Pitch win - The Body Shop
It's been a crazy few months after winning a 3 way pitch for The Body Shop Vision and Strategy communication work against leading London agencies, which led to creating a 7 minute animation and supporting material to communicate the future of The Body Shop to the top 100 global leaders within the company.
Just 5 weeks from idea to script, style guides to key frames, animation, voice over, music, edit and delivery. A fantastic opportunity to work with a great client and pull a team together that delivered an outstanding animation.
Big thanks to Pete Kirby(writer), Blade McGivern(Animator), Sally Oldfield(Producer) and David Lovelock(Edit) for helping make this lovely piece of communication work in such a tight timeline.
Darren Whittington
The Water Men
It's Flushing Art Week and this year I've been playing in the Water Mans Rest on the quay. It's a place that's seen generations of Fishermen, Ferry men and passengers take time out, smoke a pipe, wait for the next ferry or a storm to pass. 
It's a place full of character and most mornings full of the most colourful people in this small fishing village, so this year I've been drawing some of these wonderful people and with their kind permission added a little colour to their windows for the week. 
It's certainly caused a good pub conversation or two and with any luck helped those who passed through Flushing this week discover a little more of the community that exists here.
Big thanks to Norman and Danny for being first up, more paintings popping up in Flushing over the next few weeks, watch out for John, Bunny & Potts!
There's more of my glass painting to be found in the 'Sketchbook'
Darren Whittington
Dog passport anyone?
A bizarre request but good fun to do, the Petplan dog passport which was used within a shoot for their insurance advertisements in various pet magazines, this was pre the recent government showdown on dog passports, good timing!
Shown here are the initial dog crest vector drawings and a foil block mock up that was used in the shoot.
A passport for any discerning dog lover. Love a challenge! D
Bring on the bendy people...
Advertising agency Lowes needed a quick illustration for an internal project that created the word 'Strength' using as many people as possible to represent the strength of talent at Lowes worldwide.
Caffiened up, 100+ characters and 48 and a bit hours later, hey presto.
Tight deadlines a speciality! D
Leap tree
Leap Media were looking for an illustration that would some up what they do and use it for back page business ads. Leap specialises in using design to create positive change but isn't one of those design agencies that rams it down your throat, it has a friendly, fun and fresh approach that focuses on the clients needs and see's it go from strength to strength.
Designs of the time 2009 launch
I've been helping out with the 2009 Designs of the time challenge otherwise known as Dott 09 which launched last week. It's an exciting project created by the Design Council that is designed to fit in with the National Curriculum and ask year 8 pupils what's the size of their schools ecological footprint and how could design make it smaller, letting pupils take the lead in reducing the eco footprint of their school and then team up with designers/creatives in industry to help bring their ideas to life.
My role in all this was to create the five characters with Leap media that would help explain what the project was in it's first instance to teachers and get them onboard, then communicate the project to the pupils, educate them and get them excited about being a part of something that can effect real change.
The five characters are designed to cover all aspects of sustainability and are called Eco, Recycler, Energiser, Aqua and Consumer. 
The launch last week was aimed at the prospective schools in Cornwall, getting them to come to the Bedruthan Steps Hotel for the conference and sign up. Matt Hocking at Leap Media is heading up the Eco design challenge aspect of Dott and managed to pull it all together from scratch in just 3 weeks.
Andrea Siodmok is heading up Dott - Designs of the time and gave a fantastic talk on the project which helped clarify exactly what Dott is together with it's aims and objectives. Will Coleman MC'd the entire day and did a stirling job, and Matt Hocking pulled it all together with some inspirational content that has certainly got the ball rolling and with any luck will see the Dott project go national next year.
For more info on the Eco design challenge, click here.
For more information on Dott - Designs of the time, click here.
To see more of the great work that Leap Media are doing, click here.
Darren Whittington
I'm dreaming of...
The work I've been creating for the M&S in-store Xmas campaign is now live in all their stores across the UK.
I was commissioned by StoryUK to create 3 snowflake illustrations that illustrated the product benefits of the M&S Premium Club card over the Christmas period which would also transcend communication into decoration. They are everywhere!
This particular illustration required a bespoke font creating to make it work in the simplest looking way possible, others in the set include a plane and a bow.
Photo's courtesy of the award winning Art director Sheryl Newsome at StoryUK.
Darren Whittington
Liz Earle Superskin now in John Lewis
I worked with Turner Duckworth a while back to create the illustrations of Rose hips for the Liz Earle Superskin packaging. A fantastic job to work on with one of the most creative design agencies in London.
I'd not seen the final product on the shelves because it was orginally being sold via QVC but now Liz Earle has her own shop in London and the Isle of Wight.
I was running around Milton Keynes at the weekend and found that John Lewis now stocks the Liz Earle range and has quite a large amount of space is dedicated to the Superskin products.
I managed to get these photographs before being hunted down by the extremely polite security guards.
I will return with a decent camera soon and will endeavour to get an action shot of my exit. Darren Whittington
Love/Hate
If advertising needs to stop you, grab your attention and then be all consuming then this is a masterpiece.
Walking down Regent Street on a mission to get to Piccadilly Circus something caught my eye, made me double take a shop window, back up to see if what I saw was for real... a Marmite shop? but more interesting than that the shop had a best before date next to the entrance, ok I'm intrigued now especially when I see a sign saying it's a pop up shop?
At this point my ad head goes "you've been had", but I pop my head through the door and inside it looks relaxed, no sales person about to pounce and too be fair looks pretty cool and thoughtfully put together. A brand really pushing the boundaries of creativity? An ad agency that has a creative team they need to hold on too?
I just had to find out, stepped over the Marmite welcome mat, camera at the ready and wam, sales person, bugger, but no! "Please feel free to browse and take photos", now this ad agency really has got their heads screwed on to the power of social media.
I rummage, take the pics of the branded wallpaper, water flasks?, pop art paintings, you name it they had it, but it was all perfect for Christmas presents, the best bit though was hidden away upstairs, a gallery and a cafe serving Marmite on toast and a cup of tea for a pound!
Now this whole time I've assumed this is the brain child of some large ad agency in London who has the Unilever contract, so I asked the people running the shop what the deal was and guess what I was wrong. This is was created by two extremely creative guys(one x marketing manager of Marmite) who asked Unilever for the rights to use the Marmite image, just creative people with noodles doing it for themselves and certainly not doing the brand any harm either, and I hate Marmite!
These guys have really hit a chord and I wouldn't surprised to see them taking on another brand in a completely new shop in a different location soon.
Designed by Sun House Creative
Concept by Hot Pickle Trading
:) Darren Whittington
The View-Master 'model E' circa '59
When it's 8 knots outside with lightening strikes every two minutes, the power's off, no computer and you're hunting inspiration what do you do? go old school, rummage through the attic and wonderous things will appear!
In this case probably one of the most amazingly colourful pieces of packaging I've ever seen encasing the 'View-Master three dimensional Kodachrome picture viewer'. A thing of beauty with authentic 1955 Winter sports at St.Moritz reel, and mock wood veneer plastic viewer that takes it's styling from a 50's radio.
These illustrations are just so simple but extremely artistic with it's use of shapes, colour and typography, capturing a real cultural hunger of the period when travel holidays were in their infancy, Kodak colour film was getting in full swing and eyes were still being opened.
The photos through the viewer are absolutely stunning and even to this day bring the scenes to life with a real sense of dimension and yet after 74 years of production Kodak have just retired Kodachrome. Maybe when Digital has run it's course we can get these tangible wonders back in demand, in the mean-time I'll just have to suffice with the next reel on the 'Natural Habitats of Africa' 1948. Darren Whittington
Just seen my illustrations on TV!
Wow, there I was just enjoying a cup of tea readying myself for a cooked breakfast and in the corner of my eye this ad was playing on ITV.
I was asked quite some time ago to work with a Director to create some really simple line illustrations that were to be animated within this film for Future Morph helping to promote the DCSF Science and Maths campaign aimed at 11-16 year olds.
The basic idea was to bring the line in their logo to life illustrating the interesting and exciting jobs taking Science and Maths can lead young people to.
Great fun to do and a joy to see on the box at last. There's also a very lovely website that this ad is driving traffic to that is well worth a look to see how engaging you can make Science and Maths to a younger audience. Brilliant.
Just click here to view the site.
Darren Whittington
It's on the shelves! First glimpse...
I've been working with Pentagram on some new Boots vitamin packaging aimed at kids. It's taken a while to see it finally get to the shelves but walking through Truro today there it was, first glimpse of the sparkly packaging.
Those I've found to date include:
Smart Omega 3 chewable capsules, liquid & syrup
Complete A-Z chewable tablets
Multivitamin syrup & Multivitamin gummy bears.
Darren Whittington
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