by Geo Parkin
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, boys, Buildings, Café, Cartoon, Character design, Cooking, Crowd, Family, Food, Games, girls, Holidays, Home, Hotel, Humour, Illustration, Interiors, Landscape, Lifestyle, Men, music, musical instruments, Party, People, Transport, Travel, Uniform, Vector artwork, Women
by Geo Parkin
Earlier this year, in preparation for the opening of their second restaurant in Guildford, the Chilli Pickle had a branding makeover, overseen by Design LSM. The idea was to formalise the visual and environmental elements of the restaurant to enable brand consistency to be maintained across multiple locations. Up until this point, their visual identity had evolved in a piecemeal, organic manner, but had nevertheless proved very successful, so an important consideration during the project was not to lose sight […]
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Animals, branding, Brighton, Cartoon, Character design, Chilli Pickle, Chilli Pickle Canteen, Cooking, Curry, Food, Guildford, halftone, Illustration, India, Men, monkey, musical instruments, Poster, Restaurant, sitar, snake, tiger, Vector artwork, Women
by Geo Parkin
Here’s another selection of recent publishing illustrations in a similar vein to those in the last post. People, locations, and situations pretty much sums it up. Click on any of the images to enlarge.
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, autodesk sketchbook, bicycle, books, boys, Buildings, business, Café, Cartoon, Character design, Children, Cooking, cycling, domestic scenes, Drinks, fire, fire engine, Food, girls, Humour, Illustration, Interiors, library, Lifestyle, Men, Party, Restaurant, sci-fi, traffic, Transport, Travel, urban scene, Vector artwork, video game, Women, workplace
by Geo Parkin
The following is a selection of recent vector-style book illustrations, created for a series of educational publishing titles. The images I’m commissioned to produce usually involve figures in specific settings or situations. The subject matter can be pretty prosaic, but I managed to keep this project engaging from my own point of view by trying out a slightly different technical and stylistic approach to the final artwork. Experimental, but not radically so. It was also very well received by the […]
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Animals, boys, Buildings, Café, cars, Character design, Children, Cooking, Costume, Drinks, education, Food, girls, Humour, illness, Illustration, Interiors, Lifestyle, Men, music, Packaging, Publishing, Restaurant, Shopping, sport, Transport, Travel, Vector artwork, vector illustration, weather, Women
by Geo Parkin
If you were watching The Best of British Takeaways on BBC2 earlier this week, you will have seen Brighton’s very own Alun Sperring of The Chilli Pickle emerge triumphant in the Indian Takeaway contest. What you probably missed however, as it only appeared on screen for a split-second, was the one-off box design that I produced for packaging Alun’s amazing culinary creations. The focus was quite rightly on the food being prepared by the competitors, but in case you’re interested, this […]
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, BBC2, Best of British Takeaways, Chilli Pickle, Curry, Design, Food, Illustration, India, Lettering, map, Packaging, Pattern, rangoli, Restaurant, takeaways, Travel, TV, Vector artwork
by Geo Parkin
There are some jobs you simply have to do. I was contacted recently by Mark Carew, the perma-grinning slap-bass player from local rockabilly legends, The Long Tall Texans, about creating a cover for their forthcoming 10″ vinyl release, ‘Headless’. It was great to learn that they’re still going strong, and I was more than happy to get involved. I did a number of record covers and t-shirt designs for the band back in the early-90s, so it was great to […]
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Brighton, Cartoon, girls, Humour, Illustration, Interiors, Long Tall Texans, Men, music, Packaging, psychobilly, record cover, Rockabilly, sci-fi, Science-fiction, scientist, Vector artwork, Women
by Geo Parkin
My label design for a recently-launched new product now available from the Chilli Pickle restaurant.
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Animals, bees, Character design, Chilli Pickle, Cooking, Costume, Food, honey, Illustration, India, label design, Lettering, Packaging, Restaurant, Vector artwork, Women
by Geo Parkin
Illustration to accompany an item on restaurants and cafés as an instrument of gentrification, for Square Meal magazine. The image is inspired by the recent, high-profile case of Shoreditch breakfast joint Cereal Killer being targeted by Class War demonstrators, which is referred to in the article. Great fun doing this one, and creating alternative versions of Snap, Crackle and Pop. It occupies a full page of the magazine and, at first glance, could easily be mistaken for an ad. Although emphatically NOT […]
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, breakfast, Café, Cartoon, Cereal, Character design, Cooking, Food, Humour, Illustration, Lettering, Lifestyle, London, Packaging, Restaurant, Vector artwork
by Geo Parkin
Red Chilli Sauce and Mango Chutney – now on the shelves at the Chilli Pickle restaurant. And now that we’ve got bonfire night out of the way, I believe it’s obligatory to start using the C-word, so here goes – the perfect Christmas stocking-fillers!
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Animals, Chilli Pickle, Chilli Pickle Canteen, Cooking, Food, girls, Illustration, India, Lettering, Mango Chutney, Packaging, Red Chilli Sauce, Restaurant, Travel, Vector artwork, Women
by Geo Parkin
A shameless mash-up of Indian and Mod iconography – Quadrophenia as re-imagined by Bollywood. Poster for Chilli Pickle restaurant’s summer 2015 collaboration with Brighton’s Big Screen event. We later adapted the main character from this poster, who we felt should have a longevity greater than the 2015 Big Screen event, and gave him a starring role on a poster advertising the restaurant’s amazing takeaway service:
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: advertising, Bollywood, Brighton, Chilli Pickle, Chilli Pickle Canteen, Cinema, Curry, Fashion, Film, India, Indian, Lifestyle, Mods, music, Poster, Restaurant, Transport, Vector artwork
by Geo Parkin
Educational publishing, in particular English language books for the overseas market, has been a constant source of work from the very start of my career in illustration. It’s an arena that has perhaps unfairly gained a reputation among illustrators for being slightly uninspiring and workaday. While it’s true that these commissions tend to arrive with quite prescriptive and detailed briefs (the images usually have very specific roles to play in support of related text and audio content), and do not provide the ideal platform […]
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Beach, boys, Buildings, Café, China, Cooking, Family, Fashion, Food, girls, Holidays, Home, Humour, Interiors, Japan, Lifestyle, Locations, Market, Men, Narrative illustration, People, Shopping, Situations, sport, Students, Technology, Transport, Travel, Vector artwork, Women
by Geo Parkin
A selection of animal images created for various clients and mostly aimed at a younger audience. Wrap-around label design for a hanging bird-feeder:
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Animals, Birds, boys, Cartoon, Dinosaur, Farm, Fish, girls, Humour, Insects, Jungle, Vector artwork
by Geo Parkin
Selected images from Farm-themed large wall-sticker pack aimed at young children, commissioned by FunToSee
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Animals, Birds, Children, Farm, Humour, Nature, Vector artwork, Wall stickers
by Geo Parkin
There is, of course, some element of character design involved in any figurative illustration. For characters that will be used multiple times, from different angles and in different situations however, special attention needs to be paid to aspects such as recognisability, consistency, distinctness, etc. I’ve had lots of experience of this sort of thing. Sample vector-style character designs for ELT educational title. My line-drawing & colour style was eventually chosen for this project as these samples were considered too different […]
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Animals, Birds, boys, Brighton, Buildings, Cartoon, Character design, Drinks, Fashion, Food, Games, girls, Holidays, Humour, Men, music, musical instruments, Poster, Students, Transport, Travel, Vector artwork, Women
by Geo Parkin
These three maps, created for the US store Party City, were used on their website in 2009 as interactive guides to their themed products in the run up to Halloween. Party City is a big store and Halloween is one of the key dates on their calendar, so there was a lot to squeeze into these images while still leaving enough breathing space between the ‘locations’ to enable on-screen navigation. Click on them to expand and have a closer look at the detail.
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Animals, Buildings, Cartoon, Fantasy, Halloween, Horror, Landscape, Lifestyle, Maps, Party City, Science-fiction, Transport, Vector artwork
by Geo Parkin
Poster design for the Chilli Pickle restaurant highlighting the take-away service plus latest of many awards. And taking huge liberties with the Hindu God Lakshmi.
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Animals, Cartoon, Character design, Chilli Pickle, Chilli Pickle Canteen, Costume, Curry, Food, India, Lakshmi, Pattern, Poster, Transport, Travel, Vector artwork
by Geo Parkin
A packaging design job for the small London-based games company Go For It Games. The brief was to produce twenty-four unique but visually unified pack designs for a name-specific card game, Games With Names. I created a basic template common to every design, then six separate character-led layouts, each in four different colour-schemes, providing an individual pack design for each of the twenty-four names. Here are some of the card characters that were grouped together for the final layouts, plus an example of the […]
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Cartoon, Character design, Games, Humour, Packaging, Playing cards, Vector artwork
by Geo Parkin
The following is a selection of Christmas card designs I’ve produced over recent years to send to friends and family in both print and electronic form. I could do the same for you. This one actually worked for anyone with the time and patience (and curious lack of anything better to do) to cut it out: The cut-out Santa and Fairy designs below were intended to be made into tree decorations; if you would like free, print-ready pdf copies to […]
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Animals, animated gif, Buildings, can-can, Cartoon, Christmas, Christmas cards, Comic strip, devils on horseback, Drinks, gif, grim reaper, Holidays, Home, Humour, Men, pantomime horse, Party, Santa, sketchbook, Surreal, tree decorations, Vector artwork, Wacom Cintiq, Women
by Geo Parkin
A slightly nebulous category, I admit. Food and drink, eating, restaurants and cafés all frequently play a peripheral part in my illustrations, but here I’ve selected a few in which comestibles, beverages and eateries have a more central role. A wider selection of my Chilli Pickle restaurant images can be found in their own section. Following two images produced for Square Meal magazine.
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Animals, boys, Café, Cooking, Curry, Deli, Drinks, Ethnic, Fast food, Food, Fruit, girls, India, Italian food, Japan, Japanese food, Kitchen, Market, Meals, Men, Party, Restaurant, Shopping, Sushi, Transport, Travel, Vector artwork, Vegetable, Women, Youth
by Geo Parkin
That is, anyone from teenagers down to youngsters. A large proportion of my output has been for this age range, so you will find several other relevant samples elsewhere on this site. The following images are from publishing jobs (educational and fiction), CD covers, wall-stickers, website content, magazines and personal work:
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, boys, Buildings, Café, Children, Fantasy, Food, football, girls, Home, Interiors, kids, Lettering, Lifestyle, music, musical instruments, playground, Restaurant, Shopping, Situations, sport, Surfing, teenagers, Television, Transport, Vector artwork
by Geo Parkin
These art gallery icons acted as digital portals to three separate image collections on my previous website. Great fun, inventing imaginary buildings.
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: architecture, Buildings, Cartoon, Stylised, Vector artwork
by Geo Parkin
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Black & White artwork, boys, girls, Guitar, Humour, Jazz, Men, music, Musician, Rock music, Rockabilly, Science-fiction, Singer, Vector artwork, Women
by Geo Parkin
Full-page illustrations for editorial / opinion pieces in Square Meal magazine. This Dick-Whittington-inspired image accompanied an item on the rise of high-end restaurant chains in West London to the detriment of smaller, independent operators: Image to sit alongside outraged opinion piece on Government proposals to include calorie-counts on restaurant dessert menus: Formal vs informal service in restaurants; the evolution of ‘fine dining’: Not all about the food; restaurants with a welcoming ambience: Illustration to accompany an item on restaurants and cafés […]
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, boys, Cartoon, Cat, Character design, Dick Whittington, Drinks, Families, Food, girls, Humour, Interiors, Lifestyle, Line drawing, London, Men, Neon signs, Restaurant, Surreal, Vector artwork, Women
by Geo Parkin
Website comic-strip for the Chilli Pickle restaurant. Armed with just a few scribbled notes made during my meeting with the owners Alun and Dawn, I was tasked with creating a comic-strip account of the long-debated decision to add a takeaway service to their successful restaurant business. It ended up running to nine quite busy horizontal panels and can still be found on their ‘Canteen’ website. The first commission of what has gone on to become a most enjoyable and creatively fruitful […]
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Buildings, Car, Cartoon, Character design, Chilli Pickle, Comic strip, Cooking, Drinks, Food, Humour, Illustration, Interiors, Lifestyle, Railway, Restaurant, Transport, Vector artwork
by Geo Parkin
A selection of labels designed and illustrated for the Chilli Pickle Restaurant’s range of Chutneys, Pickles and condiments. More are in the pipeline. If you’re ever in the vicinity, treat yourself to a jar of the Garlic Pickle. You won’t be sorry.
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Animals, Buildings, Cartoon, Character design, Chilli Pickle, Chilli Pickle Canteen, Cooking, Curry, Food, Fruit, Illustration, India, Kitchen, Lettering, Packaging, Restaurant, Travel, Vector artwork, Vegetables
