Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year for 2016 from Mike @ Korsenn Design!

Turkey_Christmas Card_2015_F1Bit of a Turkey this one!

At Korsenn Design we look forward to working with you again in 2019, many thanks for your work over the past year/s, across the board! Its always appreciated of course the varied design projects we’ve worked on this year, from tradit print to web stuff and back again.

So for this years Christmas Card and for a bit of festive fun, I decided to go back to my older portfolio archives and re-illustrate digitally this time in Photoshop, a cartoon-card illustrated back in the day in inks and magic markers, (which was Dec 1991)! The original the result after a very late night and several beers no doubt at my then design studio employers The Marketing and Communications Business, in Notting Hill, London.

My original Turkey-Toon Christmas Card illustration,,..rendered in old school Magic Marker Inks, circa 1991. I can still smell those marker inks now, you used to get high as a kite using them!!

MCB were a cool Design Agency as far as I was concerned, being a newbie to all things London circa 1988. Housed on 3 floors within a Victorian gothic and crazily turreted building, set at the junction of Westbourne Grove and Pembridge Road in Notting Hill, London. With Moet & Chandon, Mercier Champagnes, Vrigin Atlantic and even NATO and Nuclear Electric on it’s varied client roster, the agency liked to party! The area was always a vibrant and varied place to work or socialise at anytime, back then with poverty and affluence existing cheek in jowl, typically London. But it was especially evocative at Christmas time, it snowed heavily in December 1991 too, causing havoc and giving it a really Victorian/Dickensian feel to the area with the lack of traffic!

The building had an interesting history, originally a respectable Bank for over 50 years. Prior to WW2 it was the tempoary HQ for George Mallaby’s Fascists Blackshirts (yikes) who assembled outside for rallies and an enivitable punch up! After WW2 and in the austerity of the late 1940’s, early 1950’s, it was also a late night drinking den that George Orwell and drinking pals frequented allegedly, according to local folk lore. In my time in the late 1980’s to early 1990’s, it contained 3 floors of the design agencies ‘creative folks’, including myself. Who’s characters were as diverse as the client workload. Manically working all hours of the day and night. Also handily placed to watch the stunning colourful atmosphere of the Notting Hill Carnival pass by each August Bank Holiday’s and handily located for London’s West End and its culturally diverse life. A building that definitely had an atmosphere. Its now in part a modern art gallery and open to all, so good to see its gone full circle.

So hopefully it will make you smile and enjoy that Turkey if your having any of course!?
Best wishes

Mike Reed, Graphic Designer and Illustrator, Korsenn Design – December 2016.

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