Helen Entwisle is the avid collector and all-round industrious, creative person behind Hello Memo. Her prints and greeting cards are full to the brim with kitsch Americana, showcasing colours, characters and lettering that cheer the soul. Helen’s products are curiously nostalgic, causing even those born 30 years too late to yearn for the ‘good old days’.
I got in touch with Helen to find out what’s new at Hello Memo…

Hi Helen! Tell us a little something about yourself…
I’m Helen, I live in Leeds and work as an illustrator from my little studio at home (pictured.) I sell my work at artbook fairs and comic conventions. Also, I run workshops in screen printing, zine making and self publishing. I also collect lots of things, including typewriters, mid century kitsch, graph paper, flying birds, old tins, pottery dogs, the list goes on…

What connection is there between what you collect and why, and your work?
Collecting things goes hand in hand with my creative practice. If I’m not drawing the objects I’ve recently acquired, I’m using the lettering or the colour schemes as inspiration for new screen prints. Collecting things is my way of finding new forms of inspiration to make new work.

You recently travelled to America for 3 weeks and visited Portland and San Francisco. How do you feel this has influenced your practice?
Portland is the BEST city I have ever visited. I loved the feel of the place, so many independent shops and makers; everywhere I went had an element of do-it-yourself. I met some great artists in Portland- Nicole Lavelle, Will Bryant and Kate & Clifton Bingaman-Burt who all work together in a fantastic, creative space called ADX, and Brandon Wilson who makes some really good stuff. They were all so enthusiastic about what they were doing, and new work they wanted to make, it was great to see. I collected old photos, cocktail stirrers, super 8 film and more, some of which I intend to draw and make into a zine. On the road to San Francisco I collected some natural objects that I plan to paint directly onto.

How have you developed your style of drawing?
I like images that are simple and not over complicated. I love the style of illustration and product packaging from the 1950s and early 1960s, bold colours and striking fonts. I think the more designs I create, the better I get at putting together an image I feel is balanced and better at deciding when an image is finished and ready to screen print. The more I draw the more my style becomes apparent. It’s one of those things you’ve got to keep working at in order to keep improving.

What do you love about screen printing?
Whenever I draw anything I always think about how I could turn that image into a screen print. It has been my favourite medium ever since I learnt the process at college ten years ago. I love the clean look of a screen printed image, the way the print sits on surface of the paper and how an image looks when the layers don’t quite align. Screen printing allows me to create multiples that I can sell but also retain the hand made element. Each item I make I produce myself from start to finish; for me that’s what its all about.

Tell us about Ten Fingers.
Ten Fingers is a zine I began putting together in 2010. Each issue is a limited edition of 100; each zine is fully screen printed and hand assembled by me. It’s a collaborative project. I invite 7 creative friends to take part in each issue and produce an image working to a theme. I want the zines to tell a little story about each artist; we spend a lot of time working on freelance projects for other people, so I thought it would be nice to do something more personal. I am currently developing issue 3 which will be finished late spring-early summer this year.

What projects do you have on the go at the moment?
Currently I’m working on branding for a new textile accessories label, lots of hand drawn lettering, issue 3 of Ten Fingers zine, new greetings card designs, and planning new workshops that I’ll be teaching in the coming months. I’m also working on a special ten colour screen print that will be a limited edition of ten to celebrate my first ten years of screen printing. I’d say I’m pretty busy really, 2012 has started off well!

Lovely, thanks Hello Memo!