Based in Broadstairs, Kent, Top City Art & Design is run by husband-and-wife team Daniel and Kim, combining original illustration with thoughtful product design to create distinctive, highly giftable retail products.

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Daniel is a self-taught illustrator with over ten years’ experience selling artwork through his other business, DGriffinArt. Since 2016, DGriffinArt has served around 40,000 customers, with a particular focus on detailed sports artwork and stadium-inspired prints. His work has also been stocked by the National Football Museum, and the Design Museum shop as part of the Designing the Beautiful Game exhibition.

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Daniel’s fascination with urban detail began with football stadiums. From a young age, he was captivated by their scale, architecture, and cultural importance, sketching famous grounds from every conceivable angle. That early obsession grew into a love of crowd scenes, architecture, busy streets and places filled with atmosphere, the kind of scenes where every building, sign, person and small detail helps capture the character, energy and essence of a place.

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Top City Art & Design was launched in 2025 as Daniel’s work began to expand beyond sport into cities, landmarks, venues and destinations. Each artwork is carefully built to capture not just what a place looks like, but how it feels: its energy, character and identity. Kim’s eye for style, product design and presentation brings another important layer to the business, helping turn Daniel’s detailed artwork into products that feel considered, giftable and retail-ready. Together, Daniel and Kim make a strong creative combination - blending original illustration with thoughtful product development to create distinctive pieces that invite people to look closer and keep discovering new details.

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Daniel creates the artwork using a blend of digital 3D composition and hand-drawn illustration. Scenes are first built and arranged in Blender, a 3D design program, to establish structure, perspective and depth, before people and other small details are added using a tablet and stylus. This process allows each piece to feel both carefully constructed and full of life.

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Kim works alongside Daniel across the product side of the business, focusing on sampling, materials, packaging, suppliers, fulfilment, quality control, customer communication and product development. Together, they turn Daniel’s artwork into finished retail products that are designed to feel distinctive, well-made and commercially appealing.

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Top City Art & Design creates artwork-led products for gift shops, visitor attractions, venues, destinations and retailers. The artwork can be applied across prints, mugs, tumblers, apparel, packaging and bespoke gift ranges, as well as licensed or developed collaboratively for custom retail collections.

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At its heart, the business is about creating products with a strong sense of place, pieces that feel personal, memorable and worth keeping.