The Story Behind the Rats
- Aug 7
- 2 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
DESIGN | AUGUST 26
One year ago, right in the middle of a frozen North London winter, there was a girl sitting at the centre of her bed in a 3-story-high shared flat. Her guts tell her that the bed is where she will produce her greatest work. What she didn’t yet know is that a fresh intruder has made their way into the corner of her room.
Illustration by Bua Pavinee
From time to time, she’d swivel her neck, to keep the cramps at bay. She’d turn her neck towards the left, then right, and back again: she sees her desk in its ususal place, familiar. the brown carpet, yes. socks dangling on the chair, sure. A long narrow tail? No. It moved like a flash of lightling, surely the speediest thing that has ever stepped foot in that room. Her body shivered and her heart stoped. She knew she had met her london rat.
Unsurprizingly, that girl is me, Bua. When I gathered my soul back into my body, with a shivering hand I held my ipad, and drew the narrow tail, the medium-sized rugby body with a small guilty face. Late at night, I presented this rat - my rat, to Arthur, as the only surviving evidence of what I saw. He was charmed. That night, passing the ipad back and forth, we drew all our friends as rats: pink tails, snivering eyes, but still in their usual charmingly dirty dungeries and baggy jumpers and grassy parkas.
Those rats became a little animation we called The Rats We Saw. It was also where the rat that would eventually become our logo.
This store is for all of us London Rats.
Animation by Arthur Yu and Bua Pavinee
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