John O'Carroll Book Design

The new showcase on the Pickle Design features work we have completed for an exceptional international artist, John O'Carroll. The project involved all of our creative team, below, Emma Julian talks a little about the design that she and Marie developed, bringing John O'Carroll into the process as well. The book contained both a English and Dutch translation.

“A favourite of our portfolio is the book we designed for the Padstow based artist, John O'Carroll. This project involved both Marie and I, and was an enjoyable challenge.

John O'Carroll is an exceptional artist who is inspired by the natural world around him. He draws influence from the rugged Cornish moors and coast, the gentle Dutch landscape and his time on archaeological digs in Egypt. Our task was to take this varied body of work and put together a book showcasing John's paintings, sculptures and installations.


We worked with John to create a mark to represent him as an artist, influenced by his sketches and drawings, and pairing this with simple sans serif type. The colour scheme is a subtle palette of greys to complement his pieces. Marie and I used a strict grid for the information; the challenge was incorporating English text with Dutch translation.


John provided us with a vast selection of imagery and part of the task was to limit this and still present a coherent overview of his work. For the book itself we decided on a square format with matt white paper. Marie and I primarily worked on creating templates to help with the flow of the book. Creating chapter headings, allowing large statement images, small insets and considering the typographic introductions and conclusions.


Marie represented Pickle at the launch of John's book and I have been working on applying the look and feel of the book to a website. This was a great project to be involved with, culminating in a piece of work we are all proud of.”

Emma Julian