naomi-wilkinson-illustration-pollen-place-07

A Picture Tells A Thousand Words

Posted by Cat How, December 12, 2017

Before setting up Pollen Place, our previous business was an e-commerce design shop called Howkapow. We sold colourful products and prints from emerging designers and illustrators. As we are based in Bristol, it wasn’t long before we got local artist and lovely lady Naomi Wilkinson onto the books – and started selling her work.

Naomi’s work is strong, colourful, graphic and of deceptive simplicity. She has designed beautiful illustrations for Facebook, Airbnb, Zalando, Nest, Etsy, The Daily Telegraph, Wide Eyed Editions, Sheffield University, Lagom Design and Random House to name but a few.

During the design of the Pollen Place website, we came across the need for some more playful imagery – illustration that helped convey the feel and vibe we wanted for the coworking studios and event space. Something that spoke to the many designers and creatives we had working in the spaces, who also might want to come and work with us.

Naomi was an obvious first choice – her style was just what we wanted. We commissioned her to do a modular illustration, where we could syphon off accent elements (like a laptop, cup of coffee, or plant) to use in image boxes across the site. We felt they would add flavour across the website, and make it less serious.

Her ‘meditating lady’ sat next to a slick white laptop, alongside a steaming cup of coffee (taken from the Jansen+Co crockery we have in the coworking spaces. We used to sell these on Howkapow and Naomi was a great fan of them!). Two other figures, chatting and leaning against the storage rack, were also drawn up. We had a medley of rubber plants, cacti and stacked books and the overall feel we wanted to convey was of a friendly, chilled vibe.

Knowing Naomi personally already helped – there were little touches she was able to include in the design which resonated with us, and helped us to achieve the mood we wanted.