Client: Design Museum
Project: Illustrated Object Series – Wes Anderson: The Archives
Commission Type: Freelance Illustration (Retail & Editorial Applications)

Project Overview

To coincide with Wes Anderson: The Archives, the Design Museum is seeking an illustrator to produce a series of artworks inspired by key objects, props, and set details featured in the exhibition.

Rather than directly reproducing film stills, this commission focuses on interpreting objects as design artefacts—highlighting their materiality, symbolism, and role within constructed worlds.

The final illustrations will form a flexible visual suite used across retail, editorial, and interpretive contexts and should include 1 repeating pattern design for seamless tiling.

They were particularly interested in work with a strong sense of authorship.

1. Retail Products (Primary Use)

Your illustrations would likely be adapted into:

• Postcards or boxed postcard sets (object “collections”)

• At least 1 repeating pattern design for seamless tiling

• Notebooks and journals (with repeating or modular designs)

• Tote bag or cushion (single-object hero designs)

• Stationery sets (stickers, bookmarks)

Each illustration should work both:

• As an individual “hero” image

• As part of a set or system

Creative Direction

We are looking for a cohesive series of illustrations that:

• Isolate and elevate iconic and lesser-known objects from across Wes Anderson’s filmography

• Emphasise composition, symmetry, and colour logic

• Treat each object as part of a broader visual system or taxonomy

Tone & Aesthetic

• Precise, intentional, and highly composed

• Playful but controlled

• Rooted in observation, but not purely referential

• Should evoke the feeling of Anderson’s worlds without mimicking film stills

Product Considerations

The work should sit at the intersection of:

• Illustration as product (commercial appeal)

• Illustration as interpretation (museum context)

• Must work at both distance (readable as pattern) and close inspection (detail-rich)

• Avoid overly fine lines that may be lost in print

• Colour palette should consider retail visibility (shelf impact)

For this brief I illustrated a mixture of popular and lesser known objects from the Archive collection at the museum. I kept to a limited palette of colours from The Grand Budapest Hotel that overlapped with Wes Anderson’s common use of pink and red together.

I designed one surface design pattern in iconic pink, changing the details of the key to red to give the iconic combination. The design can be read from far away and up close.

For the hero image I chose the work permit as it was designed on pink paper which suited the rest of the surface design, and which I think looked brilliant on many gift shop objects, and could also be added to paper products such as gift cards etc.

The objects from the design could also be used separately as hero images, such as how I used the key on a notebook.