A lovely commission from the National Trust for their property in Anglesey, North Wales.

Plas Newydd is a huge house housing a collection of paintings and the gorgeous 47 foot ‘Claudian Fantasy’ mural by Rex Whistler who stayed with the family there for a number of years during the 1930s.

After initial discussions about a family-friendly vector-style map and a tour of the house, we decided it would actually be great to use Whistler’s distinctive romantic watercolour style for the inspiration.

Whistler also had an unusual handwriting style that he used on some home-made Ludo boards (on display). So, as well as his standard, and more legible, copperplate for the title and larger labels, I used his ‘gameboard script’ for the smaller labels.

This involved recreating the letters I could find of his and turning them into a font that I could cut and paste into the Photoshop file:

I also got the chance to have a go at a watercolour framed vignette in similar style to Whistler’s, showing the view across the Menai Straits.

The result is one that I’m really pleased with. I think it balances clarity with a distinctive and fitting style and I’m very glad the client went the extra mile with this.

Final usage on printed map with overlaid key and routes using National Trust’s branding guidelines:

The project underwent a few hand-drawn sketch iterations to find the right level of detail and building sizes. It was created in Photoshop as a layered file, with the printed map layout in Illustrator.

20 second video showing the process from sketches to completed version: