I have also designed, created and tweaked a set of product icons for use on the website and packaging. They also appear on the A4 information brochures which I have designed to follow a template using CoreFiling's house fonts.
Smaller icons have also been created for use in the browser bar, however at the time of writing, these have not as yet been implemented.
Ditto the redesigns for the website.
Watch this space!

Menus and POS for a Turkish cafe bar

Aslan is Turkish for lion, so I created a logo with a lion and lioness laying down side by side. This was applied to all elemets of signage and print including concertina menus, flyers, business cards and even signs for the toilets.
I was also involved with the interior design and layout of the cafe bar itself.
A roaring success!

Fresh and friendly. Clean and bright and colourful.

Designs for CoreFiling teaser ads

CoreFiling wanted to create a series of ad pairs featuring photographic images that illustrated their products. The ads were booked to appear on subsequent right hand pages, whereby the first ad intrigues and the second ad on the following spread clarifies the solution and the specific product on offer. Ads needed a coherent design that identified them as part of the CoreFiling brand, yet to be distinct as a product.

My initial designs are shown in columns 1 and 2 above. After a lot of picture library research, I found a family of images that illustrated the problems and solutions. It wasn't easy! Then, I applied a palette of six distinct colours. I was keen to hold onto a repeated element on each ad, hence the graduated and black panels.
After discussion with the client, a second set of designs was created, as shown in 3rd and 4th columns. The client wrote larger stronger messages which I aligned across the ads linked by leader dots. And the colours were made stronger.
At a later stage the colours chosen for each product changed again and the approved final magazine ads feature solid colour panels on the right hand side. I also designed and created scalable vector icons in two sizes. See here for the subsequent designs.

Cake craft & decoration magazine

Cake is a magazine packed full of useful information for cake decorators. It clearly indicates how to create some truly stunning effects with sheets of sugar and food colouring.
But the magazine needed a revamp that would not alienate its readership. The  brief was to bring it up to date without completely changing the friendly look and feel.

The tidy-up involved new typefaces to separate the editorials from the step-by-steps, and a stricter though more adaptable 7-column grid with runners, folios and section headers.
The banner heading on the cover also needed amending as the old one used up too much space and did not work very well at small sizes. The basic designs below show how I originally tweaked the old logo and spun it slightly anti-clockwise. At a later date, after conversations with the client to recommend a change, I completely redrew the Cake logo script from scratch and supplied a scalable file. It can be seen bottom right, on the December 2013 front cover.

Print, web and signage for Amelia Parker

In addition to the graphic design, I also create and sell items made using fragments of clay pipes that I collect from the foreshores of the River Thames in London.
I wanted the information cards and signage for Amelia Parker to echo the lovely printed books of the 18th century, so Garamond, with its lovely choice fonts and ligatures, was the obvious choice.
Shown above are some of the items I have created including the website (which echoes the colour of the market stall), business cards, signage for the stall, and greeting cards that feature my photographs of some of the textural patterns and figurative images I have created using the fragments.

A book about London ghostsigns

Back in May 2008, Sam Roberts, another fan of faded ads painted onto walls, contacted me with an idea to collaborate on a book about the old painted signs that cling to the walls above our busy modern streets. 'Ghosts signs' or 'ghostsigns' hint at a bygone past, depicting local traders and services, products and potions, as well as brands that are still going strong today, albeit advertised in a different style. The signs were hand-painted by talented men who were proficient at climbing up and balancing on tall ladders (no scaffolding or hard hats back then!) whilst deftly using a paintbrush and paint.
Sam had seen my my website Jane's London and my vast collection of photos on Flickr, snapped during my extensive wanderings around London, and he thought that we'd be the perfect fit. We were both of the opinion that this would make a fabulous book. Sam was to be the wordsmith and I was to be the photographer, plus, with my graphic design and typography skills, I was well-placed to produce the artwork for print, thus saving on costs and keeping control of the look and feel. We planned for a print date of June 2010.

A square format was agreed and two months later I had produced a basic flexible grid and pulled together some initial spreads (above) that we hoped would tempt the publishers. Many of the reference elements shown in these layouts, such as the yellow tin, are my own personal items having sourced physical examples of product-related ephemera.
The project was put on hold when Sam went to Cambodia for a couple of years although we almost secured a publishing deal in 2011. When Sam returned to the UK we were both too busy on other projects to properly return to the idea. It will happen soon but more likely as a self-published title. In the meantime, I plan to produce some books of my own to tie in with my website – little 80pp books, each a collection on a subject (bootscrapers, coal hole covers, ghostsigns with pictures, ghostsigns of traders, doorway mosaics etc). And I continue to take photos of old signs when I spot them, but my Flickr photo account is now not for public viewing – I instead use it as a personal archive.

UPDATE: Since 2018, I have been leading guided walks about ghostsigns in various London areas from Shoreditch to Soho. I also offer online talks on the subject via Zoom. See www.janeslondonwalks.com for more info.

UPDATE November 2021 – Sam never got back to me. He instead produced a book in conjunction with someone else. I am disappointed to say the least. The design and layout is confusing and hard to navigate as regards using the book for reference. Nevertheless I wrote a positive review of it here.

Business Cards

Below is a collection of some of the business cards I have designed and produced in the last few years.
Let's face it, most business cards are just glimpsed at for a few seconds and then left in a darkened place for years. So I think they should be intriguing enough to provoke a immediate response.
Hence, I like to keep my designs clear and simple as I believe it's the information that is the most important element here, rather than over-designed versions where the vital information is lost, cramped, or way too small/light.
My designs feature text in a legible point size surrounded by a fair bit of white/light space for those extra inked-on scribbles, and I like to use photographs or graphic devices on the image side wherever possible. For instance, my own cards (both my personal one and the revised design for Amelia Parker clay pipe jewellery) feature my own shots of clay pipes – these images always get a good reaction.
Another clever design device for the picture side of the card is to zoom in on an element of an image, or the logo itself, which then becomes clearer on the information side.

B&B quarter page ads

Here's a small selection of some of the ads placed for Braybrook & Britten

Braybrook & Britten small catalogue Autumn 2012

Design and artwork for B&B catalogues is only started when the new products have been photographed. Many items are carry overs from previous catalogues and, unless there is a good reason for a whole page repeat, they need to be juggled about so that customers do not think they are looking at last year's version again. 
In 2012 there was no large catalogue but the bulk of the product shots, namely the jewellery items, still needed to be scaled at actual size before being further reduced to 80% for here. During the rough layout stages items get moved around a lot from page to page until the client is happy that we have achieved the best spreads to sell from.

Braybrook & Britten small catalogue, Winter 2011

Seasonal product spreads appear in these pocket editions. Also included are many repeat spreads from the full size general B&B catalogues, but it's not just a simple job of scaling down as all of the fonts change for ease of legibility, plus the grid is slightly different as this one isn't perfect bound. 
Having Rudolph on the has proved popular, so he, or one of his other sterling silver reindeer friends, has been on the cover of the Christmas catalogue in 2012 and 2013 as well.   

GKN pitch document

An outline document for an event. Images chosen to

Braybrook & Britten discount leaflet

B&B catalogues are designed to be stylish, clean and easy on the eye. But every now and then a stock clearance is needed to make way for new products. This particular 8pp A5 leaflet was inserted into Sunday magazines and the like. The aim was to make it say 'sale' and 'reduced' without looking tacky. 

Ideas for redesign of B&B catalogues

The client noticed that some of the best selling pages in the B&B catalogue where those that had bleed images or coloured backgrounds, and suggested that we introduce some coloured panels to the general design.
A nice idea, but it was a tough call. The cufflinks spreads already use squared-up panels, but they are all small products – applying the same idea to other pages which show items of varying shapes and sizes, especially in the jewellery section where they need to be shown at actual size, makes it hard to create a grid that works without looking too messy.
Shown below are the initial ideas I came up with, using random colours in blocks (colours would obviously be specifically mixed for each page to best enhance the products).
But, realising that this would make each page an even bigger jigsaw puzzle than usual, plus creating further photographic and/or repro work, this idea has been shelved for the time being.

Alive creds/thanks booklet

My client something that he could give as a thank you to his existing clients which could also be used as a promotional item in the future. He wanted something conversational.

He also knew what he didn't want... he didn't want pics of events, or anything corporate, or logos, or the 'our brief was this, so we did that' approach.

All the six case studies in this A5 booklet contain stories told by Lud and feedback from each of the clients invlolved. We're rather pleased with it!

Jack Morton brand identity guidelines

Putting together succinct guidelines can sometimes be a hard job. Less is more. Especially on those pages that show what cannot be done with the logo – let's face it, that could go on ad infinitum!

I worked closely with the brand designer on this one and we spent a lot of time on the naming and collating of the various master logo files, so as to (hopefully) avoid any confusion, and make these guidelines as easy as possible to follow and adhere to.

Earlier JM brand identities that I have worked on can be found here.

Islington Green Dental Practice redesign

A new logo and identity for IGDP, including stationery, leaflets and assorted items of print. I also proofread and/or re-wrote all the literature.

American Express Business Travel – Earls Court 2011

Those blue blurry lines again. But this time with no background image and the whole effect looked a lot cleaner and neater. I managed to find time to go to the show and take some photos of the finished product. Happy to say I was really pleased with the quality and finish of the graphics.

Pastiche record cover

This was a private job for a friend who wanted something special to give as a wedding present.

I created an LP-size pastiche mock-up of the cover of one of their favourite songs. It was float-mounted and framed and now hangs on their wall. Smaller versions were made for close relatives.

Amex Pacesetters 2010

Every year Amex put on a 'thank you' event for their best-performing employees, and in 2010 the theme was 'magic'.

Shown here is a very small selection of some of the items of collateral and event graphics I created which included elements for an Alice In Wonderland courtroom complete with 'wooden' walls and desk (a pic of the finished thing is shown bottom left).

KIT promotional postcards

A series of promotional postcards for KIT who produce lightweight technical garments etc.

The images were chosen and supplied by the client so it was all about making them work as a family of five.

John Cullen Lighting product catalogue

What a job! This product brochure, showing John Cullen's full range, was a tough job to produce, what with all the images to collate, diagrams and illustrations to draw or re-size, dimensions and spec to be added on at artwork stage, etc. The pictures down the right-hand edges show off some of the products in situ. This is the second version of this catalogue I have produced; products are always changing or being added/deleted.

As I write this I am in the process of designing the 'sister' design brochure which is picture-led and inspirational.

NPA redesign

NPA's expansion has been rapid and their promotional leaflets, brochures, website etc all need to be brought together and given a simplified identity to connect the seven sectors and make them look part of the same forward-thinking company. Following on from the success of the partial redesign for the panels at Excel 09, I came up with an idea to replace the existing mis-matched leaflets and gatefold brochures with DL-sized swatch cards that could be tailored to suit each individual client's needs. These would be fronted by and held together with die-stamped composite plastic manufactured by the company itself.

The website would also echo the same design.

Unfortunately this project is on hold for the time being.

Brochure design for bespoke kitchen company

I designed this in close conjunction with Iain. Our client wanted the brochure to be clean, modern and use plenty of white space. From the client's large database of images we chose what we considered to be the best ones and, using these as inspiration, invented a flexible grid and a palette of earthy yet contemporary colours to complement them.

Sadly, probably due to the current financial climate, the client pulled out and the project has been shelved. Fingers crossed they change their minds as this would have been a lovely piece of print.

Postcards for the Ghostsigns Archive

In conjunction with The History of Advertisng Trust (HAT) and Rank Hovis, Sam Roberts has been busy setting up an archive of all the old painted advertising signs that were painted directly onto walls over the past century. As well as taking lots of photos of these myself, I have been helping him with design and artwork for various items in conjunction with this project. This set of 10 postcards has been created for the launch event, though we hope we may be able to sell more in the future to help fund the project.

We are also working on a book of the same.

American Express London Skyline panels

As previously mentioned, Amex has a really strong identity for Business Travel which involves a fair bit of Photoshop work. Once an image is sourced, either from Amex's database of images or from a picture library, the general layout/design has to be agreed before blurred movement lines are added in specific shades of blue. In this instance I needed to find a suitable image that would be OK to use at 8 metres wide and really lucky to find the one below on Flickr. A mobile of logos and other Amex images hung above it. I understand it was well-received.

NP Aerospace product cards

These product cards were created for use at the Excel 09 event using the same colours for the 7 sectors, but an overall grid/graph background was added to denote technical design.

Initial designs for full page ads

The client, a bespoke kitchen maker, was a bit vague as to what was required; what look to achieve for their high-end advertising campaign. There was even talk of producing a new logo. Using three very different images, Iain and I came up with a few rough ideas to show them how each might be used in various different ways. One of those images is shown here.

The project has been shelved for the time being.

Stationery evolution

I have produced the artwork for the stationery for this company for over 12 years through 3 different name changes and 5 different identities. It comprises not just the usual letterhead, comp slip and business cards, but also a long list of labels, stickers and inserts for items such as CD cases, presentation documents and wallets, VHS and Beta tapes and cases, document covers, even carrier bags.
Shown here are the four early identities. Guidelines for the current one can be found here.
Please note the lovely thank you letter addressed to me which reads:

"Dear Jane... The brand launch, without doubt, was our best ever... An enormous amount of credit for the success goes to you, because without your hard work and professionalism it would not have been possible.... [we] found working with you very reassuring. Yours is certainly a job where patience and unflappability are a bonus and you have it in abundance...."

Braybrook & Britten mini catalogues 2009

Two smaller brochures for B&B ; a 12pp insert and a 48pp Christmas mailer based on the full-sized September version.

These are not just scaled-down versions of the earlier ones, but re-styled and re-jigged pages as the fonts all change for these smaller editions for ease of legibility, so everything has to be cross-checked for erroneous line breaks, mentions of 'actual size' etc.

Braybook & Britten catalogue 2009

64pp plus covers. Layouts for B&B catalogues are planned once all the products have been photographed. All jewellery has to be shown actual size and this means it is always a major jigsaw puzzle. During the rough layout stages items get moved around a lot from page to page until the client is happy that we have achieved the best spreads to sell from.

Shown here are pre-press pdfs, hence some really rough cut-outs; the extensive Photoshop work, to merge and montage some images together, is done by the repro department at the printers.

NP Aerospace event graphics and identity redesign

NP Aerospace wanted a more modern, clean, coherent identity. And they wanted this to start from the Excel 09 event where they had a large stand.

Time was of the essence, so, retaining the roundel version of the logo, I designed a template that could be adapted for use on each of the 7 sectors, giving each of the 1.5m triptychs a dirty pastel backround colour, utilising a red thread to hold together the 'story' of how their products are manufactured from start to finish.

This design was then adapted for use on the individual product cards using the colours as an overall grid background.

The same idea was also applied to the 3 panels for the IST toblerone, part of the same stand, shown here bottom right.

Nokia

Shown here is a design for a 4pp magazine insert, and some small pocket brochures. Nokia, as with most large well-established companies, already has a strong identity and strict corporate guidelines, so it's always a challenge coming up with new ideas and thinking within the box, to make each new item have an identity of its own

Jack Morton marketing

At JM they call these 'Snapshots'. Each 2-sided card is about one aspect of the company's strengths, or for one event or project.

My task when designing and artworking them, was to set up a loose template and then, depending on the images available for each one, choose the most intriguing or arresting image for the front of each card. For some of the more generic cards, a whole new image might need to be sourced or created from scratch.

On the reverse of each card a small selection images were chosen to accompany the text describing briefly the project from brief to completion.

There are 100s of these.

Royal Mail Group, print items for the Chairman's Excellence Awards

Every year The Royal Mail Group invites its staff to nominate a fellow employee for an award. The 2008 event was designed to look like a house with, for instance, themed wallpaper and carpet, a really large front door and over-sized electrical sockets.

Shown here are my initial designs for the various print items which continued the same idea – the posters featured everyday treats and rewards; the nomination form had a door on the front; the invitation had keys; the ticket had a welcome mat; the event programme featured things such as a reminder post-it on the fridge, a branded tablecloth with plates and menu, a coat stand on the prizes page, lights and lampshades for the nominees (luminaries!), and dining chairs for the judges.

Sadly, for me, a lot of these ideas were watered down by the time the job was finally artworked. The client was keen on the brown and gold stars image on the front of the programme and wanted this to be repeated wherever possible, in particular the posters, the nomination form and the ticket.

Re the internal pages of the programme, only the fridge and and the plates made it through to the final cut. I still say they could have used children's fridge magnet letters for the A-Z nominations. Ah well, what do I know?!

HP Technology@Work event guides

Three years running I have set up the templates and produced the artwork for these A5 event guides. They are full of seminar listings, company overviews and speaker biogs etc following HP's strict company style guidelines. It's "Style Sheet City". Strange as that may sound, messing about with type and forms is something I really enjoy as I find a great sense of satisfaction when it all fits in well, looks good and is easy for the user to understand and navigate.

Athens 2004 opening and closing ceremonies

Jack Morton created and produced the opening and closing ceremonies for the Olympic Games 2004 in Athens. 1000s of photographs were taken and a selection was was put into a 220pp book called 'Ceremony' which told the story of the making of these events.

I picture edited, designed and created the layouts and artwork, based on a rough template that had already been set up. I also went to the printers to do a press pass etc.

I am really pleased final printed book, and it was hard choosing just 8 spreads to show here.

I also designed an invitation for the book launch; my idea being a 6pp concertina leaflet that could be torn along perforations to make individual postcards, one being the reply paid card acceptance card. Sad to report that the printer used perforations that were too close together and thus the things just fell apart once opened. I was SO disappointed!

Other landscape format postcards were also designed.

Felt rugs

Design and artwork for various items of print for Felt.

From L-R: invitations, leaflets, ads.

American Express Invitations

Two invitations for American Express events. And,top right, mocked-up at smaller sizes than the final glossy printed item, are some of the early designs for that particular event.

IBM Bangalore invitation

I was really getting into this and then the event was cancelled. Hence, these are working designs. I wanted each of the 16 A4 pages to depict some of the sumptuous colours and textures of Banaglore.

An earlier design for an event at St Andrews is here.

MOD – Falklands 25 years commemoration ceremony handbook

A prestigious event and what a lovely job to work on.
The design had already been created and approved. I was brought in to streamline it, pull the artwork together and oversee the print, which was almost a disaster, the printer having omitted to buy in the correct cream paper stock. But in the end we got them to flood the pages with 7% yellow and the same effect was achieved.
I watched the flypast from The Mall on the day and it was great to see so many people clutching their copies as souvenirs of the day.

Amex print

Three different projects here.

In Top Gear – shown here is the A4 pocketed folder, notepad, pocket event guide and delegate badge.

Pacesetters – there were over a hundred exhibitors at this event and as well as the signage for each of their booths (not shown) there were various bits of print to produce for the delegates including an A4 pocketed folder, notepad and 'Passport' which was a marketing device for delegates to tick off every booth they visited and perhaps win a prize.

Good2G0 – The fold up leaflet was based on a patented idea already in print. The screen-printed mirror card theme, used on the fronts and backs was also echoed on the postcard-sized invite and many other items (not shown here) such as A3 posters and a box containing a range of cosmetics that were also branded with the event logo.

Braybrook & Britten catalogue spring/summer 2008

64pp plus covers. Layouts for B&B catalogues are planned once all the products have been photographed. During the rough layout stages items get moved around a lot from page to page until the client is happy. Add to the mix that all jewellery items have to be shown actual size and it becomes a sparkly puzzle. But the end result is always worth all the effort.