Art, Illustration & Design

A selection of my art, illustration & design projects.

NOTE: I DO NOT use AI anything.






ART & DESIGN BIO:

Stephen Embleton is a graphic artist, author and filmmaker, and was born in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa and is now a resident in Oxford, UK. With a background in graphic design and typography, creative direction and filmmaking, he has received multiple awards in design, short film, and documentaries. Working in both digital and hand-created illustration (including pen/brush & ink, watercolours and acrylic), three of Stephen's large format acrylic works were displayed in the 2021 Contagious Art Exhibition at The Gallery in Ballito, South Africa. His most recent works have combined design and illustration for numerous fiction book covers.

Select works can be found as prints on Society6

The Gallery (KwaZulu-Natal), March 2021


The Company of Birds – Cover Design/Illustration



Waypoint Seven – Cover Design (2024)


Display Typeface Design: Adinkra-Ntumy Font



Design & Typography: Stephen Embleton, Illustration: Akintoba Kalejaye


Celestial Machine (Dhlo-dhlo monolith) 2024

Celestial Machine (Dhlo-dhlo monolith) 2024



The Art of Sauúti:
Various pieces from Mothersound: The Sauútiverse Anthology 2023







Various pieces from Mothersound: The Sauútiverse Anthology 2023




BSFA's Fission #3 Cover Design




A tribute to fellow African speculative fiction writer and lovely human, Nick Wood.



Jorge Luis Borges – Stephen Embleton (24 May 2023)


Jorge Luis Borges – Stephen Embleton (24 May 2023)– Detail


Jorge Luis Borges – Stephen Embleton – 24 May 2023 (FULL)



"The Good Nigerian" by David Dison (2023)


FULL COVER: "The Good Nigerian" by David Dison (2023)


"Yamtarawala, the Warrior King" by Henry Akubuiro (2023) – watercolour

Henry Akubuirois's a historical dramatic play.


Full cover: "Yamtarawala, the Warrior King" by Henry Akubuiro (2023)


(2023) The Lake Goddess by Flora Nwapa (2023 Edition)

Paperback (Feb 2023)


Paperback (Feb 2023)



(2023) Cover Design for Ikenna Okeh's 2023 (Crime Novel)
Henry Louis Gates Jr Fellowship Brand Design (2022)


Wild Dog Road Signage (2022)


Bones & Runes Book Cover & Illustrations (2021/2022)

“Lunar Ascension” (Ink and brush) (2021)


Spot Series (digital) (2021)



Light Flight Freedom (digital)(2020)


Freedom of Flight (digital) (2020)


Tree Person (digital) (2021)

The original ink & brush...
Detail



Thrashing (1.5 x 0.5m) Acrylic on Canvas (2021)


River Crossing (1.2 x 0.9m) Acrylic on Canvas (2021)


(2020) Soul Searching Novel Design (SF Novel)



Riley (watercolour) (2019)


Seating Spaces (digital) (2020)

Original Ink Illustration Detail (2020)

Seating Spaces – pen & ink

Bay Windows detail

Final touches on "Studio"

Studio detail

Earth Touch's MIPCOM DISPLAY STAND POSTER (Oct 2021 & March 2022 versions):

MIPCOM Oct 2021

MIPCOM March 2022 (extended)

Film Poster (2020)

Film Poster (2020)

Various Ink works


Inktober 2016


2009 Editorial Strip


1999 Flyboy Font Design

1999 Biltong Font Design


1998 Matchmaker Website Brand & Illustration


Stephen's double page spread design and poem (1997).

Featured in iJusi Issue #6 "V8 Power" 1997


Marketing Mix Design Profile Feature 1997

Stephen Embleton, a 23 year-old graphic designer and typographer, is applying creative design to the Net to produce award winning Websites.

1996-1997 Award winning personal site: seedPod
 1998 Sanlam Personal Web Site Awards
Category Winner – Philosophy (Graphic Design)

Visit the archived seedPod site here


Various logo designs and rebranding I have done since 2000. 

2019

2019

2020



2004


2004

2002


2000






Popular posts from this blog

Published Works

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2015-2024 Fiction: 'Land of Light' : 'Imagine Africa 500' speculative fiction anthology (2015/2016) (Speculative Fiction). 8,000 words. Read more...   (Malawi)/(UK reprint 2017) 'Veiled ':  2016 'Beneath This Skin' Edition of Aké Review (2016) (Fiction). 1,450 words.  Read here...   (Nigeria) 'Water' : 'The Short Story is Dead, Long Live the Short Story! Vol.2' anthology (2017) (Fiction). 3,100 words.  Available on Amazon  or Read Online (South Africa) 'Sub Migratio' : the debut edition of Enkare Review (2017) (Speculative Fiction). 3,500 words.  Read here...   (Kenya) 'Inktober' : 2018 edition of 'The Bloody Parchment' (2018) (SF/Horror). 1,250 words.  Available on Amazon .  (South Africa) 'The Girl with Two Bodies' : The Kalahari Review (Nov 2018) (Fantasy). 7,050 words.  Read here...  (South Africa) 'Journal of a DNA Pirate' : Volume 3 of 'AfroSF' (Dec 2018) (SF). 8,150 words.  ...
Read more

Adinkra Font & Book Title Design

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It was a real pleasure to be able to create something unique for a friend and Sauúti Collective colleague – Cheryl Ntumy – for her new novella coming out with Atthis Arts press: a custom display typeface and title design. Design & Typography: Stephen Embleton, Illustration: Akintoba Kalejaye Find Atthis Arts here. A latinised version of the Adinkra alphabet from Ghana (because Cheryl is Ghanaian!), it has some fantastic characteristics and a very modular form which made it a fun, yet simple, design to work on. I first focused on the letters needed for Cheryl's book cover, and then fleshed out the other characters, as well as creating a "light" version. One happy accident for the cover design was incorporating the "working" components of each letter in the design itself. i.e. when I work on fonts, I find the common weights (stroke thicknesses) and common shapes, and move these around to exact positions. And by making them separate bright colours enables m...
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ANNOUNCED: Bloomsbury Academic Acquires Essay Anthology

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  UPDATE: Cover Reveal April 2024 Great to part of this! Thanks, to Eugen Bacon, who initiated this over a year ago: Bloomsbury Academic will be publishing this essay anthology covering a HUGE range of topics and insights within Afro-Centred Futurisms, including my essay “Cosmologies and Languages Building Africanfuturism”. Afro-Centered Futurisms in Our Speculative Fiction is an accessible work of criticism that will appeal to scholarly readers and broader enthusiasts of Afrocentric and speculative literature.  British Fantasy Award winner Eugen Bacon (ed.)'s AFRO-CENTERED FUTURISMS IN OUR SPECULATIVE FICTION, an anthology of original artistic essays infused with creative excerpts from award-winning African writers on the futurisms in their speculative fiction; a new kind of African study in an evaluative gaze at African history, African spirituality, Afrosurrealism, 'becoming', black radical imagination, cultural identity, decolonizing queerness, myths, linguistic cosmolo...
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