We are delighted to share a sneak preview of our exciting new collection launch on June 9th: Love, Hope & Freedom. As a company, we’re incredibly passionate about supporting our community and giving creative talent a chance to thrive, and so for this new collection, raising money for a charity close to our hearts, we set the third-year BA (Hons) Illustration students at Falmouth University a challenge: to design and present illustrated labels to be used in the collection.

We were left in awe of the thoughtful and beautiful entries, with each and every student who entered providing work of an exceptional calibre we could not have been more impressed by their talent, hard work and attention to detail.

While each set of designs was stunning, one entrant in particular caught our eye and we felt it was the perfect fit for this special collection with such an important message.

In anticipation of their release in two weeks, we spoke with the winner, Francesca, and runner up, Alicia, to learn a little bit more about the meanings behind their designs.

Francesca 

Francesca’s beautiful illustrations were the chosen design. We instantly fell in love with the minimal and elegant illustrations which perfectly encapsulated the theme and charity connection in such a fun and vibrant way.

Alicia

We shortlisted Alicia’s incredible illustrations because we loved her interpretation of the brief and how she conveyed the messages and charity connection with these evocative watercolour designs.

Can you please tell us a bit about yourself and your background in illustration?

Francesca: "I'm Francesca, I am 22 years old and I am from Bergamo, a city located in the North of Italy near Milan. I have been fascinated about drawing and art from a very young age, but I have been developing this interest in my free time until I was 17, when I moved to the UK to study Illustration. Now I am working at turning my creative practice into a profession."

Alicia: "I'm Alicia Perkins, I recently graduated from Falmouth University and I enjoy all areas of illustration this was my first time applying my skills to package design which was a lot of fun. A sense of atmosphere is always so important to my work along with use of colour to bring my concepts to life."

We’d love to know more about how your designs for Love, Hope and Freedom came to fruition, can you talk to us about your creative process?

Francesca: "Using the words Love, Hope and Freedom as triggers for idea generation, I started by drawing small doodles and symbols in my sketchbook. I call it visual brainstorming. To me, It is much more effective than writing words because it helps me come up with visual elements that I start to combine and arrange into a composition. In terms of media, the illustrations are painted entirely using gouache, treating the paint a bit like watercolour, adding a lot of water and little pigment to create very delicate layers of colour."

Alicia: "For the theme of love, hope and freedom I wanted the illustrations to be vague but narrative. I wanted to represent the people that go through the charity and the journeys they go on to find freedom, hope and love. I also wanted to connect the designs back to nature to represent the St Eval brand and their roots. For all three I wanted the colour palettes to be cohesive so they seem like a collection to do this they use all the same colours. They contrast from each other by being set at different times of the day making each other easy to identify on their own as well. They also have a moon or sun all in the same place to reaffirm the connection through all three."

We’d like to say a huge thank you to the University of Falmouth and to every student who entered for approaching this competition with a level of dedication and care that blew us away, and an especially big thank you to Francesca, whose designs have perfectly captured the message of this collection.

The winning designs will be unveiled in full when this exciting collection launches on June 9th. Sign up to our newsletter to be the first to learn when we go live here. 

#LoveHope&Freedom #ShiningALight