While volunteering with the Trivallis media team, I was tasked with designing a large wall decal for the main reception area. As Trivallis is a housing association in Rhondda Cynon Taff (RCT), I chose to link the mural to designs I had created for the meeting rooms on the upper floors of the building.
Alongside adapting the existing designs, I created multiple new vector illustrations of iconic places in RCT. Each required careful attention to detail to ensure they remained recognisable. In particular, some buildings were difficult to recognise as silhouettes, so I added windows and structural details to define their shape, scale and perspective.
To create a background that also referenced the RCT region, I collected photographs of the surrounding valleys and stitched them together into a continuous, flowing hilltop. While the initial block-coloured hills looked rather ragged and disjointed, I refined them through multiple iterations to work in unison with the landmarks, sometimes hugging taller buildings and other times providing space for the hillside statues and monuments.
While placing each element, I aimed to keep the composition as geographically accurate as possible. For example, buildings in the south are on the left while northern ones are to the right, the stone circle monument found above Pontypridd is placed above the town itself.
After assembling and connecting all elements within the spread, I refined the colour palette to ensure each object stood out clearly and did not blend with its surroundings.
With Pontypridd being the home of the Welsh national anthem, we thought it important to include this within the mural design. I explored several ways of incorporating it and ultimately chose to include the music itself. The sheet music is presented on flowing wisps of wind that move through the design while the lyrics hang beneath them. It was important to me that the chords were represented accurately so they could be recognised by anyone able to read sheet music.
The mural was one of the final updates made to the building and has undergone a few changes since I left Trivallis. For example, the colour palette was updated to include a deeper shade of blue, helping certain buildings and details stand out more clearly and the English translation of the Welsh national anthem was removed from the hilltops.
I am very proud to have my work up in the Trivallis building and I would like to especially thank the Media & Comms team for welcoming me during my time with them.
To see the other work that I've done on the Trivallis meeting rooms, please visit my projects page.
