In honor of Black History Month, Target recently launched its “Dare, Dream, Do” campaign. The print, web, broadcast, and interactive campaign tells the inspiring stories of Malaak Compton-Rock, Marc Morial, Marcus Samuelsson, and Steve Stoute. The banner ads and video interviews are a blend of 2d and 3d, Digital Kitchen seamlessly mixes live video with Sarah J. Coleman’s intricate hand-drawn illustrations.

Malaak Compton-Rock

Says Sarah J. Coleman, “‘Dare, Dream, Do’ is an integrated multicultural branding exercise by Target, celebrating the company’s diversity and aimed at sharing stories of success.” Malaak Compton-Rock founded the Angel Rock Project, an organization that aids orphans and young children in South Africa. Steve Stoute is an entrepreneur and record executive. Marcus Samuelson is a chef and cookbook author. And last but not least, Marc Morial is the president of the National Urban League.

Marcus Samuelson

Coleman watched videos of the interview sessions to understand how each person moved, stood, and talked. Most especially, noticing what excited them and when they became the most animated. Using descriptions of their life stories and collections of words pulled out from their interviews and photo sessions, Coleman drew accompanying illustrations that provided a more detailed snapshot of each person.

Steve Stoute

Besides illustration, Coleman also created an entire hand-drawn alphabet for Target, creating unique typography for the campaign. The thorough digital typeface she created includes upper and lower case, a set of punctuation marks, and numerals. The most commonly used letters were given different versions to avoid what Coleman calls, “a dead giveaway when playing the ‘is it a font or is it handwriting?’ game.”

Mark Morial

For Coleman, each work started out on paper with black ink – be it fountain pen, dip pen, felt pen, or other. Coleman notes, “Since everything was being animated, a consistent line weight turned out to be crucial.” After everything was drawn and scanned, the illustrations were then vectorized for the animators.

Stills from one of the banner ads

Coleman final remarks are, “This really felt like I was having the time of my life, doodling away over a big sheet of paper and getting to draw from a long list of different and sometimes challenging little objects – it was one of those jobs where you think to yourself ‘this cannot be my job – I’m having too much fun!’”

Look for web banners and print ads across the Internet and the nation. More information and videos can be found on the Target website.

————————————————————————————————————————-

Client: Target
Campaign: Dare, Dream, Do
Agency: Little & Co., Minneapolis
Video and Animations: Digital Kitchen
Art Director: Katherine Lamm
Creative Director: Julie Zulkosky
Illustration: Sarah J. Coleman

One of the print advertisements

The blog will resume January 4th, 2009. Cheers!

Animation and direction by:
12 foot 6

Art By:
Andrew Rae
Andrew Bannecker
Stan Chow
Am I Collective
Josh Cochran
Nishant Choksi
FriendsWithYou
Nathan Fox
Big Chief
Tatiana Arocha
Tristan Eaton
Sarah Coleman
Ben Wachenje
12foot6

Sound, Music, and Voice:
Expansion Team