The 2019 WordCamp theme celebrates the wonderful old outdoor market places of London, just one of the many attractions for which the city is famous.
The Organising Team wanted to mark the city’s great tradition of markets and bring its bustling, colourful street scenes to WordCampers across the globe.
London’s Design Lead Andi Wilkinson is a committed WordCamper coming from a role supporting the Manchester’s 2018 WordCamp. She transformed the Team’s love of street markets into a fun, whimsical artistic vision.
She created a street scene illustration, that showed elements of the various market places, with a focal point on the iconic Camden Locks.
How was the design created?
“The design,” Andi explains, “was created using a mixture of Photoshop, Illustrator, Procreate and good old fashioned pen and paper, a MacBook Pro and iPad Pro with Apple Pencil. Who knew so much could be involved in one drawing!”
Timelapse video of the video design creation (YouTube)
She created some of the more deliberately wobbly and hand drawn looking buildings with paper and pen, scanning and tracing them on the iPad. The cleaner looking shapes were created in Illustrator and brought into Photoshop for texturing. Textures of bricks, paper and fabric were overlaid over the various elements and blending modes were applied. The Camden Lock bridge was taken from a stock photo. She then stylised and overlaid it with the words ‘WordCamp London’ interpreting the style of the wording on the bridge.
Smaller elements like the hot air balloon were created with the pen tool and overlaid with repeat patterns created from wallpaper textures.
She said: “The only thing I didn’t draw were the people. I found some royalty free vector files, which I textured, recoloured and shadowed. The people bring the scene to life and also represent the inclusivity of the WordPress Community. Everyone is welcome and everyone is looked out for.”
Andi’s wacky and whimsical style has been a dynamic and inspiring part of the WordCamp London preparations.
Animation
Kirsty Burgoine, WordCamp London 2019 Website Lead and WordPress Developer, transferred the design to the site with the team. She was so taken with the illustrations that she decided to create an animation.
She said: “After seeing Andi’s amazing and whimsical street scene, I immediately had the idea to create an animation that would complement the style and add a bit of movement to the page. I had in mind a very simple style of animation using a cutout to appear as part of the scene in a style that is reminiscent of the 70’s cult British TV comedy programme, ‘Monty Python’s Flying Circus’, which is another very British thing!”
She added: “After chatting through some ideas with Andi, we narrowed it down to two possibilities and I built some very quick demo’s in CodePen for the team to review. The plane was by far the favourite! The animation itself was created using CSS keyframe animations in transform:translateX() to move it from one side of the screen to the other. Dan Maby, our WordCamp Co-Lead, then came along and pulled everything together by adding the dates as a banner behind and this year’s Wapuu as the pilot. We love that!”
Thanks too to website team member Louis Moloney and Abha Thakor for all their work on the site.
Wapuu
A design would not be complete without a wapuu. Thanks to design team member David Butterworth, these wonderful creations came to life. From next week, they will be introducing you to featured wapuus from other locations.
Our 2019 mascots are dressed as Pearly Kings and Queens.
David, who keeps the team connected to fascinating facts about London, shares the background to his wapuu inspiration. “Traditionally, each district had its own Pearly King and Queen, who wore suits and hats entirely covered by mother-of-pearl buttons. These sparkling characters were commonly known as ‘Pearlies’ by the traditional London cockneys, people who were born within the sound of Bow Bells in the East End of London.
“The Pearlies today belong to a charitable organisation started in the late 1800’s by Henry Croft. He adopted the practice of sewing mother-of-pearl buttons on his suit. The market stall holders, called costermongers, used to have them sewn on their trouser seams.”
David added: “The holes on the top Wapuus are there to represent buttons. I think it cute that our little Wapuu fairies are holding pearl buttons. As for our tail-touching pair at the bottom, well, who wouldn’t hold tails with you partner if they could!”
Take part in the WCLDN London theme
Abha Thakor, Communications Lead, said: “Part of a WordCamp experience is to introduce and showcase the wonderful international locations in which each event is held. Team members all wanted to share their favourite tourist locations with the global community.”
During the next few weeks, we will continue to feature tourism spots highlighted by previous event attendees and with the assistance of Visit London, open up a world of discovery for everyone visiting this year. Do share your London tourism destination photos with us. Thanks for the ideas and pictures of all the beautiful Royal Parks, Big Ben, the Thames River Bridges and much more.
Share your beautiful pictures of London’s tourism destinations on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Information on travelling to London