Every year the Association of Illustrators run a poster competition in conjunction with Transport for London. I have never entered before, but this year I decided to give it a go and I am thrilled to say my poster is now in the exhibition of the top 100 entries – on show at the London Transport Museum until September.

The theme was ‘Sounds of the City’, and I used the wonderful website London Sound Survey for inspiration – take a look, it’s full of fascinating sounds and archive clips. It also has a very carefully compiled section on references to sounds in London in print through the ages, and this is where I discovered a news clipping from 1951, about a baby elephant escaping from New Cross Empire. In its panic it ran into a nearby Post Office, causing customers to vault over the counter and stamps to scatter everywhere, trumpeting loudly all the while. The Post Office staff proudly reported afterwards that they hadn’t lost a single stamp. This delightful story inspired my entry, which I made entirely in collage, using letterpress blocks to print the ‘Parrrump’ sound. I even made my own set of stamps!