Client
Historic Scotland

My role
Branding, Typography design, Illustration

Agency
Stand

The context

Historic Environment Scotland is the lead public body established to investigate, care for and promote Scotland’s historic environment; they’re responsible for more than 300 properties of national importance. Buildings and monuments in their care include Edinburgh Castle, Skara Brae, Fort George and numerous smaller sites, which together draw more than 3 million visitors per year.

We were asked to design artwork for a modern range of souvenirs that could be sold at the castle gift shops. The range was to appeal to everyone from the UK and overseas, with no age limit.

The approach

I began a series of preliminary sketches based on capturing the Edinburgh landmarks in a contemporary illustration style. Because of the variety of the applications, the design had to be constructed in a modular fashion so that we could later deconstruct and pull elements out in order to use them on smaller pieces in the collection – this was the main requirement.

Off the back of that, I wanted to add an element of exclusivity to the project, therefore I designed some custom type for the Edinburgh logotype of the range, featuring the iconic battlements of the Edinburgh Castle.