Whale Song

The Whale Song Trust asked me to design their prospectus for the project's fundraising campaign. The prospectus began life as a word document and quickly began to take shape over several months. Our goal was to have the books printed and mailed to potential investors before a formal fundraising launch at The Roxy Cinema on 9 May 2023.

It was a collaborative effort from start to finish: I worked closely with the artist, writers, architects and printers to create a spectacular final product. For the design, I wanted to focus on elegance, white space and minimalism, with a colour palette limited to an ocean blue, bronze and cream, printed with a combination of process colour and spot Pantone inks. Design elements include a die-cut introduction page revealing a humpback whale eye painted by artist Sofie Seyah, and abstract lines resembling water waves and baleen. The books were printed by Blue Star Wellington, with the cover including a combination of a in-line spot matt, which allowed the gloss paper to create a spot gloss effect - this effect was used throughout the prospectus - and an emboss layer for the tubercles and ridges on each whale, which I individually hand-painted to get the right placement.

The stars of the show are the whales, which were a combination of blue-and-bronze renders I created - using 3D source files provided by the artist Mike Fuller - and beautiful environmental renders by Tilt Architecture that captured the scope and wonder of the installation, highlighted with a fold-out section of the prospectus. Each prospectus was presented to its recipient in a custom-made box designed by Blue Star Wellington, along with a personalised plaque created by Mike Fuller. The finished books looked and felt fantastic, with incredible print clarity and spectacular colour reproduction on every page.