I’ll start with saying that I made this work 4 years ago, this is by far the oldest work in my current portfolio. I would do somethings different today.

The reality is that I was handed a difficult situation. Most of the useable art direction was used in MASS, leaving little for Walmart.

I don’t like to highlight the product. I understand that there is strategy there, people see the product and they are more likely to buy the product.

Hallmark has a problem that young people are not gravitating towards the brand like older generations have. Hallmark also is one of the largest fine arts employers in the country. I considered myself young when I worked there, and my solution to these largest issues was to always try to push the work that the artists were doing to forefront. This is most evident in my Illustrative Bunny concept. At the time I really enjoyed illustrating landscapes and I wanted to design an Easter farmland and combining the different Easter illustrations into a world for the Bunny to live in. I knew that leadership wasn’t interested in this, but I think it’s important to design what you are most passionate about. Sometimes you change minds, and sometimes you don’t but at least you tried.

My second concept was the vintage pattern concept, I wanted to lean into some of the inspiration for the art direction rather than the art direction. To be kind to my younger self, this was too ambitious of a concept for companies like Hallmark and Walmart. Some may call me naive, and they would be also be correct. I sourced and created my own assets for this concept from the patterns to the Easter typography. Typically, this role is more of an assembler than a creator. The artists create assets, the art director organizes them, and then the graphic designer applies them. So, what I was doing was out of scope, but all of this is done in close collaboration with managers. I was allowed to explore this direction, and I was told that they likely were not going to be picked.

The Floral and Product concept I knew was likely the direction that would be picked. Also, these are early concepts and the shadows look terrible on this, but this product was a placeholder product from the previous season. This was understood internally to be a placeholder asset. It’s possible that Hallmark would even have a photographer match the color and professionally shoot a photo specifically for this project rather than needing to photoshop the shadows to make it look realistic. I am drawn to pink and teal, so I liked the pink background with the product and the proof of concept from the creative marketing. Hallmark visual merchandising concepts are very minimalistic, and putting two different products on the headers would be loved by Walmart.

The Diagonal Stripe concept was meant to emulate painted Easter eggs. I don’t remember my decision making for this concept as well as the others. I probably spent much less time on this concept, but felt like I needed another safer concept for the broader leadership. One decision I would change is the teal here. I would go darker or lighter, perhaps the yellow from the chick required a darker teal than I originally wanted, but I just don’t think the colors are as strong on this concept. Easter colors are very light in value, which is another challenge with Easter.