Yesterday Jack & I travelled to London to visit Pick Me Up, the graphic arts festival at Somerset House. Last year Jack went with his sister Emma and her boyfriend Alex, and we met up with them to see what was on show this year. En route to catch the train I realised I hadn’t brought my camera with me – I was so annoyed with myself! Knight to the rescue – Jack let me borrow his iPhone but I hadn’t ever used one before so they’re not the best photos ever, sorry.
We hadn’t booked tickets online as we wasn’t sure what time we would be going so had to wait in the queue for a bit but it was a gorgeous sunny day so it wasn’t so bad!
When we finally made it inside, the first thing I saw was Maricor Maricar‘s beautiful stitched typography which I’d seen on Behance. (This happened with a lot of the work – great to recognise something you’ve seen online but actually see it in the flesh!)
Around the corner was some great work by Hattie Stewart:
A set of magazine spreads overlaid with patterns and doodles – so much detail!
The room was full of people admiring the work and Daniel Frost’s people caught my eye as well as that of a little girl on a scooter…
Anna Lomax’s work caught my eye for a different reason:
A neon fry up and some fluorescent price tags – very British!
Fluoro was quite popular, also featuring in the striking risograph prints by Rob Flowers:
Striking for other reasons…
Malika Favre’s Kama Sutra alphabet for the Penguin Classics book. Some were a bit naughty but they’re simple, striking and brilliant!
We then went upstairs and the first thing I was was this lovely print by Dayjob – it was obviously the tri-dar in me:
A nice little range of prints.
Brothers of the stripe were showcasing some great prints…
… as well as a lovely eclectic alphabet.
Fatherless print posse were screen printing through out the day:
Awesome and colourful prints – I liked the overlaying.
Facestamp by Human after all provided an opportunity for you to do some printing yourself…
A variety of facial feature stamps with different styles by several illustrators – good fun.
Fun was a general theme throughout the room with portrait booths, fayre games including hoop-la and an ideas machine:
Then we ventured into the collaboratives and gallery side rooms off the main area…
…Puckleduster had set up a mini tattoo parlour offering temporary tattoos whilst Nelly Duff had an eccentric gallery with quirky frames and Anthony Burrill prints:
SOMA had some cool parcel tape:
and I loved Hazel Nicholls’ Nice biscuit design – ‘It’s nice to be nice’. I also loved Untitled’s alphabet candles…
…whilst Jack & Alex admired their prints – one of which was on printed onto leather.
In Handsome Frank’s room I found a lonely fluoro poster shouting FREE at me, so of course I picked it up (pick me up pun haha):
But it wasn’t the same story in the shop – I resisted buying any of these tubes filled with lovely prints:
I was well behaved, only picking up a few freebie leaflets and business cards and I signed up to a couple of mailing lists too:
As I’m sure you can tell, I had a great time! Saw so much, loved so much and even persuaded Jack to take my photo next to the giant Pick Me Up pencil (which I am amazingly colour co-ordinated with)!
Pick Me Up is open until 28th April and I recommend going if you’re around London. I’ll definitely be going again next year.
I’ve not got anything to hang just yet as the plotter broke this afternoon (typical!) so I’m just using odd ends of paper at the moment:
