As you may well know, we are huge instagram fans, and find a lot of inspiration scrolling through our phones on our coffee breaks. We love to share our favourite accounts with you, and thought it was about time we sang the praises of a certain illustrator.
Here at Les Enfants, we derive inspiration from everything – movies, books, art, but more often than not, instagram! Sometimes throughout a busy day it is helpful to have a little pick me up, and Nina Cosford’s work is exactly that.
Nina’s work is charming and whimsical, with a vibrant use of colour and child like marker lines. Wether or not they are meant ironically, we also secretly aspire to look as chic as the girls in her style pieces. Who doesn’t want to rock dungarees – they are the perfect party planner uniform!
What we adore most though, about Cosfords illustrations, is their subject matter. Nina really explores what it is to be a modern woman. Her drawings represent women of all types doing everyday tasks, poke fun at our silly body hang ups, explore feminism and celebrate diversity.
Nina has even published a book celebrating womanhood in all forms, wisely titled ‘My Name is Girl‘. This book is full to the brim with hilarious diagrams, sketches and magazine like quiz pages, like this brilliant ‘What to Wear’ page, which reminds us of dressing paper dolls. The book celebrates all things lady, from our various alter egos to our hairy legs, in a child-like, humorous style.
We think this would be a fantastic gift for teenage children – and, admittedly, slightly older children too – we were glued from cover to cover over a lunch break. This one really is a coffee table staple, and will give you a good chuckle. You can find Nina’s brilliant book on Amazon.
A London based illustrator, soon after her graduation from Kingston university, Nina developed a fantastic series of pop up accordion travel guides. Her work was later spotted by HBO, who commissioned Cosford to work on promotion for the hit series, (and one of our personal favourites), ‘Girls’.
Since this, the illustrator has worked with an impressive line up of clients and magazines, including Jamie Oliver, Nokia and Marie Claire, and produced a fantastic line of books exploring inspiring females, from Coco Chanel to Frida Kahlo.
If you love child like illustration, and enjoy your humour with a subtle slice of feminism, Nina is the lady for you, and is certainly our ‘instragram follow of the week’. Just be warned, once you start scrolling, it is pretty hard to stop!
Whilst you are surfing, be sure to check out our other favourite illustrator accounts, including bymariaandrew , and pug lover gemmacorrell.