John Coyle 1974 – 2013

John Coyle was a much loved and respected member of the team at Toolstop and worked as our chief graphic designer from December 2008 until his sudden and tragic death on 15th February 2013.

John will be remembered as a quiet, humorous and clever guy who contributed hugely to Toolstops success.

This montage of Johns work is meant as a tribute but also reminds us of the fantastic talent he had.

One of the first jobs we asked John to do was to design a Christmas Card to send out to our website subscibers and this is what he came up with:

The following year we exhibited our tools at the Outdoor and Caravan Show in Glasgow and John designed this "Guess How Many Tools" competition for everyone who visited our stand, we particularly liked Miss Disco Pants – can you guess how many are in there?

It was Neils birthday and he got a cake with a guy on it which was supposed to look like himself, however it looked more like John.

Neil was interviewed over the phone for DIY Week Magazine and was asked to provide a photograph. John transformed him from Mr Bald to Mr. Hair.

Another christmas idea we had was to have another "Guess How Many Tools" competition.  John designed a great image with 37 tools in it.  Our favourite is Rudolphs nose being lit by the Bosch laser.

John was responsible for 2 characters who regularly pop up on our blog.  First was Mr. Toolstop, a tradesman who was always after a bargain and then there was The Power Tool Spy who would exclusively uncover new power tools.

The Toolstop Highland Games were in 2010 and John designed this, incorporating the spirit of the games with some tools.

Wayne Rooney was the brunt of many a Toolstop Joke and when we proclaimed that grinders were better than Rooney because…. John provided the artwork.

Toolstop took our first foray into the world of printed catalogues and John designed the cover something like this.

One of Johns concepts was "the man with the arms" holding numerous tools which can be seen above as well as below in our billboard.

John liked to make fun of his work colleagues, particularly Neil and Mark. He was always looking for ways to "photoshop" them, like when he transformed them into Subbuteo men.

And an annual event was for John to use photoshop to stage the awarding of the Toolstop Power Tool Oscar, see how he annoyed Mark by making him "fat" and Neil "skinny"

This is just a small selection of some of the excellent work produced by John. What are your memories of John and his work at Toolstop? Let us know in the comments below.