Team Rosie and Radish

Now you have had a chance to look at our website and see our products, I thought it would be a good idea to give you an insight in to how we bring our cute little characters to life. Team Rosie and Radish consists of two people - Helen (our super duper illustrator) and me, Amy, who designs stuff.

We spent many hours brainstorming, sketching out ideas and doodling before we finally decided upon Rosie and Radish being a little girl and her pet mouse. But that was the easy bit. What hair style was Rosie going to have? Should her socks be pulled up or slouched down? Should she have freckles? Should Radish the mouse be naked? So many life changing questions and so many developmental sketches done by Helen ...

But once we had answered them, Helen went away, worked her magic, and our cute little characters were born - all shiny and new and ready to be used on greeting cards and prints. And that is where I come in. As a designer it is my job to position everything on a page and to combine Helen's illustrations with other elements and type to make it all look pretty ...

Once we had our products we then needed a website to sell them on, and this process shows off our illustrator and designer hats perfectly. Whilst brainstorming ideas for our website I came up with a lovely little scamp, where Rosie has what can only be described as a wedge cut, and Radish looks like an extra out of Harry Potter, flying around on his broomstick ...

Thankfully Helen wasn't put off by the fact I had massacred her beautifully drawn characters and she (somehow) managed to translate it into this ...

After a few tweaks and the addition of a few more elements and some type I then transformed it into this ...

Our wonderful website!

The lesson that came out of this exercise is that I should definitely leave the character illustration to the professionals. But it is also a great example of how Team Rosie and Radish work perfectly together.

Amy Xx