Last week in the studio (CW27-26)

Every Monday, I write about what I worked on during the previous week. I’m back in the studio for a few weeks and pushing to get a few client projects over the line before we head off to Germany again in August.

Getting close to the end on Lockrose

Building on Eleventy in a Box meant I could complete the technical development of Lockrose’s new website in just a few days. This gives me more time out of the budget to work on content, graphics, and illustration.

I’d ended the week before with an idea which combined photography with graphic elements.

Lockrose weren’t convinced by this approach, and they wanted to avoid showing people entirely. So it was back to the drawing table for me. I had several things in mind, including flat colours and graphic shapes. I also wanted to use the Lockrose triangle as their main motif.

Dipping into my library, I found the few issues of vintage Graphis magazine I’ve collected. Among the covers were nos. 46 and 48, which have exactly the style I had in mind.

Using this style, I made loose sketches for the sectors that Lockrose operate in.

Then I colour-blocked them by drawing triangular shapes with points that intersect on the underlying grid.

Lockrose liked this direction. For their contact page, the team suggested I make an illustration of their London office building.

I love it when clients start bringing their own ideas, as it shows they’re committed to the direction. Using those same flat colours and simplified shapes, I recreated their London office building.

And, of course, being me, I started working on an Easter egg. But more about that some other time.

Getting the majority of the user experience design and code finished the previous week meant that I could spend last week working on content and graphic design. These are some of the weeks I like best.