Not For Squares

Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saat­chi & Saat­chi World­wide wrote this lovely piece about us on his blog KR Con­nect,

“A few weeks ago, I dis­covered Coulson Macleod, an art busi­ness mak­ing waves from Northamp­ton­shire. It’s the cre­ation of Mark Coulson and Han­nah Macleod, a couple who share a strik­ing design aes­thetic, rad­ic­ally pos­it­ive ambi­tion, and, most import­antly, love.

I’ve bought sev­eral of their pieces, which are all hand-finished in lim­ited edi­tions. The works in the Love Col­lec­tion are favor­ites of mine – bold typo­graphic designs fea­tur­ing declar­a­tions of feel­ing and fam­ous romantic lines from clas­sic movies. Other col­lec­tions cel­eb­rate the pop cul­ture of dec­ades past, the icons of music his­tory and the spirit of Cool Brit­an­nia – all top­ics close to the heart.

After I sent the team a note of encour­age­ment, Han­nah Macleod shared the company’s “simple little love story” with me. It’s also a story of smart, down-to-earth entre­pren­eur­ship. After fall­ing in love, the couple began work­ing together. Want­ing new art for their home, but not able to afford high-end prices, they decided to design their own rather than deign to buy mass-produced prints, and thus Coulson Macleod was born.

Start­ing small in March 2009, Han­nah and Mark didn’t have big dol­lars for pro­mo­tion, but built their own web­site and show­cased their designs online. The work spoke for itself, and with grow­ing sales they could soon begin advert­ising in top interi­ors magazines. Now, Coulson Macleod fields orders from all over the world, and tracks the buzz on their blog. Brides-to-be have con­tac­ted them to ask if they can read out the quote from the “What Is Love?” piece at their wed­ding – a spe­cial request as this was writ­ten by Mark.

As Han­nah described it to me, the com­pany is “built on love and driven by pas­sion”. The world needs more entre­pren­eurs like this. Here’s to spread­ing the Love.”

As we approach our first birth­day, we thought it was about time to add a Testi­mo­ni­als page to the Coulson Macleod website.

We asked some of our more high pro­file and cre­at­ive cus­tom­ers for their com­ments. We’ve got five lovely com­ments so far, so do check out our web­site to read them.

Of course, if you’re a Coulson Macleod cus­tomer who has a busi­ness that you’d like us to link back to, then please let us know. We’ve only been able to ask our cus­tom­ers that sup­plied a busi­ness email address so we could identify them. But we’d love to hear from you too.

Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saat­chi & Saat­chi has bought sev­eral of Coulson Macleod’s Love prints.

Kevin Roberts very kindly gave Coulson Macleod per­mis­sion to use his name.

In fact Kevin (yep we’re on first name terms!) sent me a hand­writ­ten note that basic­ally said well done and that the world needs entre­pren­eurs. He also said that I could tell the world that he’d bought our art and that if I sent him our story, he’d put it on his blog.

Saat­chi & Saat­chi is one of the world’s lead­ing cre­at­ive organ­isa­tions, and Kevin leads a team of 6,000 people in 150 offices across 86 coun­tries.  And yet  he some­how found the time for Coulson Macleod. It’s nice to have friends in high-up places.

Saat­chi & Saat­chi cre­ated Love­marks. They wanted to know what makes some brands inspir­a­tional, while oth­ers struggle?  Their answer was “future bey­ond brands”. They write on their web­site, “Love­marks tran­scends brands. They reach your heart as well as  your mind, cre­at­ing an intim­ate, emo­tional con­nec­tion that you just can’t live without. Ever. Love­marks are a rela­tion­ship, not a mere trans­ac­tion. You don’t just buy Love­marks, you embrace them pas­sion­ately. Love­marks inspire.”

Now we like to think Coulson Macleod is a Love­mark. And maybe, just maybe, so does Saat­chi & Saatchi.