Being a freelance illustrator is something I've wanted to be for a long time. Each project I complete is different, each client needs their own particular design and I love the variety in this. I start with a client consultation which can be over the phone, by email or in person. I enjoy working with local clients in Chester and Cheshire as the project feels more personal in my home stomping ground. Areas around and outside Chester such as, Upton, Newton, Broughton, Hoole, Handbridge, Waverton, Hawarden and more...But the flexibility of remote working means I can also help clients anywhere in the country or even abroad.
I like to work with local Chester businesses or organisations looking for illustration design. I have worked with Chester Cathedral to produce an illustrated map of the Cathedral grounds and surrounding town area. This was an especially personal project for me as my father used to be an active volunteer at the Cathedral and was very involved in Cathedral life.
For this project, I met Emily, the Cathedral's Archivist/Communications and Grants Officer in the stunning Chester Cathedral Refectory for a coffee and chat about what they were looking for in a site map. Emily provided me with a copy of an ordnance survey map of the exact area they wanted to be represented on their illustrated map design. She pointed out key landmarks that they wanted highlighting, such as the Addleshaw Bell Tower, Abbey Gateway, the Kaleyard Gate and more local sights like the canal, Roman walls and the Townhall. Having seen my other designs she said they were looking for it to include some fun illustrations as well as the basic map layout. And as the handdrawn map was to be used for various different occasions they were looking for flexibility so decided against any name labels for roads or landmarks.
This project was very useful for me in honing my design process. I love to sketch and draw in the Procreate app on my Ipad with my apple pencil. It's digital design but like drawing with pen on paper, plus with the added benefit of a delete button rather than an eraser! So this gives me the freedom to design freehand the layout, colour scheme and details first. To explain the more geeky side of illustration design, Procreate is a programme that uses raster images. These can look great on the screen but once sized up or down they can lose their crisp definition and get a bit blurry. So to produce an image that can be scaled up and down with perfect clarity maintained the design needs to be converted to a vector image. And this is done by importing it in layers into the Adobe design programme Illustrator. It may seem to some people that an illustrated map might be drawn quite quickly but the planning, design and completion of a design is a lengthy process.