Quality purveyor of sea monsters, fairytales and ghosts.

Tall Ships Races Bergen

In 2019, Bergen was one of the host ports for the Tall Ships Races. I was hired to design a festival map, design marketing visuals and also some festival management.

Client: Tall Ships Races Bergen
Year: 2019

Illustrations for maps, signage, social media, and posters.

The printed Tall Ships Races festival map held up at the harbour in Bergen, with tall ships behind

Brief & Process

The brief was to make illustrations for a map for the Tall Ships Races that would be of interest and be picked up by people not primarily interested in the Tall Ships Races.

For the Tall Ships Races Bergen 2019 I created a map conveying the festival areas and happenings, like a ton of sand being poured onto a grass field to make a beach club, arrival of pirate ships that are accessible for wheelchair users, areas of the city with warehouses converted to restaurants, activities, street food areas, and general merriment all around.

I made lots of little “Easter eggs” you can discover in the map, some fantastic, some just plain normal but not too well represented: a breastfeeding mermaid, wheelchair users stage diving, 50% male and female crews, same-sex couples with kids, grandma climbing the rigging, a female pirate captain, secret passages at Bryggen, and a mermaid in a bouncy castle. Layers that make the map fun to read.

Local people might also recognize some of the characters.

Mine skip stamp sheet for collecting the ships visited, held up in front of a tall ship
Stamp sheet to collect the different ships visited
Illustrated festival map of Bergen for the Tall Ships Races 2019
Detail of the festival map showing Koengen Beach Club, the concert area and the pirate ships
Illustrated Tall Ships Yngel programme with the children’s activities for each festival day
Programme for the children’s activities
Illustrated map of Sjørøverlandsbyen, the pirate village at the Tall Ships Races Bergen 2019
Map of Sjørøverlandsbyen, the pirate village

I also made campaign illustrations; the ones below were made for different social media platforms.

Campaign illustration: two children shouting Hoi from a ship’s bow and the quayside
Campaign illustration: a family arriving for the Tall Ships Races with a suitcase
Campaign illustration: a mermaid in a tub asking about concerts at the Tall Ships Races

This is a new website, so I’m still working on all the entries about my work. 20 years of books and illustrations take time, so bear with me 😉