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Dickens and London campaign
In the bicentenary of Dickens's birth, London is awash with competing imagery. Our job was to create a definitive, stand-out visual that is instantly recognisable whilst conveying the essence the exhibition and, of course, drives ticket sales to an experience-hungry audience.
Dickens and London is Museum of London's big exhibition of 2012. The exhibition examines the influence that this prolific writer has had on the capital, and the influence the city had on his writing.
We chose to do the illustration in-house as that gave us complete control (and allowed us to mess about with inks).
In the final designs, the pen and ink illustration appears to be drawn onto a map of London, with the ink running and trickling through the streets (as Dickens walked the backstreets of the city, late at night). In our illustration, Dickens literally leaves his mark on London’s streets and vice versa.
The first run of posters was on the London underground in the weeks before the opening, on 9th December. Publicity will continue through the exhibition’s run, until 10th June 2012.
Museum of London : Dickens and London - making of slideshow
John BurtonThis was a wonderful opportunity to make some mess. Day one was very controlled sketching but by the end of day two I was covered in splashes of blue ink (and so were the studio's tables).
5 slideshow images (click image to view)
6 slideshow images (click image to view)
Museum of London : Dickens and London - campaign in situ slideshow
The design has been used on countless display, signage and publicity materials, and has even been picked up by the press as a ‘press-shot’ (including the cover of a four-page map supplement in The Times).
