Zombie came together in 2010 during the final year of our illustration degree at Kingston University. We were looking for a handful of like-minded people that we could bounce ideas off of & promote one another once we’d graduated. The name came about after obsessively listening to the band ‘Dead Man’s Bones’ whilst freaking out over our final year exhibition; there’s an aptly named tune called ‘My Body’s A Zombie For You’ & it just stuck. Plus as a group of solely girls we wanted a fairly unisex identity.

After becoming official we installed a pop up shop & workshops day in summer 2010 at Brixton Village. Working with adults & children we discovered a knack for tailoring workshops to the public with a strong emphasis on drawing & image making. As a group we’ve always had a strong idea about using pared back design to communicate visually & engage the public.

So far we have had the immense pleasure to work with Tate Britain, Design Museum, House of Illustration, Ministry of Stories & British Library on a range of projects. When given the beautiful main hall of Tate Britain we threw ourselves into making a giant three metre long Toblerone shaped drawing board which we scrambled together in one of our gardens the night before. Thankfully it all paid off & we had an incredible jam-packed day making an underworld illustration on what can only have been one of the most stinking hot days of the year.

Since then we’ve worked continued to work on a variety of projects from window displays, pop up shops & most recently our upcoming show ‘Fathoms Deep’. A couple of months ago we put out a nautically themed brief asking people to pitch their ideas for Fathoms Deep. We had an incredible response and had to whittle down well over 100 submissions to just nine illustrators who we are really excited to be working with. We are over the moon that the show will be held at the Hayward Gallery for three weeks this May as part of ‘This Is Not A Pop Up’ series.

As Zombie we are fortunate that among us we have a real variety of skills from handyman to organiser extraordinaire keeping us on our toes & making us a bit of a many-headed beast. On top of that it always helps to work with your pals.

Visit Zombie’s website here.
Follow them on Twitter here.
Find them on Facebook here.

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