Meet Jill White, The Award-Winning Designer Behind Rocket68
Jill White is the award-winning designer behind many illustrations, including the London prints of our Rocket68 collection. Here she tells us how it all began, what inspires her to create and how she created an award-winning brand.
Jill White has been in the design world for 34 years, creating everything from prints, cards, gift wrap and homeware. She specialises in bright colours, bold designs and beautiful prints. Alongside being an award-winning designer and teacher, she has single-handedly built up her brand, Rocket68.
Rocket68 is a design company specialising in cards, prints and much more. Jill runs her studio and the Rocket68 shop in Somerset, and works with a variety of brands in the UK and abroad. It is a licensed collection of Tall Boy Prints, which includes a curated selection of 20 London prints from Rocket68, featuring different parts of the city.
There's no doubt that Rocket68 has become a hugely successful brand. Here Jill shares how Rocket68 began, what inspires her beautiful work and how she created such a successful range of art.
The Start Of Rocket68 & London Prints
Jill has extensive experience in the design world and was teaching illustration & graphic design at a Somerset college when she first had the idea for Rocket68. She loved teaching, but found she missed the creative process of illustrating and designing. So she started cutting down on her teaching hours and began work on some new designs.
"I loved teaching, but I found that I missed the creative process of designing and illustrating for myself. I started to build up some collections whilst gradually cutting back on teaching hours. I formed Rocket 68, booked my first tradeshow.
“I was lucky enough to get some great stockists, and Rocket68 took off from there.”
Rocket68 has many different collections of art, more notably the London prints collection. This now contains over 65 designs and won the Gift Of The Year award in 2022. It features bold and beautiful illustrations of London scenes, with some of the most notable designs including Trafalfar Square, Notting Hill, St Pancreas Station and much more.
"I loved teaching, but I missed the creative process of designing and illustrating for myself."
The Inspiration Behind Rocket68 London Prints
Jill describes her art style as eclectic and it's easy to see why when glimpsing her striking London prints. Every print contains detailed illustrations of a London scene, bathed in a boldly coloured background. Jill states that she creates her designs by using both traditional media such as gouache and watercolour along with digital processes.
"I work from doodles and sketches & photos, these days from my ipad, and I develop the artwork mostly by combining painting with Illustrator and Photoshop. One of my favourite styles is pens and ink and watercolour. The element that is consistent with my work is a strong bold colour palette - I don't do pastels!”
Jill is inspired by architecture and made it the focus of her collection of London prints. The inspiration stems from her childhood, where growing up she was surrounded by architecture books in her mother's bookshelves.
“My mum's bookshelves were full of 1960's archiectural books and I kept that in mind when I started this collection. I wanted to get away from the traditional London 'red white & blue' style of tourist imagery so applied strong zesty colour palettes instead.”
"Architecture is my favourite subject matter to draw & I am drawn to using bold colour palettes - I don't do pastels! "
Jill has a variety of favourite prints from the Rocket68 collection and has adapted many of her designs for a variety of products. Some of her favourite illustrations include 'The London Pie & Mash Shop', ‘The London Pub’ and ‘The National Theatre’.
When not in her studio or running her shop, she can be found spending time in her garden, listening to music or going for a run. Find our more about Jill at Rocket68 or explore the full Rocket68 Wall Art Prints Collection.
The Rocket 68 London Prints Collection
The Rocket68 Collection with Tall Boy Prints contains an exclusive set of 20 striking art prints, curated from the brand's full collection. Each piece is printed on luxury Etching Cotton Rag 315 GSM fine art paper, using a 12-colour printer. We use light fast ink on our prints, which creates art that is more striking and dramatic than ever before. Explore Jill's full collection of prints in the Rocket68 Wall Art Prints Collection.