Over a period of 18 months my colleagues and I at D8.Studio worked with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to create a series of animated stories titled ‘Behind Every Name’.

Each video tells a story based on authentic letters and diaries that document firsthand accounts of the Holocaust. An athlete's defiance in the face of Nazi oppression. A soldier's courage through captivity. A friendship across continents. The rescue of 50 children. A professor's plea for help.

We developed each story from script to finished animation. I illustrated all scenes with the finished animations brought to life by David Beattie, with some rotoscoping assistance by Danny McCormick.

Created at D8.studio
Read more about these incredible stories here.

Illustrations and cover design for the brand new podcast ‘Legacy’ from Wondery and Goalhanger Podcasts. Presented by Afua Hirsch and Peter Frankopan, ‘Legacy’ takes iconic figures from history and re-examines their legacy from a contemporary perspective. The illustrations shine new light on each figure by turning the Greek Column into a flashlight. Meanwhile, the “statues” appear to shrug as though they are puzzled at being re-appraised. This in itself is something of a visual joke in an age where people take hard positions in defence or criticism of who and what can and can‘t be re-examined.

Created at D8.studio

Tectonics is a Festival of new and experimental music which takes place each Spring in Glasgow. The festival’s art direction for 2022 was inspired by the work of electronic music pioneer Janet Beat. I illustrated this 3D version of the Tectonics ‘T’ logo comprised of multiple synthesizer modules and components which was used as a key visual across promotional materials.

Art direction by Stephen Cappello. Animation by Danny McCormick. Created at D8.studio.

I was involved in illustrating D8’s first work for the Nederlandse Publieke Omroep. We created a promotional animation for the NPO Luister Podcast Pitch, an initiative where anyone with an idea for a podcast can apply, get coached by professionals and have their podcast launched on the NPO Luister app.

The look of the promotional animation was inspired by the one thing that podcasts have in common (for the time being, at least) – the human voice.

Created at D8.Studio

We worked with Spanish Hands to create static and motion promo graphics for Nike Golf’s NG range, coinciding with The Open Championship at Royal Liverpool in 2023. The shoes are inspired by a Summer of Love-style psychedelia, so we illustrated and animated these visuals to capture the spirit of a 1967 Liverpool in all its technicolor weirdness.

Created at D8.studio.

As part of D8.studio’s rebrand of Scottish icon Walker’s Shortbread, I developed a new illustrative approach for the brand. This simple, hand-drawn style wraps around the product itself, creating a platform to tell stories with warmth and humour.

In the illustrations everyday scenes are captured with an all-butter twist, whilst seasonal scenarios capture the magic of a moments that are best shared, and towering shortbread landmarks tell tales of how Joseph Walker brought shortbread to the world.

Lifestyle photography by Jacqui Walker. Created at D8.studio

This series of illustrations were developed for a client, exploring the perceptual phenomenon of synaesthesia in orchestral music. Trails of colour trace the gesture of the musicians whilst colliding with, and inverting the simplified palette used to render their figures.

Created at D8.studio

I recently created an illustration to promote a dance school’s end of year show. Around the theme of ‘Wonderland’, the show takes the audience “down the rabbit hole and beyond” to celebrate the wonders of our own precious and vulnerable planet.

Type design and single artwork for spiritual jazz band Mama Terra.

I took part in 2023’s 36 Days of Type. I took a first-come-first-served approach to the concepts which was refreshing and a satisfying departure from the deeper dives we often take with design projects. Here’s a handful of favourites. See the full set over on Instagram.

Personal work.

I worked on a suite of illustrations for Voigt Travel’s Winter holiday campaign promoting travel to the North of Iceland. Tailored to Voigt Travel’s Dutch audience, the campaign headline “Noord-IJsland: Buitenaards mooi” translates to “North Iceland: Out of this world beautiful”.

The illustrations were created to capture the otherworldliness of the landscape whilst also giving Voigt Travel a unique set of assets to use in addition to campaign photography.

Purposely we don’t see the faces of the characters in each, allowing viewers to project themselves into these magical landscapes.

Created at D8.studio.

Cafolla’s lockdown-penned album ‘The March Onto Forever’ has been described as an “atmospheric wonderland of synthesizers” (wewriteaboutmusic.com). The sonic influences of the record are worn unashamedly on its sleeve. Whilst I adopted a similarly retro-futuristic visual aesthetic to approach the cover art, the elements of change, uncertainty, and a world on the brink of apocalypse came straight from Cafolla’s lyrics.

We worked on digital artwork for two singles, ‘The Running Man’ and the title track ‘The March Onto Forever’ which preceded the release of the album.

Listen to ‘The March Onto Forever’ on Spotify, or wherever else you get your music.

This was a personal piece that I drew immediately after discovering the brass sculpture ‘Eastre: Hymn to the Sun’ (c.1924) by the Scottish artist JD Fergusson. The model for the piece was Fergusson’s wife, however the inspiration for the sculpture was an obscure Germanic and Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring and dawn, thought to be the namesake of the Christian holiday Easter.

I discovered the piece online during the Covid pandemic, and it immediately resonated with my own illustrative approach. Also, I’m a sucker for Fritz Lang’s ‘Maschinenmensch’ (and, of course, C3PO). Once we were allowed back out again I was delighted to hear that Fergusson’s sculpture was on display at Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Art Gallery.

Personal work.

Authors, painters, composers and artists of every kind have drawn inspiration from forests over the ages. BBC Radio 3’s Forest Season focused on forests as inspiration for art and culture. Forests are places to escape and wonder. They have transformative properties and a certain magical quality, eloquently captured through music, poetry and art.

The season featured five forests throughout the UK – Glen Affric, New Forest, Sherwood Forest, Tollymore and Gwydyr. The illustrations aimed to draw a connection between each landscape and the art they inspire.

Created at D8.studio

I created this illustration of Prince for an event in celebration of his life and music in The Arches, Glasgow.

I developed a set of powerful campaign illustrations for Greenpeace as part of a campaign to stop the destruction of the tropical rainforests and peatlands by the global palm oil industry in South East Asia.

Many household brands still buy palm oil from the world’s biggest dirty palm oil traders. The palm oil industry threatens to devastate the complex ecosystem of unique species which inhabit the endangered species and tribes that inhabit the forests of Papua, Indonesia’s easternmost province.

I initially developed two proposals, each with distinctive visual approaches.

Created at D8.studio.

The Quatrefoil Collection was a limited edition release of four bottles from The Lakes Distillery. Each bottle highlights the individual flavours, which, when blended together reflects the house style of The Lakes Single Malt.

I worked on the illustrations for each of the bottles – named FAITH, HOPE, LUCK and LOVE. The illustrative style was derived from the overlapping arcs of the Quatrefoil symbol itself. Each of the abstract illustrations reference a different landscapes from around the Lake District – Helvellyn, Scafell Pike, River Derwent and Skiddaw.

The line illustrations were also used on the wooden presentation case which came with each release.

Created at D8.studio.

I have create numerous promotional illustrations for Massaoke. Their mass-karaoke events are usually based around mash-up themes from the history of film, music and pop culture.

I designed and art directed the 8th edition of D8’s magazine. Exclusively produced for prospective clients, the magazine features a series of articles and curated case studies to showcase the agency’s recent work, paired with the print spec of a high-end publication.

This edition co-incided with D8’s 20th anniversary, which I acknowledged with a custom number ‘8’ comprised of 20 lines screen-printed onto luscious sumptuous Sirio Ultra Black cover stock. The magazine also features a recurring fluorescent yellow, which has always been the agency’s unofficial second colour.

Created at D8.studio

‘PUSH: IT WILL COME LATER’ by International Contemporary Dance Collective (iCoDaCo) reflects on the challenges of collaboration and on the conditions for a practice of working with others within the international landscape of contemporary dance.

I designed and illustrated the book in collaboration with editor Diego Agulló of Circadian (a non-profit publishing house) and Israel Aloni of iCoDaCo.

Published by www.circadian.co

I created the visual identity for the Made in Scotland Festival, which took place in Brussels in 2019. A dynamic identity, inspired by the idea of Scotland sending a vitally-timed artistic transmission to Europe, was carried across various print and digital applications.

Cafolla’s track ‘Everyday Superman’ reflects on growing up in 1980s Milton. The song gets pretty technicolour from the perspective of the child’s imagination, so that was the jump-off point for my artwork for the single.

Funk band Federation of the Disco Pimp’s second album was rooted in, and inspired by a transient period for their home country. Conceived in Glasgow and recorded in Brooklyn, the overarching theme of forbidden love (romantically, spiritually and politically) was darker than subject matter explored on previous releases, whilst the music had broadened into something simultaneously barbarous yet beautiful.

Discussions with bandleader Marco Cafolla inspired the kaleidoscopic illustration of two lovers entwined and repeated to form a rose-like pattern. The notion of a country turned upside down was referenced further with the Rorschach-esque reverse of the vinyl sleeve. The stippled, grainy finish of the image and the typography aimed to capture the dusty analogue production of the record.

‘Là Inbhir Lochaidh’ by Scottish band Mànran was released to coincide with the anniversary of the Battle of Inverlochy in 1645. The song is based on a poem, written by Iain Lom MacDonald, who climbed a tree to watch the battle. I tried to capture the scene from his perspective, after earlier sketches based on some of the more grisly details of the battle were thought to be a little too much by the band.