Kerry Hyndman’s Layered World of Maps, Storytelling and Award-Winning Illustration
An illustrator and map-maker based on Scotland’s west coast, Kerry Hyndman creates rich, textured artwork for editorial, publishing, and commercial clients. Her work spans everything from children’s books to award-winning book covers, including a V&A Illustration Award for her cover of The Rich House by Stella Gibbons. With a background in teaching and storytelling, Kerry brings a strong sense of place and atmosphere to each project—always grounded in a distinctive, layered style.
Why did you decide to take up your creative trade?
I studied Fine Art at Uni and spent 4 years creating oil paintings. But when I got to the end of the course, I realised I was more motivated by working on my uni newspaper as the designer and illustrator, so I made the switch over to illustration then.
As an illustrator, I love the restrictions of a brief and having an audience in mind when creating work.
How do you get past creative blocks?
I usually step away from my desk and do something totally unrelated, or go through the masses of photos I have stored on my phone of things I want to paint and draw. Even if it’s totally unrelated, just focusing on something else for a bit gives my brain a chance to generate new ideas.
What is your creative process?
For my digital work, I tend to draw directly in Illustrator and, once I’m happy with the composition and details, move the image to Photoshop to add textures and details.
But recently I’ve been developing a new hand-drawn style – trying to step away from the computer a bit more. For the initial stage of creating an image, I have been sketching and painting with inks and then building the final image up on Photoshop. I’ve been working in the same way for nearly 15 years now, so it’s fun to change it up a bit!
Where do you look for inspiration?
I live on the west coast of Scotland, and I find myself just wanting to stop and draw everything all the time. Which is definitely not practical, but the light, colours and weather that we get up here are super inspiring and even on the wettest days I find myself itching to try and capture it.
What are you reading or listening to right now?
I’m working on a fun book project idea at the moment, so I am fully immersing myself in the research phase and reading a lot of books about foraging, as well as dystopian science fiction, like I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman.
What has been your favourite project to date and why?
One of my favourite projects recently was creating the maps for Edinburgh Zoo and the Highland Wildlife Park. Maps are a large part of the work I make, but they usually involve researching the place on OS and Google Maps.
With these two maps, because of the complicated layout and changing routes, I had to go to the locations and walk around, making sure I had accurate routes. It was also important to represent the environment of the enclosures and steepness of the paths, so it was a great excuse to get to visit the Zoo and the Park, and do some hands-on map-making surrounded by incredible animals.
The maps are featured on printed guides and signs, so it’s great to walk around the Zoos now and see people interacting with my work.
A big thank you to Kerry Hyndman for contributing to our series of creative conversations with industry experts.