Art licensing and design company The London Studio has begun the licensing programme for Bewilderbeest – a new publisher of illustrated cards, coasters, calendars, notecards and prints with a taste for the witty, the unexpected and, above all, the absurd.
The artist behind the brand is Iain Hamilton. His illustrations are finely crafted, meticulously drawn, and a unique blend of traditional subjects with contemporary ideas.
Bewilderbeest’s recent collection saw it become a finalist in three categories at the 2022 Henries Awards, while Iain himself won the coveted Henries Award for Most Promising Young Designer 2022.
Founder and director of The London Studio, Soula Zavacopoulos was one of the judges for the 2022 Henries Awards – and was so impressed with Bewilderbeest that her company now represents the brand. After early success bringing existing Bewilderbeest designs to Funky Pigeon, she has now revealed plans for new content through a partnership with The Great British Card Company.
The GBCC commissioned Bewilderbeest to create a capsule collection of 12 exclusive new designs, which will launch on the GBCC stand at Progressive Greetings Live in June and appear at retail soon after.
“The London Studio has a great reputation for its partnerships – and Bewilderbeest is a great example of this,” commented Lucy Ledger, head of creative at GBCC. “We have admired Iain’s work for a while and so glad that The London Studio represents him. We have formed a great creative partnership as this humour fits our customer base exactly and this absurd brand has been a delight to work with. We are looking forward to more collaborations with Bewilderbeest in the near future.”
Bewilderbeest’s Iain Hamilton continued: “We were very excited to be asked by Soula to work with the GBCC. I was let loose to be my usual absurd self, and the first batch of daft ideas that I came up with are the ones that we agreed to go ahead with. We really look forward to seeing our nonsense on shelves very soon.”
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