Thortful Cards

Thortful create beautiful and high quality greeting cards for all occasions all sold online. They have generously commissioned FdA Illustration to produce three greeting cards, one for a birthday, one for celebrating a new home and a thank you card.

Students were briefed by Katie Lillywhite from Thortful in their offices in the Strand.

Katy really conveyed just exactly how big a market the greeting card industry is and who bought their cards. It was also an opportunity to look at a range of greeting cards so as to appreciate their scope, how they varied in approach, use of media and tone. 

Now we're back in the studio working on ideas and with the winner having their design printed students are really getting on with the job. Jon Higham has produced greeting card designs for Thortful and is working with the students. They are also working in the print studio with Tobin Thompson so that they can also develop a more tactile approach. 

More to come......

And take a look at Thortful's website at Thortful.com 

Live brief for Hastings Borough Council

Hastings Borough Council invited FdA Illustration students in their first year of the course to produce artwork to be shown on the walls of meeting rooms in their newly refurbished offices. Each room is named after a notable person who lived for at least some of their life in Hastings. The students were shown the meeting rooms and briefed. After producing their ideas  each student gave a presentation to the council and then finalised their work for installation.

Here are some of the results with more to follow:

Brogan Blanch produced artwork based upon Alan Turing using binary code to make up the portrait and hiding his quote in the surrounding 'halo'. The work was printed onto transfer film by Ricochet Prints.

Charlotte Brook also produced artwork for the Alan Turing Room but this time working with Turings distinct profile and elements from his Enigma machine.

Adam Winter celebrated John Logie Baird, the inventor of the first moving pictures, using a lightbulb within which there is almost a 'manual' of parts for his invention.

Amy Cobb focussed on a less well known person, Sophie Jex-Blake who was one of the first female doctors and who founded a training centre for health professionals in London.

Reece Saunters produced a portrait of Thomas Brassey an engineer responsible for the construction of railways around the world. The portrait was smaller than the others at A3 so as to allude to an intimate victorian portrait.

Maria Nikla depicted Robert Tressell, the author of the 'Ragged Trousered Philanthropist' as the painter and decorator he in fact was.