Barclays Card

Ever since I saw illustrator Jana Polak design her own Tony's Chocolonely chocolate bars as wedding gifts, I thought, huh, what a fun way to put your own twist on an everyday item. What else could I customise?

I remembered that Barclays does custom debit cards, so I thought I'd have a go at designing one myself. I didn't want to go for the obvious picture of a loved one or a family pet, oh no no, let's do something much more fun.

I had been learning a bit about character design and had made a basic turnaround of myself despite having absolutely no anatomy knowledge (still don't lol). It was a fun foray into self-portraiture and also branding (which ended up becoming the basis for my visual identity, as you can see from the little mini-mes dotted around my portfolio).

I knew I wanted to have multiple versions of myself, like a creche of tiny Nats running around haywire. I had quite a lot of fun playing with scale, different poses and expressions.

Barclays were kind enough to provide a template to design with which I used in Figma to correctly proportion my design. I wanted to use the elements of the card template and have the characters interact with the scene around them. Whether it's web or illustration, I love the comedy behind avatars interacting with what's 'real' around them, it makes it all feel very immersive. For example, I thought the contactless icon looks a bit like sound waves so I thought I'd use that and play with sound imagery here.

Despite using a template, the actual printed version of the card turned out a little bit off kilter. Welp, at least we've got this beautiful mockup to enjoy!