The win­ner of a life’s design giveaway is…

Meg from the blog Nut­meg & Com­pany.

Meg is a design enthu­si­ast and recently bought a his­toric home, which she plans to ren­ov­ate and dec­or­ate every square inch. So pretty handy that she now has three Coulson Macleod ‘Dec­ades’ prints to hang on her walls. She said, “I’m so excited that I wont these prints. They are per­fect for the fam­ily room in my new house.”

Meg’s hus­band is a car­penter and they own a renov­a­tion com­pany called Tru­line Con­struc­tion, in Lon­don, Ontario. They’ve been in busi­ness for the past seven years and work really hard at what they do.  Here’s a couple of pho­tos of some award-winning kit­chens that they’ve worked on…

Our typo­graphic art giveaway on a life’s design blog was pretty pop­u­lar and here are just a hand­ful of com­ments left by those who entered…

• I love typo­graphy. But Coulson Macleod bring it back in style. I would not mind hav­ing these prints grace my liv­ing room. They are wonderful.
• I’d really love this set for my new home. I think that Coulson Macleod is inspired and inspir­ing: some­times I try to think about my next fur­niture dream­ing on their prints.
• Not only are the prints really beau­ti­ful, but I LOVE their brand’s atti­tude — they just seem so lovely on their Face­book page!
• These are great! I had never heard of them. I have added them to my favor­ites list. I would love one for my home. Thanks for intro­du­cing me to them.
• I love the phrases and the style — not too clean & mod­ern but not too rus­tic, their pieces are so full of char­ac­ter. LOVE!
• We’re mov­ing into a new place and need a fresh start… this art is fresh and unique… I would LOVE them.
• Wow! We love Coulson Macleod prints. The Six­ties print would go in our hall­way with our framed Beatles albums, The Sev­en­ties would go with all my other half’s Star Wars mem­or­ab­ilia, and we were born in The Eighties! Coulson Macleod are fant­astic as their art­work is so unique.
• I love their Face­book updates — they really make me smile. I love how they are inter­ested in archi­tec­ture — like really inter­ested. I love how it is obvi­ous that they love each other through their work. I love the simplicity-mixed-with-drama of their prints.
• For me it’s their ori­gin­al­ity that makes the designs so easy to relate too, as well as beau­ti­ful to look at.

Related art­icles:

• Here’s To Your Good Health
• Britain’s Got Talent
• Coulson Macleod’s Rock Collection

Big thanks to Canadian-born Mea­gan (cur­rently liv­ing in Ire­land) for this huge art­icle / inter­view on Coulson Macleod. Check out her fab­ulous blog The Row House Nest. This is the art­icle (we’ve lit­er­ally just copied and pas­ted as is)…

Twit­ter is a lovely thing. It allows us to meet all sorts of cool and inter­est­ing people out there in the blog­sphere (yes I just said blog­sphere) as well as some pretty tal­en­ted artists and vendors. {if you would like to fol­low us on Twit­ter, head here!} We are adding Coulson Macleod to our ‘we heart’ list.

From their lovely web­site, we thieved this little blurb: “Coulson Macleod was formed in March 2009 and is a UK-based art busi­ness spe­cial­ising in the design and pro­duc­tion of hand­made, typography-based art­work prin­ted onto nat­ural and reclaimed mater­i­als includ­ing wood, metal, stone, fab­ric, and recycled paper.”

They are some pretty cool folks over there and have been get­ting lots of big wig atten­tion and press cov­er­age, includ­ing the likes of Jamie Oliver, design*sponge and Elle Dec­or­a­tion magazine!

We wanted to get the inside track with the couple team behind Coulson Macleod and they kindly agreed!

Ques­tion. Tell read­ers a little about yourself:

Response. I’m Han­nah, the Macleod half of Coulson Macleod. The other half, Coulson, is my fiancé Mark. Together we run Coulson Macleod, a small but grow­ing global brand spe­cial­ising in typo­graphic art. Our typo­graphic prints are designed by us. Not only do we design the art­work, but also the frames. The frames are then hand­made by pro­fes­sional artis­ans using nat­ural materials.

All of our prints are made with love in the UK. We cur­rently print onto can­vas, oak, antique roof tim­bers, solid lime­stone, recycled paper, and weather-rusted steel. All our designs are exclus­ive to Coulson Macleod and sold via our web­site.

Ques­tion. Tell us a little about your favour­ite pro­ject that you have worked on thus far?

Response. Well we had a lot of fun cre­at­ing this ‘Pukka Print’.

We were asked by The Jamie Oliver Found­a­tion to design a bespoke typo­graphic print for their annual fun­drais­ing event, A Big Night Out With Jamie, which was held last Novem­ber at St. Paul’s Cathed­ral. Our print went into the silent auc­tion and finally went to David Ellender, Global CEO of Fre­mantle Media who paid £1,100 for it.

Ques­tion. Where does your inspir­a­tion come from? How would you describe your own cre­at­ive process?

Response. Inspir­a­tion comes from every­where and great ideas pop into our heads quite ran­domly, although one of us is often scrib­bling away on a note­pad at 3am. People often glam­or­ise their inspir­a­tional pro­cess – watch­ing the sun set whilst sit­ting on a remote beach in the Outer Hebrides – which sounds won­der­ful, but we’re a bit too busy to do that. I always carry a note­book in my hand­bag, and we get some super ideas after our Fri­day after work glass of wine in the pub!

Ques­tion. What new pro­jects do you have com­ing up/planning for?

Response. We have a file of ideas for new col­lec­tions and we’re only lim­ited by time and money. Just time and money! We have grown Coulson Macleod organ­ic­ally right from the start. We’ve never inves­ted a penny into the busi­ness, and only spend when we have money in the account to do so. We have heaps planned for 2011, but I’d bet­ter keep these secret. We do have a new stock­ist of our art, which I can talk about. Red Dir­ect, the shop­ping dir­ect­ory of women’s magazine Red will be selling our art in their June issue. Our prints are already stocked in select­ive shops in Italy, Nor­way, and in the UK.

Ques­tion. Favour­ite store?

Response. Toast. They sell a dream life­style. Their cata­logues are gor­geously styled. We also see sim­il­ar­it­ies between ourselves and Jamie & Jes­sica Seaton {the founders of Toast}.

Ques­tion. Favour­ite web­sites and blogs?

Response. design*sponge, obvi­ously. What Grace Bon­ney has achieved is impress­ive. Also look at The Sar­tori­al­ist on a daily basis.

Ques­tion. Favour­ite magazine(s)?

Response. We buy copi­ous amounts of magazines – interior design, art, cul­ture – and can never bear to throw them out. So I could lie and say Wall­pa­per* or the The Cre­at­ive Review to sound like we’re in touch with fel­low cre­at­ives. Both of us adore Elle Dec­or­a­tion (we’ve been fea­tured twice in Elle Dec­or­a­tion so of course we love them even more) but Grazia is my per­sonal favour­ite and the one that I curl up on the sofa with.

Ques­tion. Where would you like to be in ten years?

Response. Doing pretty much what we’re doing now. We’ve never been hap­pier. Coulson Macleod is our pas­sion and we can’t ima­gine life without it. We love nur­tur­ing it and watch­ing it grow. In ten years I’d expect it to be a name that is more recognised.

Ques­tion. Who are your her­oes in real life?

Response. This is where I’m sup­posed to name an entre­pren­eur. I did per­son­ally know Dame Anita Rod­dick, and she is obvi­ously inspir­a­tional to many people. But I have a thing for explorers. Sir Ran­ulph Fiennes is my num­ber one hero. I’ve read all his books and I actu­ally met him once and was able to listen to him telling his own stor­ies. He signed a book for me and I could barely speak I was so in awe. The next day I saw him at the air­port and so wanted to go up and chat, but couldn’t sum­mon up the cour­age. I SO regret that now. I’ve also met Mark Shand, another explorer/travel writer, who was giv­ing a talk. Again I’ve read his books and was too in awe to actu­ally hold a sens­ible and intel­li­gent con­ver­sa­tion. I think I just stood there blushing!

Ques­tion. When and where were you happiest?

Response. Right now. I wouldn’t change a thing about my life. Some­times people who don’t know me and are mak­ing small-talk ask me ‘what would be your dream job?’ and then look really sur­prised when I say I’m doing it. We not only enjoy run­ning Coulson Macleod, but it’s suc­cess­ful too. And Mark & I love work­ing together – it’s a great part­ner­ship where we bring very dif­fer­ent skills into the busi­ness. Plus we’re get­ting mar­ried next year, so hav­ing heaps of fun plan­ning our wedding.

Ques­tion. What would you con­sider your greatest achievement?

Response. Selling a piece of our art to one of the world’s lead­ing col­lect­ors of con­tem­por­ary art.

Ques­tion. What is it that you most dislike?

Response. Lit­ter­ing. I know it’s not up there with all the big ones, like sex­ism, racism, homo­pho­bia, etc. But if I see someone throw a bit of rub­bish out of their car win­dow it gets me so mad. I simply can­not fathom why someone would lit­ter and make their own street, town, or park an eyesore.

How to learn more about Coulson Macleod and get in touch with them!

Web­site: http://​www​.coulson​macleod​.com

face­book
twit­ter

_____________________________________

Phew! Amaz­ing huh? Such a breath of fresh air – totally hon­est, unpre­ten­tious, just doing their thing! And doing it so damn well! Thanks so much to Han­nah from Coulson Macleod!

Admit­tedly, we’re a bit biased on this one as Lark & Linen won Design Refuge’s Octo­ber Chal­lenge. This means Lark & Linen get to choose a Coulson Macleod typo­graphic print of their choice.

How­ever, there is a good reason Lark & Linen received so many votes (181 out of 813) in the Chal­lenge, because it’s a beau­ti­ful blog, run by Jac­quelyn Clark, a Toronto-based interior designer. Her blog is a real joy to read. And the pho­tos are heavenly.

Jac­quelyn says she is pas­sion­ate about uncom­plic­ated, well thought-out, liv­able, usable design. Snap. She has a door crush. Snap. She likes all things neut­ral. Snap.

In par­tic­u­lar we love Jacquelyn’s “Scenes from my week­end” with her won­der­ful photo montages.

Cer­tainly not a new blog, but one of Coulson Macleod’s long-time favour­ites and guar­an­teed to make you chuckle. So a good one for a Fri­day. If you’ve not seen it, then allow me to intro­duce Unhappy Hip­sters (It’s lonely in the mod­ern world)…

And the fowl kettle cover con­tem­plated suicide—Thursdays as usual, basically.

The neigh­bors never did come around to their “exag­ger­ated portal” concept for the back door.

Bon­ing up on indie rock his­tory before her after­noon quiz. Oh, the per­ils of homeschooling.

Their cul­tural ethos dic­tated that they purée homemade baby food; their aes­thetic dic­tated stor­ing the jars on an overly self-aware back­lit shelf. Either way, little Moses was amused.

Coulson Macleod spends a lot of time brows­ing blo­g­dom. We love blo­g­dom. Our favour­ite crush is Paris vs New York…

Now I usu­ally only write about things that get me going, hence why it’s called Macleod’s Mus­ings. I like a little bit of vin­tage, a little bit of con­tem­por­ary design, and quite often just ran­dom bits of girly loveliness.

But I’ve been politely nudged (actu­ally more like heckled) to write about this online magazine because basic­ally they’re shame­less pro­moters. And I’ve suc­cumbed because they’ve been very good to Coulson Macleod. Our per­son­al­ized art was fea­tured on their Gift Idea page and they also got us onto the US wed­ding site Wed­ding Gawker.

So I intro­duce you to Staggered, whose edit­or­ial mis­sion is: Wed­dings. Blokes. Sorted.

Yes, Staggered is THE place for men get­ting mar­ried. Or dream­ing of get­ting mar­ried (I’d like to believe that some men do dream of this).

Staggered says, “So, if you’re look­ing for the sort of wed­ding advice that wins you Brownie Points from the lady in your life, guid­ance on wed­ding suits or speeches, or how to make the hon­ey­moon go with a bang. Or you simply want to read some­thing that makes you laugh: that’s what Staggered is all about.”

Staggered claims they can help to make mar­ried life go more smoothly. And as I like their illus­tra­tions and their witty banter, I’m all for believ­ing them.

We men­tioned awhile back that a friend of Coulson Macleod had been nom­in­ated in the 2010 Blog­gies.

We can proudly announce that 3limes has won! 3limes won in the Best Latin Amer­ican category.

Well done Sam­antha, you deserve it as your blog makes for a bril­liant read. Next year fin­gers crossed she’ll win the Best African Web­log as Sam­antha now lives in Uganda (she used to live in Trin­idad). If you have a spare five minutes do read her blog, a fas­cin­at­ing insight into liv­ing in the more exotic parts of the world.

Just found the most gor­geous place to stay (via Lake Jane) in Mar­rakech. Riad Dixneuf la ksour. My oh my it looks heav­enly. Mar­rakech is a place I fell in in love with many years ago. Intox­ic­at­ing. The smell. The heat. The sounds. The souk. The tagines. OK I think you get the picture!

Just had some very excit­ing news in…

A friend of Coulson Macleod has been nom­in­ated in the Tenth Annual Web­log Awards for her won­der­ful blog 3limes.

3limes has been nom­in­ated in the Best Latin Amer­ican Web­log cat­egory, des­pite the fact that our friend is now based in Uganda, but she did live in Trin­idad. I’m sure she’ll be nom­in­ated for Best African Blog next year.

Take a read, it’s totally absorbing.

Tech­nor­ati needs to verify that Coulson Macleod is the author of this blog by look­ing for a unique code, which I have to publish.

NF3WFDHSPV3V

Once the code is pub­lished, Tech­nor­ati can verify that Not For Squares is the Coulson Macleod blog.

Sorry, very bor­ing I know.