Harriet Richardson

I discovered Harriet's work when I saw her 'Don't look directly at The Sun' print displayed in Village Books. I immediately loved the satire and humour within her work and explored the rest of her  sarcastic, current affairs based work on her Instagram. 

Harriet works a lot with charities and groups like Extinction Rebellion. She gained a lot of her following when she was photographed and recorded at the Climate Crises Protest last year, holding signs saying 'Leonardo DiCaprio's Girlfriends Deserve A Future' and 'I Got Fired To Be Here'. In lockdown she had time to start freelancing and set up her own print shop - everything is sustainably sourced and biodegradable, even down to her stickers. She's even mentioned how she won't be doing any t-shirts any time soon because she can't find a sustainable supplier yet. 

Despite her sometimes controversial work, she's currently in her third year at Pentagram, and it was her 'ideas-led thinking' that got her in. This is evident in her work, as everything she does is charming and witty - minimal in design but always an impactful idea. She shared her very simple process on TikTok - she has an idea, types it out in illustrator, prints it, traces it, then fills in with ink. This kind of design is not really difficult in terms of the process, but just shows how ideas-led Harriet's work is. 

In an interview with Grafik:

Where do you draw inspiration from to motivate your creative practice? 

My ideas come about from everyday life; chatting with friends, listening to the radio, daydreaming on the tube. Like most designers, I’m a visual person, so being out of the house and able to see the world in all its chaos has a big influence on my thoughts. 

My favourite kind of idea, and the ones I’m naturally drawn to, are those deemed gestalt, a German word which translates as ‘a form or shape that is greater than the sum of its parts’. This essentially means ‘when the brain fills in the gaps’. In design, this could be anything from a play on words to finding negative space, visual tricks that bring the audience into a dialogue with you, making a piece more memorable and satisfying.

I think that this way of working goes hand-in-hand with the kind of very British satire Harriet works with within her work. It could be a really interesting avenue to go down. 

I think that Harriet's satirical work fits in with the idea of negative news because she's commenting on current affairs and making light of situations that are portrayed to us in a more anxiety-inducing way within traditional media. I think that the idea of working with satire and this sort of very traditional British humour is also interesting. Within my questionnaire (upcoming blog post) I asked what people would like to see more within the news and a lot of people said they want to know what's happening globally. It could be interesting comment on global news and figure out a way to present this to the British public? 

I also reached out on Instagram to Harriet to see if she would answer some questions as I wanted to get some more knowledge from her. At the moment I just want to know if she thinks responding to current affairs with humour is important and if so why.