The Spey Bank Studio has made lots of friends over the past 18 months and now we’d like to introduce you to a few special additions to our team.
The Cairn Gang are a group of creatures who are featured on several pieces of merchandise in our shop. Inspired by Scottish wildlife, they are cute, colourful and full of fun.
Meet their creator
We’ve been working with Cathy Haworth for some time now. She’s a freelance graphic designer with many years of experience in the industry. She also set up a small publishing business called Love from Lemonade, which sold greetings cards to stockists such as Paperchase, Selfridges, Oliver Bonas and countless independent gift shops across the UK.
Now based in the Cairngorms, Cathy works on lots of different projects. She helped us with our logo and brand identity, and with marketing material for our exhibitions. Her work is invaluable to us. (You can also see her paintings in the gallery! She’s a big fan of flicking paint.)
Creating the Cairn Gang
The Cairn Gang emerged out of our chats with Cathy about illustrations for pencil cases, magnets and other merchandise.
Cathy said: ‘I started drawing pencil shapes and making polka dot patterns in Illustrator on my Mac. But then I thought it would be nicer to create a design/pattern unique to Spey Bank that could be used across everything instead.
‘My background is in greeting card design and I love creating characters. So it was a natural thing for me to start sketching little characters who might live around Grantown, and slowly The Cairn Gang started to appear.
She added: ‘I wanted these guys to look and feel like they belong in The Cairngorms.
‘I've used what I consider Cairngorm colours, and had lots of fun naming everyone with a Cairngorm-related name.
‘For the shapes and patterns I've used to create each member of The Cairn Gang, there are mountains, water patterns, leaves, stars and flowers. And there’s a bit of a tartan pattern for good measure - The Cairn Gang are 100% proud of their Cairngorm roots.
‘Once I had shapes I was happy with, I recreated them all as vectors in Illustrator. Then I began adding in all the little elements and details across multiple layers, which give each character their unique design and personality.’
Meet the gang
You can catch these wee characters in real life in the shop. They are featured on our tote bags, stacking mugs and pin badges. Plus you’ll find them on our special branded chocolate, via Quirky Chocolate. It is sooooo tasty.
And more products coming soon!
