The hand of the graphic designer

At the end of last year I was asked to contribute some original drawings for an exhibition called 'The Hand of the Graphic designer' organised by FAI - (Fondo Ambiente Italiano), the Italian equivalent of the National Trust. The exhibition opened last week as part of Design week in Milan, and features 367 original drawings by 108 graphic designers from all over the world, including Sara Fanelli, Seymour Chwast and Guido Scarobottolo. Mine come from a mixture of projects - Squashes and yams from 'The Great big veg challenge', dinosaur and oil from 'An Endangered Species', and Milanese Risotto from 'The Silver spoon for children'. The catalogue is in the form of a Moleskine notebook and all drawings will be auctioned by Sotheby's in support of FAI. More info on the exhibition and FAI can be found here.

Basel Kantonal bank

At the end of last year I was busy working on a commission with Swiss design agency New Identity for their client Basel Kantonal bank. The brief was to produce some images for an illustrated section of the bank's annual report. It was a great brief - my job was to provide visual interpretations of various unusual place names in Basel: 'Hare's castle', '11,000 virgins alley' and 'Chamois mountain' to name a few. I was asked not to think about what the real place looked like, but was instead completely free to use the name as inspiration for my drawings. It was a fairly long process of many sketches and ideas and also involved two day trips to Basel for meetings! Here are 'Beak alley','Chamois mountain', 'House of the mosquito', 'Hare's castle' and 'Snail man'. Hare's castle wasn't actually used in the end - which is why it's slightly more colourful than the others!

Exhibition pics

Flying pigs

Here are some photos of my recent children's workshop in Bologna. Children had great fun making flying pigs of all colours, shapes and sizes and then hanging them from the ceiling.

A few of the Impossible things....

"Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said ‘one can’t believe impossible things.’

‘I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." from ‘Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There’ by Lewis Carroll

This delightful conversation between Alice and the White Queen is the starting point for my new book 'Sixty Impossible things before Lunch' published by Edizioni Corraini. A book full of impossible questions, impossible pictures and impossible ideas, such as 
'Which came first, the chicken or the egg?' 'Where is the middle of nowhere?', 'What does the universe look like?' and 'How long is a piece of string?' 
Questions without answers or questions that are so hard as to be impossible. And some questions with so many answers it is impossible to give just one!

The book was launched at the recent Bologna book fair with an exhibition at MAMbo, the modern art museum in Bologna. Here are a few spreads... Photos of the private view and kids workshop coming soon!