HELS x The British Motor Show — Car Culture, Colour & Wrap Champions
This summer I was very fortunate to be one of the hosts at The British Motor Show — a brilliant festival-style event built around car culture, with music, displays, track demonstrations, immersive experiences, talks, competitions, food and plenty going on for the whole family.
Being part of the hosting team was already something I was really excited about, but alongside that I was also asked to create a wrap concept for The Wrap Champions Competition, working with Avery Dennison and Charters Peugeot.
That was a huge yes from me.
I really wanted my presence at the show to bring together both sides of what I do — presenting and hosting within the automotive world, but also my artwork and the visual identity of HELS. So being given the opportunity to design something that would actually be applied to a car during the event felt like the perfect crossover.
THE DESIGN
The brief centred around the Peugeot 208, with the wrap teams applying the designs live on the second day of the show.
I’d been obsessing over combinations of greens and blues for a while because they feel incredibly fresh, bold and vibrant together, so that became the starting point for the colour palette.
From there, I pulled in a few visual elements that have become part of the HELS world.
My dripping crossbones appear throughout a lot of my work and represent a mixture of things I’ve always been drawn to — my roots in custom car culture, my love of pirates, tattoos and old-skool motorsport iconography.
Then, of course, there had to be my lucky No. 13.
I’d also developed my own HELS camo pattern, and once I started combining the camo, crossbones, graphic shapes, colour and typography, it felt like everything clicked into place.
The Peugeot 208 has a really strong shape for graphic work too, so I wanted the design to feel like it belonged to the car rather than simply being laid over the top of it.
FROM MOCK-UP TO REALITY
Below are my original mock-ups, followed by images of the finished wrap — and I absolutely love how it came together.
Seeing something that started life on my screen become a full-size physical car is always such a great feeling, especially when you can stand back and see all of those little details working together in real life.
And naturally, I had to match.
I’ve got my coordinating HELS bag, and I’ve also designed a few other complementary pieces inspired by the wrap to celebrate the collaboration and bring the whole visual story together.
THANK YOU
A huge thank you to The British Motor Show and Avery Dennison for welcoming me into the team for the weekend and giving me the opportunity to be part of something so creative.
Thank you also to Charters Peugeot for providing the fantastic 208s, and to every member of the wrap teams for the skill, patience and seriously impressive work that went into bringing the designs to life:
Prestige Graphics
Miss Wrapz
CMK
Watching talented wrappers take a digital concept and physically build it onto a car is such a satisfying process, and it made the whole project even more special.
THE SHOW ITSELF
If you haven’t been to The British Motor Show, definitely keep it on your radar for next year.
The people, the atmosphere and the energy across the weekend were electric, and it felt like a proper celebration of car culture rather than simply rows of cars on display.
I don’t go to a huge number of car shows anymore, so the ones I choose to highlight are the ones that genuinely leave a positive impression on me — and this one absolutely did.
I’m aiming to be back next year too.
Until then, I’m very happy that a little piece of the HELS world made it onto a Peugeot 208.
Car culture, differently.