Medway River Lit
"I thought Medway River Lit Festival thoughtful, thought-provoking, kindly in spirit and invaluable for the region." Sir Ben Okri
Medway River Lit artist commissions
Commissioning and working with local artists: the logo
​
As a Medway-based organization, Medway River Lit loves to work with local artists. So, each year, we commission original art from Medway-based artists, that encapsulates our festival in some way.
​
In 2023, for our first festival, local printmaker Heather Haythornthwaite created a linocut logo for us, using handwritten serif text rather than a font, to reflect aspects of Medway’s long connection with words and writing. Since then, we’ve adapted it slightly for ease of use on fabrics for our MRL t-shirts. The I in the logo is in the shape of the Medway River! It incorporates both stylised open pages of a book and a pen nib to suggest reading and writing.​
​
To see more of Heather's work, visit The Hazelnut Press website.
'River of Words', 2023 ​
For our first festival, Darrell Hawkins also created our ‘River of Words’ image.
​
Darrell’s illustration scattered with inkblots, pages and the curvy shape of the Medway River not only celebrates this long history of Medway’s connection with literature from the Medieval period onwards, but Darrell’s process of using both fine art traditional techniques and cutting-edge digital image manipulation, suggests looking forwards. It captures the messy, dynamic rush that writing can be, with the urge to splurge everything out on the page at once.
To see more of Darrell's work, visit his website.
'You are here', 2024 ​
In 2024, Karen Scudder, created our playful series of ‘You are here’ images, to reflect our growing focus on the global Climate Emergency.
​
Karen’s image is created from a Gelli-plate printed Earth, then she changed colours and added type and features digitally. Karen made us several versions of the 'You are here' world, for use on different platforms, including a book design, which had the world on its cover and a child-friendly version, for events aimed at our younger readers and writers! The ‘You are here’ image points out that every individual is part of a global connection, and everyone can play a part in helping to solve the Climate Emergency.
To see more of Karen's work, visit her website.
'Elements', 2025 ​
2025’s set of four ‘Elements’ images are created by Jio Butler, to capture the essence of our theme for this year.
​
We asked Jio to create a set of 4 icons, which would be immediately recognisable as Earth, Water, Air, Fire, and that would work as a series, and could be used at a reduced size on social media. We wanted to portray the four basic elements, but it was also important to link them with the existing iconography of the festival, the traditional pen nib. Jio designed an ink splatter and created some shapes indicative of each element as if they were drawn by the nib, resulting in a cohesive and harmonious set.
Follow Jio on Instagram: jio_butler
