Macy’s Workshop.

Macy's approached me to illustrate its advertisements for the Spring 2014 session of The Workshop at Macy's, a program that encourages and helps guide women and minority entrepreneurs in the retail and fashion industry.

Michele Stormer, senior creative manager at Macy’s, explains: "We had partnered with Sarah a few years earlier on a 4th of July fireworks poster and we've always loved her sense of typography – how it feels timeless yet current and trend-appropriate – and knew she could execute the direction for the campaign effortlessly. Her style easily appeals to a younger audience and we figured she was so spot-on for this campaign that she could execute it in her sleep ... I don't know if she would agree however!”

Well, I didn’t exactly do it in my sleep, but this certainly felt like I was on familiar territory having produced similar campaigns for Target and Boston University.

The team studied Carol Seitz's photographs of the entrepreneurs and discussed goals for the completed images. "The end result was to have Sarah's art marry the photography – not overpower it, and not be secondary to it either,” Michele says of the brief. "The illustrations, in partner with the photography, would be the element that captures your attention then draws you in to further investigate the ad and learn more.”

My job was to create lively, narrative pieces that captured the energy of both the Macy's Workshop team and the selected vendors – their products, craft, and determination - without using too many words, the hand-drawn illustrations (ink on paper) had to tell each person’s story.

Michele made this lovely comment about the job once it was finished. "Sarah's work was the final piece that made everything come together. It's a little odd when you see people at work hang some of the ads up at their desks as decoration – and these were not people I know or work with! Often that's the greatest sense of achievement because people usually try their hardest not to surround themselves with work-related memorabilia. The Multicultural Department at Macy's, which is responsible for The Workshop at Macy's, was extremely pleased with the outcome, to say the least, and thrilled to have a campaign that feels fresh and youthful.”

I can’t add much to that! Thanks Michele and team for a lovely job. I hope to do it again some day!

Extracts courtesy of Bernstein & Andriulli’s interview on their news page:
http://www.ba-reps.com/news/sarah-coleman-brings-her-magic-to-the-workshop-at-macy-s

LA Times' Festival of Books

One of my first jobs this year was to create these A2 ink-filled illustrations for the LA Times’ Festival of Books, and its sister festival After Dark.

The job of the images was to help the organisers promote the sunny April event with a set of word-driven illustrations. They’re on the site, on posters, in national newspapers and on t-shirts and all manner of other souvenir and promotional things.

They’d seen the image I’d done for Family Circle on my B&A folio page, and loved the organic colour, the pen-to-paper authenticity, if you like, of a piece done ‘in one take’. There’s a certain energy in pieces which are done quickly like that, with as little faffing about* as possible (*British term), which retains the spontaneity of whatever rough you did to start off with.

I asked for a list of terms to compile (stressing that you can never have too many) and I went right ahead and pencilled out the roughs at a large size. The first piece, 'Hail the Written Word,' was approved pretty much right away, with a fine tune here and there where the open book meets the heading.

The "Inspire Your Fire” piece took a bit longer as the headline needed three versions before it was signed off as ‘right' – and the burst of words actually went though four incarnations. Spontaneity can be very difficult to manufacture, and sometimes, it’s better to just stop torturing the piece you started with and start afresh.

Studio assistant, Graham helped with the Festival After Dark microphone. It was good to have a team of two on this to get everything in on time (it was a fierce deadline), and we swapped tips on digital ink (his tips) and using Illustrator (my tips).

I really enjoyed using ALL THE COLOURS IN THE INK BOX (nearly) and slaving over a hot sheet of A2. We hadn’t started time lapsing at this point, but if we had, it would have been a great one to capture! Yep, the back of my head, for eight hours...

The B&A Journal.

The Bernstein & Andriulli Journal arrived recently. A nice sturdy, well-designed thing with great print for ’ten dollars’! This one has my Male Me Heart piece in it, and is designed by The Brooklyn Brothers. I hand-rendered my name in tiny letters too, though you can’t really tell from here.

Thanks to Aaron Barr at B&A for sending it!

If I draw owt that’s any good this year, I shall probably be in it again.