As a budding design student, my first love was poster design. I used to pour over old Graphis annuals (many of which I later collected) inspired by the work of Shigeo Fukuda, Tommie Ungerer, Milton Glaser, Seymour Chwast, Herb Lubalin, Per Arnoldi and Waldemar Swierzy to name but a few. I often thought I could have been extremely happy if I just designed posters for a living.
A couple of years ago, I got to a crossroads in my life where I started to think about what I had done to date and where I was going. I reflected on my previous youthful dreams and the thought occurred to me “when was the last time you designed a poster?”
It was a thought that began to nag at me as I started to think about what creative path I might take next. Little signs and co-incidences appeared along the way, like the fact that I found out that I share the same birthday (31 May) with Jules Cheret; the French painter and lithographer who became a master of Belle Époque poster art and is regarded as the ‘father of the modern poster’
So eventually I decided to design a set of posters purely for my own pleasure and centered around my personal heroes and heroines. I then also built a small online poster store called ‘The PStore’ (an anagram of the word ‘poster’) to sell my own works initially, but maybe one day also the works of other artists and designers I admire.
“ICONOGRAPHIC’ The first exhibition of my work will be at Art Dept at Clapham Picturehouse in London. This small exhibition of 25 artworks runs from 10 October – 10 November 2013.
The centerpiece of the show is a 70x100cm tribute artwork to the legendary and pioneering Afrobeat musician, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, who would have been 75 this month were he still alive today.
For more information visit the online poster store at www.pstore.bigcartel.com to view more examples of my work and purchase prints.