art with style
The Ford Fiesta has been completely transformed and given a totally new look inspired by the best of current design. To put this claim to the test, we invited three exciting young artists - filmmaker Tom Dean, illustrator Al Murphy, and designer Colin Henderson - to sum up the essence of this new small car.Just as you’d expect from the country's most happening image-makers, all three are producing highly original artworks inspired by the all new Ford Fiesta. Tom is creating a Polaroid flick book, Al is building a psychedelic set, while Colin is drawing a colourful picture, inspired by magic carpets. Have a look at their unique artworks in the artists' galleries.
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  • Colin Henderson

    Pre interviewColin Henderson, 24, is an illustrator with an obsessive approach to his work. In preparation for making his artwork for the all new Ford Fiesta - a large picture, with the car at the centre - he went to view it at the London Motor Show and took over 200 pictures of it. "Including all the details," he says. "Now, I’m bringing those elements into a pattern, which I’m going to make into a big drawing."Colin works with all manner of material - he’s even made t-shirts and jumpers featuring his incredible patterns. But for the Fiesta, he decided to go back to basics and get out his pens and paper instead. "It’ll have the various car parts on it," he says, adding that those parts might ‘transform into something else‘. For example, headlights might become eyes, wing mirrors turn into hats, hubcaps spin on sticks. He wants to put it all in a tropical-type setting, the idea being to make the Fiesta appear "as if it has landed in the jungle and a tribe worships its arrival, like a god".Henderson takes inspiration from an eclectic range of sources, including old copies of National Geographic, books on ethnic art, gardening literature and children’s illustrators like Richard Scarry. "I love new patterns and compositions," says the artist, who is represented by the 'Unseen Agency', "and the new Ford Fiesta has given me loads of exotic ideas."Post interviewIllustrator Colin Henderson rejected a larger artwork in favour of a drawing on paper - and the result, on A1-sized paper, is vibrant and full of detail. Like a huge, accomplished doodle, it‘s all the more astonishing as Colin‘s mode of working is to simply draw freehand onto the paper. "It’s much better for me that way," he says. "I like to work in an organic, spontaneous way - I put my pen down and see where it goes."Not that Colin's drawing was unplanned. He made hundreds of preliminary sketches on graph paper of the cars’ various parts, and transformed them into lots of intriguing characters and motifs. "Every little character was related to a specific feature," he says. "For example, I made leaf patterns from the shape of the headlights."And there was an overriding concept, in that Colin began to think about the all new Ford Fiesta as the centre of a tribal culture. "So the car is bang in the middle and the biggest part of the drawing," he says. "It's the heart of this culture and all around are these characters and plants. It's a great big melting pot of images."It took him about five days, and he used fineliner pens in five colours - orange, purple, blue, green and red. His method of working mean that he had to think pretty clearly. "But that’s good. I like to have constraints. They makes me think a bit harder."Colin uses books on ethnic art as inspiration, and for the new Ford Fiesta job, he often reached for a library book called Africa on Film. "It had great pictures of clothing and musical instruments," he says. "They really give me ideas. But as much as I plan, the end product is never as I expect it. It often surprises me - and fortunately, this has turned out better than I thought."

  • Tom Dean

    Pre interviewFilm-maker Tom Dean is to make a film about the all new Ford Fiesta - using a model, a turntable borrowed from a motor show and some dazzling studio lights. It’s his way of showcasing the stunning new Fiesta from a new perspective while making a cool critique of the ‘girl and car’ format that has fortified the motor vehicle industry for decades. It also offers Dean a chance to try and produce a film with Polaroid photographs - he’s going to take something upwards of 360 Polaroid snaps and splice them together into the 30-second film."It’s a kind of hybrid of photography, film and art installation," says Tom, who hopes that the result will be somewhat like a ‘flick book’, those cartoon books that you read by flicking your thumb in one corner. The idea is that, as the Fiesta makes its 360-degree turn on its turntable, Dean and his team will take the snaps, which will then be re-photographed into a digital format and shaped into the short film.But why Polaroids? Digital photography is, after all, a lot easier. "It’s because I love them," says Tom. "Polaroids have that lovely, old-school fashion flavour." It’s their format that he likes: the square, white-bordered shape, the strong colours, the way they ‘fit into a pocket’.The stunning design of the new Fiesta being showcased by something as retro as Polaroids is an eclectic approach. "I hope it works," says Dean. "The new Fiesta will be the star of the film, and we’re trying to take it somewhere it normally wouldn’t go."Post interviewTom Dean’s film for the all new Ford Fiesta - made from several hundred Polaroid photographs put together in the form of a ‘flick book’ - has mostly gone the way that he hoped."We were planning on taking about 360 pictures, but we took more like 500 to 600 on the day," says Tom. "Some were ruined, but we’re using more than we previously thought we would."Given the numbers of photographs Dean and his team had to take, it was a long, gruelling day in the studio. "But we kept going - even when it was getting a bit fraught," says Tom. "On a few occasions the lighting wasn’t exactly consistent, but apart from that, it was relatively plain-sailing."In any case, Tom didn’t want it to look like a "slick animation. The reason I wanted to use Polaroids is that I love their chemical reaction, the miraculous way they form an image as you watch." Indeed, it’s a bit of an elegy to the Polaroid snapshot - the company discontinued its film this year - as well as a powerful way to show off the Ford Fiesta. "I’ve always really liked Polaroid as a format and think it brings out the design cues of the new Fiesta," says Tom.So, in the film, some of the Polaroids might have a bit of ‘smudging‘, and the colours might not exactly match up. Katie, the model, pulls some extraordinary acrobatic poses in the film, testifying to her circus training, and all in all, it’s a playful, exciting piece of animation.Then there’s the musical score. By composer Tom Marsh, it incorporates sampled car noises including the sounds of doors slamming, from which Marsh has fashioned a beating rhythm. It complements the jerky film perfectly - almost as if an update on the early 20th century ‘silent’ movie with rolling piano score. Then, at the end of the film, Katie holds up a Polaroid, which the camera focuses on, and the camera dives in. "It’s a kind of ‘fashion eats itself’ moment," says Tom. "It’s a never-ending film - if you so choose."

  • Al Murphy

    Pre InterviewIllustrator Al Murphy, 31, has made a name for his madcap graphics - all cartoon figures, slogans and jangling colours. He had several ideas for the Ford Fiesta art project, but has decided to opt for a photographic still to be taken of a set, where the car will be photographed in the centre of a psychedelic montage, surrounded by figures, motifs and oddball sayings. "It's a typically crazed idea of mine," says Al.Al’s quirky illustrations have graced all manner of publications and advertisements. So he's a seasoned professional, but at the same time, he allows a certain serendipity to enter every project. "I like to do things by the seat of my pants," he says. Some of the elements that he has already sketched out may change, including a green bearded wizard figure at the centre of the tableau, rising above the Fiesta and topped by a huge glowing eyeball. "The wizard is the master of ceremonies," says Al. "He’s casting a spell about time travel which, in a funny way, is how I feel about the Fiesta. It’s a car that is a part of my past, and with this new model, it’s got an amazing future."Some of Al’s other inspirations for this piece come from previous, beloved books and films - Yellow Submarine, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Alice in Wonderland - and there will probably be about 20 illustrations orbiting around the car. For his part, Al hopes it's all going to work: "I'm nervous that it'll go horribly wrong," he says. "But it's a very exciting project. It reminds me of when I was starting out."Post InterviewAl Murphy, having chosen the idea to do a cheeky, psychedelic tableau with the all new Ford Fiesta as the centrepiece, now calls the process "a massive learning curve."There were all kinds of things I hadn't thought about," he sighs. "For example, I thought I could paste pictures on Perspex and then photograph them. But Beanie (Brownjohn, the set constructor) reminded me that the flash would dazzle off it." The solution? "I pasted the pictures on MDF, hung them with fishing wire from a wooden frame, and then retouched the frame out of the photograph using digital technology. It was all a bit 'Blue Peter'." Indeed, the result is like children's TV with a weird twist. "Well, I wanted something that looked like a macabre Playschool set," he says.Some of the elements are meaningful, others not. A pink elephant sits in front of the Fiesta, made by a fabricator in London to Al’s bizarre design. Then there's a man's head to one side: "That's an old neighbour, Reg, who passed away recently." The ginger girl is "an old girlfriend". The central green-bearded wizard, with his all-seeing eyeball, has stayed. Then there's the slogan: "Every nothing is really something". "Good, isn't it?" says Al. "I made it up. Means absolutely nothing. But I love to use slogans."It took a day to make the set, and another day to shoot it, courtesy of top photographer Ellis Parrinder. Al, who is represented by the 'Unseen Agency', didn't exactly enjoy it. "I had a real artist’s strop," he says. "I thought it wasn't going to work." But by the time Ellis’s assistant sat inside the All New Ford Fiesta and waved two torches to get the squirly light in the windscreen, Al was much happier. "It was meant to reflect ghosts from the past, shadows of the future and time travel," he says, "and I like to think it has worked."


  • Watch the new Fiesta TV commercial, brought to you by Ford.

  • Join Colin around East London and discover the inspiration behind his work.

  • Watch the new Fiesta TV commercial, brought to you by Ford.

  • Watch the final piece by professional film-maker Tom Dean.

  • Tom discusses the shoot and explains the magnitude of creating his Fiesta animation.

  • Watch the new Fiesta TV commercial, brought to you by Ford.

  • Illustrator Al Murphy takes us around the studio and explains his perception of the Fiesta.