In 1979, two books shaped my formative years

A photo of the two book cover designs from 1979

Usborne's The Detective’s Handbook and The Guide to the Supernatural captivated my imagination in equal measure. This site is an imagined combination of those books – an engaging thematic prompt for me to overcome the quandary of 'what to draw?'. The order and frequency of new chapters will be random and slow - the intention is to have a bit of fun with it!

Latest Chapter:

A panoramic illustration of a late 1970s detective office. There's a lot going on, so take a seat and I'll walk you through everything! On the left wall, is the door, with a trench coat hanging on a hook. To the left of the door is a string of garlic, and around the welcome mat is a line of salt, with a plastic tub of Saxa salt, a popular brand of salt in the 70s. At the centre back of the room is an evidence board and street map, to which a moustached detective with rolled up shirt sleeves pins a polaroid photo. Inset to the left of the back wall are shelves with books, jars of ghosts, a severed hand in a glass case, a copy of the Yellow Pages, Dowsing Rods, Electromagnetic Field Detector and a 1970s SLR camera. Inset to the right are some dark grey metal filing cabinets, with Bubbles the Clown emerging from one of the open drawers. Bubbles is meant to be locked away, but somehow has escaped, and has revenge on his mind. Above the cabinets are three posters. The first is a photo of a UFO above a line of trees with the phrase 'I don't know what to believe' (a parody of the X-Files). The second is a girl with hair in bunches, sticking her tongue out, with the headline 'Have you seen this demon? Do not approach!'. The third, and final, poster features a balding man about to be sprayed in green goo, with the headline 'Ectoplasm health & safety'. On the right wall is a window with Venetian blinds rolled up, and the ghost of a victorian lady can be seen on other side of the glass. In front of the window a male detective sits, taking notes while speaking on a red rotary telephone. In the foreground, a female detective in a blue jumper reads one of many sheets emerging from the haunted typewriter. Next to her are a pile of papers, held down by an eerie stone head, a plate of biscuits and a boiling kettle in which a generic ghostly spirit can be seen in the steam.
The Detective's Office

Colophon

This is a little side-project by Jon Hicks of HICKS.design. It's drawn using vectors in Adobe Fresco on an iPad Pro. The site is built using Kirby and has an RSS Feed for updates.