LUCKY PABLO

Lucky Pablo = Joyful Designs for Uncertain Times

We are Lucky Pablo, a.k.a Jane Anderson and Ally Standing, a Birmingham-based creative duo. We started working under this moniker back in March 2020, at the beginning of the first COVID lockdown. What started off as a few nights spent compulsively doodling shapes, forms, and symbols - just to take our mind off the troubling events which were unfolding - soon took on a new significance, and since then we’ve been doing our best to spread a bit of visual joy through our playful and folk-inspired designs.

We draw our inspirations from a number of places - we lecture in design, and it's clear that grid systems, graphic elements, and page furniture play a big part in the work we make. However, we both come from a fine art background, and take inspiration from a number of artists, from modernist - think Miró, Kandinsky, Picasso, Matisse - all the way back to early Renaissance artists like Heironymus Bosch. As mentioned above, there's also something slightly prehistoric about the forms we draw, with influences from cave painting as well as ancient zoomorphic vessels from across the world. More than anything, we want our designs to be joyful, colourful, and cheerful.

It’s been a relief to be able to channel the negative energy into something calming and meditative in process, and positive and uplifting in outcome. There seems to be an outpouring of creativity in general at the moment; as is often the case in times of crisis. We hope that our images can offer a visual pick-me-up; a playful and simple moment in a complicated world.