Elfie Christmas pavement sign
THE LOWDOWN
Last Christmas, our Creative Director, Paul, had the lovely idea that we should make our patch of Shoreditch a little more festive. For us, this time of year is a little bit about glitter and a lot about sharing happy moments, so we wanted to translate that ethos into a small social project.
With the aim of inspiring neighbourhood cheer and engaging with our customers in an entertaining way, we decided to create a life size cutout of a santa’s little helper, and reimagined him with a local twist for a touch of satire.
We tapped into the artistry of our sign installer, Russell, who is also a talented illustrator on the side, and set about making it happen.
Russell has a passion for drawing fantasy figures and pencilled us a hipster elf, perfect to place in the context of our curbside and entice East London crowds into snapping some fun selfies – henceforth known as elfies.
With our elfie dude sketched and shaded, we set about bringing him off the page, and upto head height.
THE SPECS
Using image manipulation tools, Russell then isolated his drawing and transformed it into digital art. The cartoon graphic was now suitably colourful, and vectorised so that could easily be scaled up.
We worked out the final size of the image to ensure people of all heights could interact with the installation, while keeping in mind not to make it so big as to block the pavement either.
Our very own pointy eared tribe then set about cnc cutting a silhouette out of 10mm foamex, which would be rigid and robust enough to last outside. They then printed the graphic (remembering to flip the wording and image for the opposite side) on white self adhesive vinyl, and applied it to the cut out shape.
What with Shoreditch being a very merry spot around this time of year and foamex being a pretty lightweight material, it was probable that our elfie might himself be tempted, or possibly be taken, on a whistle stop tour of the local pubs.
So we used old timber to hand craft a frame that could be fixed to our shop railings, avoiding any peer pressured walkabouts and instilling Leonard Street with a bit of light heartedness!
