'What have you always wanted to say?' Poster campaign

'What have you always wanted to say but never had the chance to? Make a series of posters expressing what's on your mind' This was overriding question of my latest brief. It's always a big ask to narrow down what you've waited your whole life to say into a series of posters. I've been reading Bill Bryson's 'A short History of Nearly Everything' which is packed to the brim with numbers and figures about our universe. I found each figure staggering and often hard to believe. But these numbers measuring how big the world is, how much it weighs and how old it is absolutely fascinated me.

So there was my answer, a series of posters with these colossal numbers comparing with the minuteness of our personal issues.

And when placed into context, the posters increase in meaning. They're deliberately put in locations where people would be thinking of those issues.

Each poster has a 'Headspace' logo. They deal with depression and drug addiction. Each of these posters deal with some the causes to these issues but communicates them in a lighter way. Click to zoom in on each poster.

The Slimy Toad

Hey guys,


Here we are on the third weekend of my degree's final year and I have something to show you :) My illustration tutor held up two envelopes, one filled with adjectives and the other with nouns. What you picked, you drew. I picked, much to my delight, 'Slimy Toad'. And so it begun.

When I heard 'Slimy', I instantly thought of guys like Jack Nicholson in 'The Departed', Jim Carry as 'The Mask', Les Patterson and Danny DeVito as Matilda's dad. The used car salesman type of slimy. the above was an initial concept piece where I tested acrylics with contact paper. THe rendering really helped get the slimy across with the sickly brownish green that I wanted. I based the hair on Tim Burton's spiny, tinny style of drawing.

Once that was approved, I begun with a sketch of the whole character I decided he should be a hedonistic, carnivorous bastard with long slimy shoes. Then began the nights that would end at about 1:30am after sweating over the rendering on his shoes, trousers, handkerchiefs...too many things.

I decided I preferred the original drawing of his head so I just concentrated on his outfit, predicting that I'd combine them digitally. All I needed to do was touch up his teeth. God bless Adobe.

It was a hell of a week, involving minimal sleep. But I ended up with this,

I showed this to my tutor and he wasn't as impressed as I hoped. He was of the opinion that the wood overpowered the toad and the shading needed beefing up overall. In hindsight, I agree. I've also found that the less time I put into something, the better it turns out. It just seems less dense and overworked. I spent too much time on this. For my own piece of mind, I made some minor changes and this is how the slimy toad now looks. It's the best it's going to look without starting it again. But definitely a huge learning curve, I'm glad I did it.

Cheers!