Illustrating a book with a strong cultural presence is a challenge for any artist. The work must walk a fine line between being original, but also recognisable. English illustrator Steve Simpson is known for his hand-lettered designs and whimsical characters, which he put to good use in creating his own unique take on Lewis Carroll’s 1865 novel Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland.
“I’m a huge fan of the book,” says Steve. “I was introduced to Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland at an early age, growing up just a few miles down the road from Lewis Carroll’s birthplace, and over the years I’ve collected several vintage illustrated copies.”
Sir John Tenniel’s work in the original book broke new ground by integrating text and illustration, so it’s perhaps fitting that Steve has built on this by combining his illustrations with hand lettering.
This special edition of Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland was produced by Serif to showcase the capabilities of our Affinity apps. The book itself was put together with Affinity Publisher and Steve used Affinity Designer for his illustrations.
The process of creating the book is one of the projects detailed in the Affinity Publisher Workbook, which contains advice and tutorials from leading designers, publishers and other creatives that will teach you everything you need to build your own magazines, brochures and books.
We approached Steve a few years ago to enlist his help with beta testing the iPad version of Designer and at this point he didn’t have a tablet, so trying out this app was his first experience of using an Apple Pencil. He had been using a mouse for 25 years up until this point.
“Being able to switch between vectors and pixels and back again was a real eye opener.”
“The first thing that really struck me was how I could work in both vectors and pixels. My style is very graphic in its design but painterly in its rendering, so being able to switch between vectors and pixels and back again was a real eye opener,” says Steve. For his work on this project, he found that the ability to move vectors around and then paint within masked shapes sped up his process considerably.
“Affinity Designer allowed me to develop my style when I thought I’d hit a plateau on the app I was using.”
Despite having over 30 years of experience as a professional illustrator and 50 awards under his belt, Steve is always looking to push boundaries with his aesthetic. “I’ve really enjoyed working with Affinity Designer on the iPad,” he says. “It has a lot of great features and effects that allow illustrators to work in many different styles.”
Steve sees this aspect as being one of the greatest benefits that Affinity Designer offers to illustrators. “It’s an app that allows illustrators to create work that when you look at it, it’s not obvious which app it’s been done in – which is important when developing a unique style.”
Click here to see Steve’s full project on Behance.