Big ideas.
Beautifully executed.
I’m Caitlyn — a graphic designer and illustrator in Northern Ireland, by way of Calgary. For fourteen years I’ve drawn, lettered and built brands for pubs, breweries, bath-bomb makers, oilfield crews and a TV series. If it needs to look like it was made on purpose, that’s my job.
See the workDrawn by hand, built to be used.
I started out in advertising, where you learn quickly that nobody owes your brand their attention. You earn it — with the puffin that ends up on the pint glass, the label people photograph before they open the bottle, the spec sheet an engineer actually reads.
Most of my work is for hospitality, food and drink, sport and consumer brands, with a sideline in technical businesses — oilfield services, laboratories — that have a lot to explain and not much room to explain it. I still sketch before I open the laptop, and it shows: the illustration and lettering are mine, not pulled from a library.
The brief changes — an identity, a launch, a six-pack, a forty-page technical brochure — but the approach doesn’t. Understand the thing properly, then make it look and feel like it belongs to you and nobody else.
The work. 119 pieces, six disciplines.
Brand Identity
Logos, marks and full visual systems — from a 150-year-old Portrush bar to an ADDY-winning mortgage brokerage.
Packaging & Product
Labels, boxes, cans and bottles that get picked up first — root beer, bath bombs, vodka and a jar of moonshine.
Apparel & Merchandise
Wearable brand — commemorative crests, team kit and the kind of tee people actually keep.
Illustration & Lettering
Characters, watercolour, pen-and-ink and lettering, all drawn by hand. This is where I started, and it’s still the part of the job I’d do on a Sunday.
Advertising & Campaigns
Concept-led campaign work across print, out-of-home, digital and photography — including two ADDY-winning campaigns.
Print, Editorial & Layout
Spec sheets, guidelines, a magazine and set graphics for Fargo — the quiet typographic work that has to be right on every page.
About Caitlyn.
I’m a freelance graphic designer and illustrator with a background in advertising — Canadian by birth, Northern Irish by choice.
I hold a BFA in Graphic Design with an Advertising Design concentration and have spent over fourteen years across agency, in-house and freelance roles — lead designer at a Calgary marketing agency, in-house at a golf resort and a laboratory services company, and graphics for FX’s Fargo, Season 3.
My student and early professional work picked up three ADDY Awards in a single year — for the Butterfly World rebrand, the Trilogy Mortgage Corporation identity and the Kokanee Beer campaign.
Before design, I was a sponsored barefoot water-skier on the Canadian national team. I still think a bit of competition is healthy, especially when it comes to the work.
I take on freelance projects, agency overflow and longer contracts — remote-first, with clients in the UK, Ireland and North America.
Services.
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iBrand IdentityA logo is the start, not the job. I build the whole system — type, colour, illustration, tone of voice — and write it down so it still holds together after the next three hires.
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iiPackaging & ProductLabels, boxes, cans and bottles designed with the shelf, the printer and the dieline in mind, so what you approve is what actually turns up.
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iiiAdvertising & CampaignsOne idea carried across posters, socials, print and point of sale without going stale. I trained in advertising — this is the muscle.
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ivIllustration & LetteringCustom characters, hand lettering and drawings you can’t buy from a stock site. If you want your brand to have a face, I’ll draw it.
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vPrint & EditorialMagazines, catalogues, lookbooks and books. Long documents, careful typography, and a grid I actually stick to.
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viInformation & PresentationSpec sheets, decks and sales collateral for businesses with complicated things to explain. Clear beats clever here, and I’ll make it clear.
How I work.
Discover
We talk. I ask a lot of questions about the business, the customers, the budget and what hasn’t worked before.
Define
I come back with a direction and a short plan, so we agree where we’re going before anything is drawn.
Develop
Sketches and rough routes first, then the strongest ones worked up properly. There’s room to change your mind here — that’s what this stage is for.
Design
Type, colour, imagery, layout and production details, checked against how the thing will really be used rather than how it looks in a mock-up.
Deliver
Tidy, labelled, print-ready and web-ready files, with a plain-English note on how to use them.
Support
I stick around for the next thing. I’d rather be the designer you come back to than the one you used once.