LONDON -- Love it or hate it, the British seaside is a very unique kind of place.
Decades after the public started jumping on budget airlines to the sun, abandoning their home-grown resorts in the process, numerous places along the coast have been left looking a bit... sad.
Designer Jack Hurley has created a range of very honest posters depicting life in some of these coastal spots and just launched a website to showcase his work.
Under slate grey skies, the likes of Blackpool and Bournemouth are shown in all their faded glory. From Redcar in North Yorkshire to Teignmouth in Devon, meanwhile, life is shown as a series of almost Hogarthian vignettes, full of drunkards and dead whales, graffitied pavements and boarded-up shops.
"I grew up by the seaside - I was born in Portsmouth and moved to Devon when I was 7 - so I'm accutely aware of what the coast is all about," Hurley told Mashable, adding that he was inspired to create the posters by "a love for the vintage travel aesthetic and a fondness for lowbrow chuckles."
"I live in Leeds these days and people often ask me why the hell I'd move there from Devon but that's the thing about the coast: We have a very rose-tinted glasses thing going on."
"When it's a nice day, it looks super nice while if it's a bleak day, it looks unremittingly grim - and there's also the fact that for six months a year entire towns basically shut down. Combine that with a somewhat senior demographic, years of slow decay plus the weird way that British people feel the need to have a punch up as soon as they get a whiff of sea air and you begin to understand why the younger generation tend not to stick about."
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The images are made "with a certain level of affection," Hurley says. "In some ways these posters are a very British way of saying 'I love you...sort of.'"
The designs are available as prints or cards, or on T-shirts, mugs or phone cases. Hurley takes requests and Southport, Whitby and Scarborough are potentially next on the hitlist.