Woop. What better word to start the New Year with. A sheer expression of joy.
And what more appropriate name for a design studio who came together over a shared love of collective nouns – that’s off the scale on my geekometer!
Woop Studios consists of Miraphora Mina, Eduardo Lima, Harriet Logan, and Mark Faulkner, four friends who came together to bring collective nouns like a parliament of owls, a loveliness of ladybirds, a wake of vultures, to life through a series of limited edition prints.
They were inspired by a book called An Exaltation of Larks by James Lipton, which brings together over a thousand ‘real and fanciful group names’. They promise not to have made up any of the collective nouns they’ve used (it must be tempting!) but do admit that “some of the collective terms listed have real pedigree and lineage and can be found in The Oxford English Dictionary, James Lipton’s 1968 An Exaltation of Larks or even The Book of St. Albans published in 1486 – some are of a more dubious and newer vintage than the original terms of venery.” But they make no apologies for being eclectic and want people to have fun with words and enjoy their graphic interpretation of them.
The prints have now developed into a book, A Zeal of Zebras, and there’s even a special print to help save Sumatran Tiger in conjunction with London Zoo. A Streak of Sumatran Tigers features a Sumatran tiger with 300 tiger-striped dots to represent the number estimated to be left in the wild. And Woop Studios donates half of the sale price of each print to Zoo Enterprises Limited, which donates all its taxable profits to Zoological Society of London (registered charity no. 208728).
Geeky, gorgeous and generous – what’s not to love?!
