TOMS Blog

Hello Everyone! I’m Erin and as the Print Design Intern at TOMS this summer, I have been (now and always) trying to integrate my love of doodling and hand-drawn type into my pieces, whether they be catalogs or thank-you cards for our national retailers. TOMS has been a really great way to explore this passion, in more ways than I had originally expected. 

TOMS as a brand and movement has an amazing culture, but one of the things that really sparked my passion within these HQ walls was the design of the conference rooms. Each room has a different name and a concept, core to the movement, that inspired its design. Right next to my desk in the creative department, there are two conference rooms , and I noticed that one of them, the “Idea Room,” felt a little bare. This room was intended to be an inspirational space where every wall could be written on. Two of the walls were painted with chalkboard paint, and the other two had a whiteboard film, but, to me, this still didn’t feel as inspirational as it could feel. 

In my personal work, I love to create large-scale installations, and this room was calling my name, as a blank canvas waiting for some love. I got together with one of the copywriters and the building manager and told them I wanted to do an inspirational mural in this space. They loved the idea and said gather the resources you need and make it happen! 

Around this same time, one of the designers in my department had sent me a fun link from one of our favorite design blogs, Deisgn Sponge. It was a contest that required you to use Scotch Blue Painters Tape to execute a project. The Idea Room mural seemed like it could be the perfect submission. I have worked a lot with painters tape to do geometric designs, but never something organic, and definitely nothing typographic. 

So, I hand drew the mural on a small sheet of paper, taking inspiration from some of my favorite vintage styles as well some classics, and then projected the design on the wall. Then, I worked with about 8 other interns and spent 4 days making a giant type stencil out of this huge wall of tape. We hand-cut each letter with an X-Acto knife, and we painted the wall in our TOMS blue (a painstaking process, but we had so much fun.). 

When we removed the tape stencil, all that remained was our wall of inspirational words, the perfect addition to the Idea Room. The process was so exciting, and it gave all of the interns a fun way to come together and leave our mark at HQ.

Check out the design on Design*Sponge at http://www.designsponge.com/2012/08/painters-tape-diy-contest-final-round-of-voting.html, and help us win! You can vote for the TOMS Interns design at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QGFMNBB