David Shrigley designs a stationery range for Tiger

Artist David Shrigley has created a range of stationery and products for Danish retail chain Tiger, recently renamed Flying Tiger Copenhagen. 

The Strong Messages collection includes a set of drawing pencils labelled in Shrigley’s unmistakable handwriting with messages such as “Words are boring”, “I’m illiterate”, and “Make art not friends”.

He has also designed a set of colouring pencils in a case adorned with a cat, and a message: “Coloured pencils for making nice drawings of cats, flowers, etc.”

Among the huge range of products are phone and tablet cases saying “Kill the computer”, shower curtains, bags, weighing scales, trays, guitar plectrums and socks, decorated with new and existing Shrigley artworks. There’s also a miniature version of Shrigley’s Really Good sculpture, to be unveiled on London’s Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square later this month.

Also part of the range is a sketchbook featuring a Shrigley self portrait, and red tape with the statements, “Sorry about all this” and “It wasn’t my idea” scrawled on them.

Shrigley has designed covers for a series of notebooks, including one with a minimal landscape on the cover, annotated with “Sky, sun, mud”. Others feature drawings titled “Sorry I fell asleep whilst you were talking”, “We hate meetings”, and “I want to look like this”, featuring a black and white illustration of a coiffured poodle.

“The nice thing about working with Flying Tiger Copenhagen is that they make things that everybody can have,” Shrigley says. They are very humble as objects and I kind of like the humility of those artworks. It is about reaching a very big audience with art objects and for them to be very accessible. You don’t want it to be an exclusive thing. You want it to be a democratic thing.”