Earlier this month, I was contacted by Eric Maundu of Kijani Grows. Kijani Grows in an Oakland based smart aquaponics startup. They make Arduino-controlled aquarium-fed gardens for businesses, schools and individuals.
Eric had found one of my early pen doodles online, and thought the style would be well suited to a pyrograph image on some of their new garden kits for schools.
I recently received pictures of a prototype kit printed with my Jellyfish I sketch. The completed prototype came even nicer than I had hoped!
I was also very pleased to see the pictures of the kit itself. It is flat-packed for shipping, and includes easy to follow assembly instructions, which are burned into the wood alongside my illustration and the Kijani Grows logo. Overall, it is a very clever design, which I expect will be very educational in schools.
I look forward to working with Kijani Grows to complete a series of commissions of other sea-life pen illustrations for other units. I have also been promised a kit of my own once they go into production – very useful to grow my own subjects for botanical illustration, as well as some of my own food
This collaboration has been a particularly creative example of how my illustrations can be applied to commercial products. Most of my existing pieces are available in multiple formats to be licenced for commercial use, and I am eager to work with others to develop creative custom product art.
