Hello,

This is the story of a pattern called Queue for the Zoo and how my design life started.

Once upon a time I used to write stories.

In 2013, I sent one to a literary agent. On the front of the manuscript I drew a tiger.

That night the agent had dinner with a designer friend of hers, who was looking for an artist who could draw animals.

The next day my phone rang. It was the designer, asking me if I wanted to design a fabric for a company called Liberty.

I knew vaguely that Liberty was a historic department store.

I’d never done any kind of fabric design before, so I said okay. It sounded interesting. I thought they’d ask lots of people to make designs and probably wouldn’t pick mine.

Apart from asking me to ‘draw some animals’ they didn’t give me any direction.

I made a list of animals. The first I drew was a flamingo, and its foot looked a bit nasty so I put a pair of socks on them.

After that I did a zebra in red glasses and a number of other animals with hats and shoes and suitcases and things. The zebra has now become my O.K.David logo.

At the end of it, I’d done about twenty pictures. When Liberty asked me what they should call the pattern I said Animal Jam, because they looked like they were stuck in traffic. Liberty didn’t like Animal Jam, so I said Queue for the Zoo.

Since then Queue’s become one of Liberty’s classics, ie their bestsellers. It’s been re-released in new colourways, and I see it used in lots of different places.

I have a lot to thank Queue for the Zoo for, because before then I’d never considered working as an artist or designer.

David