Hasta La Ideas

UK-based illustrator Laura Barnard was getting bored with selling the usual digital prints, so she conceived of a new way of both motivating her creativity and skills while producing something for sale online. 30×30 is the just-released result. “There are 30 copies of each edition, and each one costs £30 shipped anywhere in the world. Once they’re gone, they’re gone.” The first edition is a series of painted wooden blocks.

“The blocks are individually painted/drawn on — I wanted them to all be unique so thought that was the most sensible way to do it. Although that’s a fairly hefty number of bricks to draw on (!) it’s a small enough run to still be able to do by hand. I may not entirely hand draw Issue Two depending on what it is, but there’s definitely some scope for some hand-finishing.

I’ve really enjoyed selling prints for the last couple of years, but I think illustration can be particularly exciting when it’s applied to objects or surfaces, so the shop will be based more around that from now on. Keeping it fresh is important too, so that’s why I’m only doing 30 of each. A fixed price of £30 keeps it interesting too — for me as much as anything!”

Laura is already looking forward to the next edition. “I’ve got a few ideas brewing for Issue Two — it won’t be blocks but will be something similarly quirky and, er, objecty and interesting. Part of the fun of this is seeing how it’ll evolve and the limited runs mean I can see what people are excited by and adjust accordingly.”

I’ve signed up!