Personal project | Poster

365 days of Land Rover

Fascinated by their beautiful, utilitarian chunkiness since childhood, in Lockdown I started designing a poster that celebrated the endless body shapes and sizes of classic Land Rovers. From fire engines to hovercrafts, I’m still drawing!

The toy in the photo above is the Land Rover I played with as a child. Those fond memories translated into adulthood and the only two cars I’ve ever owned have been Land Rovers. Fantastically inappropriate for living but fantastically good fun. They always made me smile.

Stuck inside during Lockdown and wanting to celebrate the outdoors, I decided to draw a poster of every Land Rover style ever built. It is stunning what the engineers of the 50s, 60s and 70s did with such a simple, rugged and versatile base. At last count, I’ve drawn 341 styles and I’m still discovering ones I haven’t seen before.

Lockdown is very definitely over and this project has turned into a labour of love that I pick up when I have time. Soon I hope I’ll have a poster to sell to other crazy Land Rover fanatics, and to more normal people who appreciate classic ‘old-school’ design and engineering.

01. Cataloguing

My first step was to bring order and structure to the Land Rover universe. I informally knew there were seemingly countless body styles and customisations, but was this true in real life? And was there enough reference material for me to be able to recreate each model? In my first pass through books and the internet I easily discovered 274 variations. From that point on I knew this was a project that had legs and would keep me busy.

02. Measurements from real life

Keen to get out of the house (and exceptionally lucky that a 1975 Series III 88” Hard Top was parked just a few streets away) I took some measurements and started drawing my first model in Illustrator. It was an interesting challenge to know what level of detail to include and where to be slightly economical with the line to achieve the best representation.

03. And slowly they grew…

With a base model to work from I started tackling the body styles that form the core of the Land Rover family. Hard tops, soft tops, cab, crew, station wagons… all for each vintage and different wheelbase. These variations started to form their own amazing pattern and a piece of design in itself.

04. Endless invention

The most enjoyable examples to draw have been the ‘specials’ - vehicles created with a very special purpose in life. Ambulances, fire engines, hydraulic platforms, diggers, snow ploughs, gun buggies, baggage conveyors, ice cream vans… It really does seem as if anything is possible in the Land Rover world.

05. One day soon…

I’ll have drawn the last 25 and my poster will hang on the wall and be ready to sell. It’s taken me longer than I expected and I almost don’t it want to finish. Drawing each and every one of these Land Rovers has left me with an even deeper appreciation of the brand and just what’s possible when designers and engineers get creative.