Breathing life into Bendifolk

The trust has been providing incredible opportunities for their adventurers for over 40 years. During that time they’ve put together a set of ‘Bendifolk’; iconic figures who represent the different activities the trust offers.  

We’re proud supporters of the Bendrigg Trust and have worked with them in the past to provide some hands-on support. We’ve also used our in-house skill set to create promotional materials that they might use for fundraising and to help generate interest.  

These characters are a bit more important than your average promo person. They’re designed in such a way that they can simply and effectively demonstrate a specific activity or adventure to a person who might find other forms of instruction a little more difficult.  

That means that it’s essential that they’re easy to recognise, understand and connect with.  

The characters were hand-drawn, which meant that reproducing them was difficult, time consuming and not the best quality. To solve that problem, we invited the trust to let us introduce their Bendifolk to a digital world.  

We started by digitising each Bendiperson. That meant taking the original design and re-creating a copy using graphic design software that would be high quality, easily manipulated and simple to reproduce.

Next, we worked on introducing some new characters to represent new activities.

“We updated the Bendifolk illustrations in such a way that preserved their hand drawn charm but also brought them into the digital age. The originals were redrawn and several new illustrations were created for new activities in the same fine line style using a Wacom drawing tablet. This was one of the most enjoyable projects I have worked on, it was an absolute pleasure to have the opportunity to modernise such a beloved character.”

Caitlin Elliott, Amphigean Graphic Design

Then, we wanted to make the most of the opportunity to breathe a little life into these wonderful characters who have been with the trust for so long. Along came an animated Bendiperson to invite users onto the Bendrigg website.

Finally, we took the opportunity to create some seasonal Bendifolk that the trust could use for promotion and events.

We hope to see these Bendifolk in circulation for the next 30 years… perhaps they might even be found as holograms by then!

“[The Bendifolk] are an important resource and the updated versions have been executed so beautifully by Amphigean. We’d like to say a huge thank you to the team for their outstanding professionalism and all of their support with this project, as well as their continued support as our Corporate Partner. We are incredibly grateful for everything they do to support our work.”

Kate McCallum, The Bendrigg Trust