Headed up by ex-hospitality industry workhorse Marky Souter, The Porky Punk is an online community devoted to sharing treasured family recipes, food-based inspiration and musical playlists. Its 4,000+ members are welcoming, encouraging, and endlessly generous with food, music and drink-related knowledge.
When Marky approached me to help him produce the very first Porky Punk Annual Manual, I wasted no time bringing onboard Intercity Studio to work on art direction and design. The resulting, 222-page cookbook has a suitably punk aesthetic and features over 80 delicious recipes from professional chefs and amateurs alike from the Porky Punk’s global community.
Beyond the recipes included, the stories shared celebrate meat, fish, vegetarian and vegan, pickling, fermenting and preserving, the joys of growing your own veg, not to mention the healing properties of marijuana and magic mushrooms.
With a foreword by award-winning TV chef and broadcaster Andi Oliver (herself an avid Porky Punker), the Annual Manual is a guide to healthy, connected and caring living – it even provides its own soundtrack of musical selections from various Porky Punk members (some of them superstar DJs and producers in their own right) in the form of Spotify playlists and original DJ mixes.
The book was published in November 2023 and is available to buy direct from theporkypunk.com.
Publisher: The Porky Punk
Editor: Gavin Lucas
Art direction / Design: Intercity
Number of pages: 222
Dimensions: 297 x 210 x 18mm
I’ve collaborated with design studio Intercity many times – so before sending this print project for Lucozade to the printers, they asked if I could proofread it and ensure the tone of voice was consistent throughout.
The Movers List celebrates the people who get other people moving. It recognises 50 individuals whose volunteering, charity work or dedication to sport and exercise inspires local communities to move more. Judged by sports experts and stars including heavyweight boxer Anthony Joshua and England Lioness footballer Nikita Parris, the book profiles and celebrates unsung community heroes and heroines - from an instructor who combines yoga with paddleboarding, to a reformed gang member who organises community BMX rides.
Design: Intercity
Portrait photography: Andy Hooper
My book, The Story of Emoji (published by Prestel, 2016) traces emoji from their origin as a kind of symbol typeface created specifically for a Japanese mobile phone provider in the late 1990s to an international communication phenomenon.
As well as a history of emoji and an interview with their creator, Shigetaka Kurita, the book (art directed by design studio FL@33) includes an exploration of non-text typefaces, from the decorative fleurons of the early days of the printing press to the innumerable digital typefaces available today, to the use of emoticons, ASCII art, and kaomoji in typed messages.
It also looks at an array of artworks, fashion lines, special character sets, advertisements, and projects that convey emoji’s widespread impact on contemporary culture. Finally, the book concludes with a section for which a group of illustrators, artists, and graphic designers have created original emoji characters they wish existed, including bacon, a vinyl record, and even a stabbed-in-the-back emoji.
Between finishing the book and its launch date I curated, designed and produced an exhibition – with no small amount of assistance from Tommi at FL@33, Steve Day, and Danielle Pender) for London’s KK Outlet gallery space.
WHAT THE PRESS SAID
“Aubergines are no longer merely aubergines.”
London Review of Books
“This thoroughly researched, entertaining tome traces the history of everyone's favourite communication enhancer.”
Cool Hunting
“The Story of Emoji digs deep into the genesis of emoji, their slow burn progress and subsequent explosion into the popular consciousness. If emoji could write, this book would be their autobiography.”
Vice
“From ❤ and 😂😜😡, to icons depicting 👍 or 👎, 🍰, 🏠, 🐱 (aww!) and the ☀️☔️, emoji are used by millions each day across 📱 and 💻. With more detail than a dingbat and more expression than an emoticon – :-D ;-) :-\ – they enable us to harness the potency of symbols in our everyday communication. In his 👌🆕 📖, The Story of Emoji, Gavin Lucas charts the rise of these pictorial characters which, despite their size, are now ubiquitous in the digital landscape.”
Creative Review
“According to linguists, emoji may be the fastest-growing form of language in history–but their roots date back 40,000 years. This deep dive explores everything from 1963's ‘riginal smiley,’ by American commercial illustrator Harvey Ball, to emoji's role in literature (an emoji translation of ‘Moby Dick’) and tech (emoji rather than digit based banking passwords).”
The Wall Street Journal
“We really do 💗💖💕 this book!”
Because
Photos by FL@33.
I worked closely with designer and illustrator Kate Moross as the editor of her book Make Your Own Luck: A DIY Attitude to Graphic Design & Illustration (published by Prestel, 2014). The book charts Kate’s rise to internationally recognised graphic design superstar, taking in work from her student days through to more recently completed projects created as an in-demand professional plus, crucially, the lessons learned along the way.
Photos by Ed Park.
Before it became a beautifully produced A3 size book of pull-out paper placemats (each sporting a burger-themed illustrated artwork on one side and a burger recipe on the reverse side), The Burgermat Show was a group exhibition and food pop-up that I organised in collaboration with Daniel Young of Young & Foodish / BurgerMonday.
The two-night only ticketed event saw 24 illustrators create burgertastic artworks to be displayed as high quality signed paper placemats all set on tables upon which attendees were served an amazing burger cooked up by chef Fred Smith, especially for the occasion.
I worked with Nobrow to produce the book (published, June 2013) which essentially functions as a host-your-own-burger-art-party-kit as you can tear out the placemats to set the table with beautifully printed artwork, and cook up one of the four different burger recipes included. All you have to do then is decide who you’re going to invite – and what to wear!
Design studio Intercity approached me to act as copy editor for Mickey Mouse & Me, a publication it was art directing in the summer of 2018, the year of Walt Disney character Mickey Mouse’s 90th birthday.
The limited edition book features a host of new portraits of celebrities (including Kate Moss, Heidi Klum, Tinie Tempah and Mark Hamill) by world renowned photographer Rankin. While paying tribute to the cultural impact of Mickey Mouse and the inspiration he has provided over the years, the book was also conceived in support of UK charity Together for Short Lives and so features the stories of three families of children with life-limiting conditions. Proceeds from all 300 collector-edition copies of the book (priced at £50) will go directly to to the charity.
I worked with Hong Kong-based publisher Victionary as consultant editor and the copy editor on this handsome tome (published in 2013) that came with a lenticular wrap-around cover in keeping with the subject matter.
Another nice touch was that readers had to find the correct project text in a section at the back of the book in the form of a sticker which they could then stick on the appropriate page - thus making it an interactive print project in its own right.
Having been a huge fan of John Vernon Lord’s picture book, The Giant Jam Sandwich, as a kid, I was thrilled when Sam Arthur at Nobrow got me on board as editor of this book dedicated to showcasing and celebrating the rough drawings and sketches of the now retired illustrator and educator.
Drawn To Drawing (published by Nobrow, 2014) showcases a wealth of previously unpublished work spanning Lord’s fifty year career plus the illustrator’s memoirs, thus providing an insight into the life and inventive working practices of one of the UK’s most prodigious illustrators. I worked closely with John on the auto-biographical texts in the book that chart his career and help to contextualise the book’s imagery.
When I scoured eBay to find all the bits I needed to build my dream BMX bike (a 1985 Street Beat) back in 2004, I soon found out that loads of people I know also harboured a love of BMX bikes. It took a few years to get the idea off the ground, but together with co-authors Nathan Gale of Intercity and Stuart Robinson, we put together this book (published by Laurence King, 2012) – the first to chart the evolution of BMX by focusing on the bikes that have shaped the sport since its birth on Californian dirt tracks in the late 1960s through to its status as an Olympic sport.
Rad Rides features more than 100 bikes drawn from the best collections in the world – our pick of the world's greatest BMX bikes of all time (many of them photographed exclusively for the book) from factory built classics like the PK Ripper, GT Pro Performer, Hoffman Condor and the S&M Sabbath, to custom built bikes including Ken Spaulding’s Terrible One SFA and Woody Itson’s legendary gold Hutch Trick Star. Yes, that’s right: there is a golden BMX bike of legend!
Following on from the original GA book, this second volume (published by Laurence King, 2011) showcases yet more of the varied and inventive tactics that are being used today by big-name brands, non-profit organizations and individuals to promote themselves, their ideas and their products beyond traditional advertising media.
Also published in French, Italian and Spanish language editions.
Having written about button badges for a feature in Creative Review magazine, I became slightly obsessed with the fact that button badges are everywhere: on lapels and bags and, more significantly, in the sketchbooks and on the screens of some of the hottest graphic designers, artists and illustrators around.
Badge Button Pin (published by Laurence King, 2007) explores the rich variety of uses of the badge - promotional, revenue-raising or simply decorative and brings together the best and most beautiful badges being produced today by some of the world’s top design talent, including the likes of Milton Glaser, James Joyce, Trevor Jackson, Emmi Salonen, Eboy, Kim Jones, Fred Deakin, Michael C. Place and FL@33 - to name but a few.
To launch the book, I produced an exhibition at Exposure Gallery on Little Portland Street in central London. The exhibition featured badges and related artwork by Antoni & Alison, Jonathan Ellery, Ian Wright, Mark Pawson, Stereohype, Parra, Jeremyville and more.
Also published in Italian and Spanish editions.
I worked on this book project with art director Mike Dorrian. Guerrilla Advertising (published by Laurence King, 2006) which showcases the best international examples of the varied and inventive tactics used by big-name brands, non-profit organisations and individuals to promote themselves, their ideas and their products. Microsoft covered Manhattan in butterfly stickers, Volkswagen made a Polo out of ice and parked it on a London Street, and Adidas suspended two footballers high above the streets of Tokyo for a death-defying kick about.
