Joy Lofthouse and Mary Ellis. The women who flew Spitfires
Joy Lofthouse (93 years old) and Mary Ellis (99 years old) pictured, were part of the ATA, Air Transport Auxillary, during the second world war. During an extrodinary time they flew, solo, grade I and grade II planes. Delivering them to airfields across the country. Grade I planes were single engine fighters such as the Miles Majester, pictured lower right. Grade II were twin. Mary also flew bombers including a Wellington, on the left, and Lancaster’s. For Joy her favourite were the Spitfire’s.
Development
As a starting point from the research I would like to create packaging of a model Spitfire with Joy and Mary as the pilots. I felt this was a charming interview and from further research discovered that Joy has a love for speed including sports cars.
Illustrated are some examples of model spitfires including an orthographic construction of the interior. In addition are some World War II posters. What is striking is the simplicity of the design. As a development process I would like to recreate the packaging to include Joy and Mary as pilots using this style as a starting point. From here I would include a brief outline of their story, the missions and routes that they would take with the statistics of how many planes they delivered
Rough Ideas For Posters and Packaging
The illustrative concept would need a portrait of both pilots in the style of the posters that I had researched. The initial sketch was a first draft of the main concepts I wanted to include. The layout was intended to be clean bold design with type.
The following are examples of posters I had reviewed and my fist sketch of ideas.
Final Outcome
The Final poster that was rendered in Photoshop and with the original hand lettering replaced by computer text.
Reflection:
I wanted to keep many of the original elements such as the RAF symbol and the London skyline that I had originally painted. One of the main challenges was the portraits of Mary and Joy, which I attempted as part of the original painting by removing unnecessary details. The Spitfires were sourced from the internet and pasted into the artwork.
In conclusion, I was not happy with the final result. Although the attempt at the idea was realized the final product looks poor. Trying to communicate the brief was using the format of a poster was not the best way to convey so much detail. I limited myself to this idea partially out of time. And having spent so long researching I failed to manage this project as best as I could have.