Vicky Yorke Designs

Following on from their exhibition at the Spring Fair earlier this month, Kitchen Craft took my new ranges international when they exhibited at Messe Frankfurt at the Ambiente 2013 trade show! It's very exciting to think of my designs being shown in another country ready to be exported around the world!!! Images copyright Kitchen Craft 2013.

As we head towards the festive season, thoughts are really beginning to turn towards Christmas parties and New Year, so this is a perfect time for my final post about my party range design for ' Mix It' , which would make a perfect fun alternative to traditional Christmas party products!  One of my favourite things about this range is the packaging, which was put together by the very clever  artworkers at Kitchen Craft. They took my illustrations and surface patterns and all of the playfulness that I tried to create on product and extended this onto boxes, labels and belly bands to really bring the range together! I particularly love how they have subtly brought my cross-hatch surface pattern into the packaging using a spot UV finish, (which is basically a varnish effect on a matt background).  There are lots of cocktail and party products available in the 'Mix It' range. For more details click here. Images copyright Kitchen Craft 2012. 

The second part of the 'Mix It' brief was to design a complimentary surface pattern that would go with the illustrations, but be separate to them. This needed to be unisex to go across a range of textile and paper product, so I decided to keep it quite simple with a hand drawn cross hatch effect created with a dip pen. I used the acidic colours from the illustrations to pull the two contrasting looks together. The cross-hatch design is available on neoprene bottle bags, bottle coolers and napkins. Images copyright Kitchen Craft 2012.

In addition to 'Lock In', I was asked to design a second range for the Bar Craft brand, which is now known as 'Mix It' . The brief for this range was to create a fun and playful design for a cocktail / party range that would appeal to young adults. There were two parts to the brief. The first part was to create illustrations of products / objects associated with cocktail making, which were to be used on packaging and some of the products. I wanted to create a strong, yet playful look, so turned to my trusty dip pen and ink to create a set of fluid drawings. I love 'accidental' mark making, so embraced all the ink splatters and smudging that tend to form with this type of illustration. This can be seen to best effect on the cocktail coasters, which come in a set of four. I really took these as the starting point for the whole range, using my favourite vibrant and acidic colours to set the party tone! Images copyright Kitchen Cra