Christopher King is a freelance graphic designer, illustrator, and font designer based in Somerset, near Bristol, UK.
Combining the powers of graphic design, illustration, and motion graphics, I create distinctive display fonts for film and television.
After a childhood consumed by books, films, and endless hours drawing, I left school with definite aspirations towards a career in art and design. I was lucky enough to find work as an assistant to the head designer for a small children’s book publisher just a few miles from home, which provided the pivotal experience in industry fundamentals while introducing me to the now obsolete paste-up process, just as it was being superseded by computer programs such as Photoshop, Quark XPress, and InDesign.
Moving to the City of Bath, I was once again surrounded by talented artists who taught me the creative, business, and technical aspects of publishing, and after five years as a senior designer on a successful range of illustrated pop-up books, I transitioned into a freelance career, working on newspaper layouts, menus, album covers, T-shirts, posters, video games, and branding projects.
During this period, a side-line in movie poster art caught the attention of Computer Arts and Photoshop Creative magazines, and I was featured in Matthew Chojancki’s best-selling book Alternative Movie Posters. I was also developing Wingsart Studio— part portfolio, part resource library, part font foundry— this became my venue for selling downloadable photography, illustrations, After Effects templates, and fonts.
These self-initiated projects were creatively satisfying and popular with other designers, becoming best-sellers on sites such as Creative Market, and eventually allowed me to take a year out to complete a diploma in motion graphics for film and television in London. Inspired by creative heroes such as Saul Bass, Dan Perri, and Pablo Ferro, this was a period devoted to film titles and opening/ending credit sequences.
Recently, I’ve worked with several major studios in the creation of film trailers, titles and branding concepts, and via Wingsart Studio have combined this professional experience into a series of graphic display fonts targeted at the film, music and television industry. These fonts have gained a reputation for their fun, retro aesthetic, and you’ve probably already seen them on Marvel’s She-Hulk, Dungeons & Dragons, Stranger Things, Apple Arcade and lots more.
