We’re delighted to unveil this year’s design theme: a dreamy summer Port Eliot landscape with elephantine visitor by Rosie Lea, an illustrator and print maker based in Bristol who has produced work for the likes of White Denim, L7, Radiohead, Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stone Age and IDLES, to name a few. Rosie individually hand screen prints her designs and exhibits her work worldwide. She is also a co-founder of Jacknife Films, which has produced award winning stop-motion animation music videos for Radiohead, Father John Misty and Run The Jewels. Over to Rosie for a glimpse behind the scenes into the process of creating this year’s festival artwork.
I’ve really enjoyed creating the campaign imagery for Port Eliot. It’s been a big difference from the restrictive medium of screen printing and has allowed me to be a little more experimental with colours and detail.
The scene centres on the iconic location of the festival, incorporating the tropical foliage, British wildlife and viaduct architecture. I wanted to try and get the feeling of the festival across in the imagery and colour palette; creative, joyful, sunny, wild. The focal point is a larger than life representation of the Port Eliot elephant playing in the River Tiddy. I imagined the elephant as a giant manifestation of the festival-goers collective creativity and joy.
My favourite part of the process was choosing the colour palette. I wanted to choose something that reminded me of the dreamy, dusky stage of a festival evening. I always like to use my colours unconventionally, taking inspiration from graphic novels, pop art, and psychedelia. I’ll enjoy using layering techniques to recreate the palette when screen printing the design. It’s been really nice creating a range of imagery from the same theoretical world and I’m excited to have my work shown throughout the campaign in its different forms.
This will be my first experience of Port Eliot, I’ve heard so much good stuff about the festival and I’m super excited to experience it. Really looking forward to exploring the workshops and trying some new food. And jumping in the water after a good dance.
Rosie will be live screenprinting a limited run of 2019 Port Eliot posters at this year’s festival, visit her stall to buy one.
