Steeped in stories of daring smugglers and secret coastal trade, the Mudeford Quay Heritage Trail brings history vividly to life and illustrator Joe Lillington has played a central role in shaping its visual identity.
Joe shares insight into his creative process, from researching local history to capturing the wild, windswept character of 18th-century Dorset:
I recently worked in collaboration with Arts University Bournemouth and BCP council to produce sixteen illustrations for the Smuggler’s Run Heritage Trail at Mudeford Quay.
It’s quite a busy site with people coming to walk, go crabbing, kayak and sail, so the main aim of the trail is to teach all these visitors about the rich maritime history of the area, particularly the smuggling which went on along the coast! So my illustrations needed to draw in visitors of all ages and get them interested in learning and following along the trail.
The trail is ‘told’ from the perspective of John Streeter, a known local smuggler from the area. After getting the text and information for the trail I started by thinking about where each of the signs would be situated and how the imagery would interact with the views around it, doing a site visit and taking plenty of photos.
We also had some local historians working on the project who offered a great amount of knowledge and assistance in finding visual reference material so that we could get all the imagery as factually accurate as possible!
From the start one of the main focuses of the illustrations was to really emphasise how the landscape has completely changed since the 18th century. It’s relatively built up now, but back then it would have been a very wild, rugged landscape, so we made sure to include a lot of the wildlife that would have been much more numerous back then.
Alongside my work, students from the AUB Model Making course created relief carving style 3D objects which also sat on some of the boards to add a tactile element and another way for visitors to interact with the trail. We had to make sure that the imagery of my illustrations complemented the relief carving and didn’t repeat or clash with any of the imagery.
Since it was quite a large project with multiple people involved, there was quite a lot of back and forth developing the illustrations, tweaking depending on the model makers ideas, adding in extra bits of new information and adjusting the layout of the boards before moving onto the final images.
There was a lot of much detail to pack into every image, but as usual I enjoyed adding in the fun little details, particularly with the wildlife which I think really brought the illustrations to life!
It was a great project to work on and I'm really pleased with the illustrations! It’s great to see my work there in situ and we’ve had some great feedback from the public, special thanks to Marten Sims and Nuala Clarke who I worked with closely on the project!
Here’s a photo of me on a sunny but very windy launch day!
You can see more of these wonderful illustrations for the heritage trail over on Joe's portfolio. For more information regarding collaborating with Joe please email info@arenaillustration.com or call us on 020 8555 9827
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