THE BRITISH LIBRARY.Building the visual fantasy world for their most successful post-pandemic exhibition.
Skills used: background research, ideation workshop planning and delivery, concept and narrative development, creative direction, collaboration with curatorial, marketing and exhibition teams, format planning and guidance for adaptive use, handover for internal rollout
Outcomes:
The Library’s most successful exhibition since before the pandemic.
Ticket sales of over 56,000. 24% above target, despite cyber-attack disruption.
Winner at International Communication Arts Awards (Institutional).
Hero illustration shortlisted for V&A Illustrator of the Year (Sveta Dorosheva).
Context
Fantasy was the British Library’s major post pandemic exhibition, bringing together centuries of imagined worlds and fantastical storytelling. The Library needed a creative proposition and a hero image that could unite curators, publishers, exhibition designers and marketers and help draw audiences back into the building after a long period of reduced footfall.
We were commissioned to clarify the creative direction, define the narrative and develop the central visual that would appear across posters, signage, merchandise, publications and large scale outdoor applications.
Approach
We began work at the iconic British Library itself, running a ‘Choose your own adventure’-themed proposition workshop designed to harvest as much insight as possible from a project team of curators, event designers, in-house marketers, events and merchandising specialists.
From this workshop and our wider discovery work, we crafted three propositional territories, a range-finding exercise designed to draw out the views and preferences of the many stakeholders. And from their feedback we crafted our final proposition:
Art direction
Echoing the tone of the proposition the visual direction was built around the idea of layers within layers – we needed to create a world the viewer could travel across, through and into. A key piece in the exhibition, Bernard Sleigh’s Mappe of Fairyland, became an important reference point.
Environmental features like mountains, rivers and caves hinted at the vastness of the fantasy genre, while hidden characters added moments of discovery. The composition was anchored by the British Library’s iconic gateway on Euston Road – a nod to the portals ubiquitous in fantasy literature.
The intricately illustrated landscape became a labyrinth of stories, each layer revealing more about the richness, diversity and complexity of fantasy. We worked closely with curators to decide which characters and motifs to weave into the design, grounding the magic in the Library’s own collection and hinting at the journey visitors might take – both through the exhibition and into the genre itself.
Developing The Illustration Brief
I developed a detailed illustration brief that set out the composition, symbolic elements, transitions between realms, atmosphere and the intended path of the viewer’s eye. A key part of the brief was the placement of the Library gate. It mirrors the real gate on Euston Road and was included intentionally as a symbolic portal, suggesting that stepping through the Library’s entrance would transport visitors into the world of the exhibition. Its placement was planned precisely so the composition would crop and scale cleanly across all formats. It would feature on everything – from merchandise and gift shop displays to the beautifully produced Adventurer’s Guide and the accompanying coffee table book.
The brief was designed to support the creation of a complex hand drawn illustration while still allowing the illustrator space to bring her own craft to it.
Sveta Dorosheva, the illustrator, described it as the most comprehensive and helpful brief she had ever received. And because the foundations were so thorough, the production phase ran smoothly. The final illustration required only very minor refinements before sign off and everyone loved it.
Campaign rollout
After approval, I produced usage guidance for the Library’s internal design team to support the rollout. This included rules for how the illustration should crop, scale and adapt across formats and how the Library gate should be positioned to maintain consistency.
Outcome
The campaign became one of the library’s most successful since the pandemic, selling 56,000 tickets and winning an award in the Institutional category at the International Communication Arts Awards.
The illustration was also nominated for the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Illustrator of the Year award, so Sveta and I, after lots of collaboration via Teams, finally got to meet in person, which was wonderful.
This project represents the kind of work I love most – world-building through art direction. It combined creative craft with strategic design thinking, collaboration and precision.
Turning an idea as broad as “fantasy” into something people could walk past, step into and believe in was a real privilege.
The full illustration is shown here - how many characters and references can you find?
(There’s 65)
