We Chat To Alan Kenyon at Hunkydory Crafts!

Have you ever wondered how some of the amazing products you use in your card making came to be? Who thought of the idea? Who designed them? Here's a sneak pee at our chat with Alan Kenyon, one of the Product Design Managers at Hunkydory Crafts. Check out our August 2018 issue for the full interview! All back issues are available on our website with no UK P+P costs!

Tell us a little more about yourself. Growing up, I lived with my very artistic family near to the beach in Formby. I would draw and painting with my dad, and my mum would create amazing knitted toys. Seeing what they could do really inspired me and has had a great influence on my life. They’d buy me books about origami and paper-folding which fascinated me and I’m sure have influenced some of the concept cards I’ve developed many years later! After school got a degree in animation from NEWI in Wrexham. I relocated to Preston four years ago, where I live with my girlfriend, Kirsty (and our ever growing collection of gnomes and Lego!).

And your role at Hunkydory? As one of the Product Design Managers I get to work within a great team of creative people. I was originally taken on as a freelance illustrator over 10 years ago, creating characters such as the Golden Oldies and Raindrop. Since then I’ve been lucky enough to work on some very exciting products. I love that you can take flat pieces of card and turn them in to something that needs to be displayed! Anything dimensional really appeals to me – decoupage and diorama can be stunning. Over the years we really have pushed the boundaries.

Tell us a little more about the design process. Our team have so many ideas, which is lucky because we produce a lot of products which have to begin as one of those ideas! We’ll start with the artwork that is going to be used. We work with many artists so we have access to many themes and styles. From here we’ll decide what kind of collection it is going to be, how big, the content, what kind of board will it be on, foil-colours, shapes... there’s so much that has to be thought about to make sure it’s the quality product our customers expect. The next part is the fun part for us – designing the individual elements that make up a collection ensuring the end result is cohesive with not too much of one colour or repetition. Little things like that can make a huge difference.

 Check out our August 2018 issue for the full interview with Alan!