Illustrator Joe Wilson explains how he produced a stunning pop-up menu for The Savoy Hotel.
04. Get client approval
I would do a detailed pencil rough after we had approval from The Savoy
There was a lot of back and forth between the two of us. Throughout the process, we sent the drawings and mock-up pictures to The Savoy to get approval. It pretty much worked in a similar way to my normal process, with me doing a detailed pencil rough after we had approval on a very early rough.
05. Work within a die-line
Helen designed the guidelines around my drawings
The design then went back to Helen, who would create a die-line I could work within. From my rough drawings she created a soft edge – she could only cut so much detail, as the final book had to be sturdy. My drawings would sit inside those edges, and I'd carry on in ink and colour as normal. Then it would all go back to Helen.
06. Make modifications
We modified the designs as we went
Sometimes I had to modify illustrations, making shapes a little simpler, to make it more robust. It's flat-printed, so the detail was never a problem, but shapes could be an issue. For instance the stems of champagne flutes had to be as thick as possible – if they got too thin they would collapse after a few uses.
07. Determine glue points
We spent a year doing the whole project, it was a long journey; the menus are lovely things
Finally, Helen made a white mock-up, so that the printers could determine how many glue points there were. With pop-ups it's all about glue points – the more you have the more complicated it is. They printed 1,000 copies. They're lovely things, and it's nice to see my work doing something that I've never seen it do before.
UK-based Joe Wilson is an illustrator specialising in highly detailed, hand-drawn illustrations and print. Working with a combination of pencil, ink and digital colour, his work focuses on detail and strong drawing, merging the traditional and contemporary.
