Our Story

Why this company exists

KK Automotive Art was started because of a gap that anyone who likes cars will recognise. If you want a phone case, a mug or a print carrying a car you actually care about, what the market mostly offers is a manufacturer's badge printed on a generic import. Original automotive artwork, reproduced properly, was almost impossible to buy.

Our founder and CEO, Alexis Pratsides, came at that from the technical side. The problem was not finding artists who could draw a car. It was finding a way to reproduce their work on a curved, mass-produced object without losing the thing that made it worth looking at.

The artwork

Every design we sell is original artwork, commissioned or created in house. Nothing is licensed clip art and nothing is a manufacturer's logo.

Berni Reeves, one of the established names in automotive art, signed with us exclusively after several weeks of correspondence and a great many print samples, which were needed to prove the reproduction was good enough to put his name on. Alongside him we built an in-house team, including Belizabeth Guerrero, who came to us from Spain with an automotive obsession she has had since childhood, and Yavola, trained in Italy and Turkey and a self-confessed lover of classic cars.

Getting the printing right

This was the expensive part, and the part that nearly stopped the company.

We bought and tested printing machines that cost tens of thousands of pounds each and could not hold colour. The problem was rarely the resolution. It was colour profiling: a British racing green that came out olive, a papaya orange that came out brown, a red that shifted between one batch and the next. For artwork whose whole point is a particular colour on a particular car, that is not a small defect.

After a long stretch of getting nowhere with suppliers in the Far East, we started again with engineers and colour profilers in the United Kingdom and Ireland. That took months and a lot of test prints. It is why the artwork, the design, the manufacture, the machinery and even the packaging now come from the UK and Ireland, north and south, and it is the reason we can put a colour on a case and have it be that colour.

Made when you order it

Nothing here is printed in advance. Your case, mug or print is made after you order it, for the exact device or size you chose, and it is made one at a time.

That is slower than pulling a box off a shelf and we think it is worth it. There is no warehouse of last season's designs, nothing made in the hope that somebody buys it, and nothing thrown away at the end of a season. It also means a new design can join the range the week it is drawn, and a new iPhone the month Apple ships it.

Who we are

KK Automotive Art is a trading name of KK London (Designs & Fashion) Limited, registered in England and Wales, company number 12968488, VAT registration number GB371399079. Our registered office is 1 Davies Meadow, East Hanney, Wantage, OX12 0GG.

You can read more about our founder on Alexis Pratsides' page, or get hold of us on 020 7046 1295 and info@kkdesignslondon.com.