About Us and Our Design Journey
Our vision is to create beauty from where there might be decay, to do so ethically, using a recipe of colour, pattern and a positive attitude!
Who are BillingtonPix?
BillingtonPix is a new and exciting LGBT-owned photo and graphic design enterprise, based in London. My name is Matthew Baines and I am the founder of this exciting creation that was formed during Lockdown in 2020, drawing together my love of photography, graphic design and online digital skills.
The name BillingtonPix comes from a street that my ancestors used to live on when they first arrived in England from central Ireland around 1850. You can find out more about their experiences in Manchester, from what I have unearthed in what was known as Little Ireland. It's an experience I would not want to live through, but one, nonetheless, that has inspired me to make the most of this wonderful life and to create beauty where I see decay.
In my view our history defines us. Living around Southwark in London, it has made me realise just how important is social history. All the buildings that surround us meant something to those who designed them and reflected those who lived around the area. I take a lot of inspiration just from the shapes of the street views, whether photographically or abstract. More recently this has led me to explore the Japanese streetwear style of Harajuku and appreciate its beauty.
What do we sell?
As BillingtonPix, we focus on creating beautiful quirky and vintage style products, including apparel, stationery, homewares and digital downloads, all based on photographic and digital art.
Love Retro
We love retro style design and will draw inspiration from designers of the 20th Century to inform our work. Together with our urban photography we bring together a design aesthetic that uses the shapes and colors of urban modernity to design abstract patterns for our products. If you are looking for retro style interior design, or don't yet know what is retro style interior design then we can help inspire you. Our blogs talk about some of the most important graphic designers of the past 80 years, including in the movements of Mid Century Modern and 80s Memphis design.
Love Harajuku Fashion
We are also obsessed with Harajuku and you can find a growing number of this awesome Japanese-inspired design phenomenon on many of our fashion products, ranging from Fairy Kei to Yami Kawaii and Menhera Kei.
We play around with these different fashion styles in terms of t-shirts and accessories such as phone cases and tote bags. These statement pieces can help to display our identity to the world around us.
How it all began
Our story actually began with inspirational retro style greeting cards and the sheer frustration when searching for interesting photo greeting cards across the internet, especially during the Pandemic of 2020+.
Most of those cards for sale can be quite boring or twee. They are usually a closeup of a flower, or an atmospheric landscape, taken at sunrise or sunset. There's not really much readily available that has what I would call attitude that might reflect some of your personality.
There is a huge amount of philosophy behind our products. You can read more about this and why I am fairly obsessed with bricks! A lot of our greeting cards have architectural themes, such as Art Deco, Modernism, or more urban themes such as decay. When it comes to vintage style abstract design patterns, taking our inspiration from the shapes we see on the streets of urban London and transforming it into beautiful vintage style designs.
We are constantly adding to our product collections so keep checking back to see what is new! We also have a newsletter, which you can subscribe to to receive news and info on new products or sales!
You can see us also on Instagram - at @BillingtonPix!
Finally, we are a growing business, and welcome any feedback you might have. Please do get in touch.
Best,
Matthew