The Origin
Martin Jones Studio began with something personal — creating posters for my unborn son. That first project sparked a genuine interest in graphic design: the craft of typography, the logic of composition, and the satisfaction of making something that communicates clearly and feels beautiful.
Fuelled by creativity and the joy of making, I started exploring different styles, mocking up new designs and refining my skills. What began as a bedtime project quickly evolved into a small Etsy shop where I could share my digital art with a wider audience.
The Work
The studio output ranged from typographic posters and minimalist prints to more experimental digital pieces. Each design was a chance to explore a new aesthetic direction — editorial minimalism, bold colour blocking, hand-lettering styles — and see what resonated with an audience outside my professional bubble.
The process was deliberately unstructured: no client brief, no stakeholder review. Just a blank canvas and the question of what I actually wanted to make. That freedom taught me a lot about my own visual sensibility and gave me a creative practice entirely separate from my day job.
What I Took From It
The shop paused when my son arrived — parenthood has a way of reprioritising things — but the creative habit stuck. The experience sharpened my eye for typography, composition and visual hierarchy in ways that feed directly into my product and design work today. It also gave me an early lesson in what it means to put work out into the world and let an audience decide what they value.
Skills Developed
- Visual composition and typographic hierarchy from first principles
- Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop across print and digital formats
- Understanding of what resonates with a general audience vs. a design-literate one
- Creative confidence — making and publishing work without a safety net
