Validity Illustration

Freelancing in London revealed the city to me in a way I'd never viewed it previously. Despite growing up in the surrounding area, I never really got under the skin of the city; I mostly slipped in and out on the odd occasion to do this or that - never at peak time and never with a burning agenda. But all the years I've been traipsing in with the masses to make my client meetings, squeezing between the coffee suckling suits and rolling expertly along the pavements, I've come to appreciate exactly what an intimidating and confusing machine London really is.

When that revelation first struck me it was while I was sat at Trafalgar Square fresh into my career, whittling down the minutes until I could competently approach a design pitch I had turned up to too early for. Like the stone statues erected around me, I was motionless, overlooking countless flocks of pigeons exploding into life in every direction. Something about that juxtaposition of still statues and the frantic birds seemed to polarise the whole city for me; focus all of its energy into a very surreal scene where the angular architecture and blurs of text were a backdrop behind stony people and pigeons caught up in their daily chaotic dance. I produced this illustration when the feeling was still very new to me.