I always wanted to be an artist and make stuff. I didn't quite know exactly what I would end up
doing but I always wanted to make things and I've got really nice memories of my parents and my
grandparents helping me to make castles and drawbridges out of cardboard and I had a great
childhood of making and drawing and painting and I knew that that was what I would end up doing.
My name is Luke Edward Hall and I'm an artist and designer and columnist
and I am the artist behind this year's English Heritage handbook cover design. I look to the past
for inspiration but I'm really trying to bring in a comtemporary edge. I'm not trying to create a
pastiche of anything and I'm never really sure about that word 'nostalgia'. I love looking
to the past for inspiration and then it's just about creating work that feeling contemporary.
I was thrilled when English Heritage got in touch because I'm majorly inspired by the past
and I love visiting old houses and gardens and getting inspired and learning about their history
and so it felt like an amazing fit and also a chance to do something maybe a bit unusual
for them so it was really exciting that English Heritage were really up for me using
bright colour and they'd always be saying add more colour in and that was really nice. The idea was
to work on the handbook design for 2022/2023 so that involves the front cover and the back cover
and the little spine, and then also the membership card and a couple of other things.
And it's inspired by celebrating Roman Britain so I was looking up to Hadrian's Wall for inspiration
and on the cover that's what we see: Hadrian's Wall, Hadrian himself, interpreted in my own way.
[interviewer] "How would you describe your work in three words?"
Colourful, irreverent and romantic.
My style I'd say is very colourful, playful, inspired by the past but hopefully brought up to
date and made contemporary. I think there's a real DIY element to it as well, it's very handmade,
because a lot of my work is based around my drawings.
I buy a lot of handmade paper. It has this really lovely texture. I love buying old paper as well
and actually people give me old paper. I use a mixture.
Definitely handmade and old paper with character is what I love.
I'll use printer paper if I have to.
Window.
Both.
Velvet.
Do I have a favourite board game?
Articulate.
Oh my dog. My whippet.
Probably 1980s English pop music like Soft Cell and New Order.
I love music but I can't play anything. I played the keyboard, I played the piano, I've played the
guitar really badly when I was younger and I can't do it and I wish I could.
Too much beige. I love colour. But green I like because green I think I like most of its shades.
I wear all colours, apart from black. I don't own any black clothing.
So many good bits. I love... I live in the Cotswolds and I have to say, I miss the sea,
yes, but I do love the Cotswolds. The West Country I love. I love Dorset, Devon, Cornwall.
All the villages are so beautiful. There are so many amazing houses to visit, amazing gardens.
The food is great here. And I love London. So, too hard to choose.
I think with all projects, because I work across a broad range of disciplines, all projects usually
begin with research. So that's going into my library of books. I have some books here, some at
home as well. Old magazines. I often do research online looking through museum collections as well.
What's really great about a lot of our museums is that you can view their entire collections online
so I do that. And often I'll go and visit a museum or a gallery as well and then I start sketching.
As you've probably seen in my studio it's filled with piles of sketches so I start just sketching,
sketching and I'll see what comes out. I'll start experimenting with different
techniques and materials, it sort of builds from there until I get to the end result.
When we first started talking about the cover design it was decided that Hadrian was always
going to feature but it has been through various stages. The temple was always going to feature as
well, the pediment and columns. We tried Hadrian shown as a full figure, we did a shoulders-up
bust, we did just a head, we tried various things out. On these preliminary sketches I've drawn
Hadrian's Wall as a kind of border but we ended up actually making for the final design a border
with a kind of rope motif inspired by a fragment that we saw in the collection at Corbridge.
With the text at the bottom that says Handbook, I hand-wrote it, I tried a Roman-inspired typography
moment. So it's been through various stages until we finally decided on the final version.
When you go to a museum or whatever and you see the white classic idea of Roman sculpture
it's beautiful, but it's a sort of myth isn't it that they were made like that and actually they
were painted in these amazing colours, very vivid bright colours. So I suppose actually
working on this project it does feel like it's quite a nice fit actually to
reinterpret them in my own way that does feel like it's how they were actually made in the beginning.