It’s a very rare and unique pleasure to get to work with artwork styled on someone you have studied, loved and been inspired by for many years.
This morning the first job thrown on my desk was such a piece, after adoring the works of the late Keith Haring I am lucky enough to now be involved in the roll out of Tommy Hilfiger’s new European marketing campaign.
Through a collaboration with the Keith Haring Institute New York Tommy Hilfiger is bringing Keith’s artwork back to life through Hilfiger’s new footwear range.
A large volume of bespoke POS material will be required for Hilfiger shop window’s, all adorned with Haring’s infamous artwork, and luckily it will all pass through my desk for creation and production. Watch this space over the coming weeks to see updates on what we have designed and produced.
Above is a little teaser of the type of artwork we will be using.
If you love Keith Haring as much as I do, or if you have not yet been lucky enough to discover his works, here is a little info about him…
Throughout his career, Haring devoted much of his time to public works, which often carried social messages. He produced more than 50 public artworks between 1982 and 1989, in dozens of cities around the world, many of which were created for charities, hospitals, children’s day care centers and orphanages. The now famous Crack is Wack mural of 1986 has become a landmark along New York’s FDR Drive. Other projects include; a mural created for the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty in 1986, on which Haring worked with 900 children; a mural on the exterior of Necker Children’s Hospital in Paris, France in 1987; and a mural painted on the western side of the Berlin Wall three years before its fall. Haring also held drawing workshops for children in schools and museums in New York, Amsterdam, London, Tokyo and Bordeaux, and produced imagery for many literacy programs and other public service campaigns.
Haring was diagnosed with AIDS in 1988. In 1989, he established the Keith Haring Foundation, its mandate being to provide funding and imagery to AIDS organizations and children’s programs, and to expand the audience for Haring’s work through exhibitions, publications and the licensing of his images. Haring enlisted his imagery during the last years of his life to speak about his own illness and generate activism and awareness about AIDS.
During a brief but intense career that spanned the 1980s, Haring’s work was featured in over 100 solo and group exhibitions. In 1986 alone, he was the subject of more than 40 newspaper and magazine articles. He was highly sought after to participate in collaborative projects and worked with artists and performers as diverse as Madonna, Grace Jones, Bill T. Jones, William Burroughs, Timothy Leary, Jenny Holzer, Yoko Ono and Andy Warhol. By expressing universal concepts of birth, death, love, sex and war, using a primacy of line and directness of message, Haring was able to attract a wide audience and assure the accessibility and staying power of his imagery, which has become a universally recognized visual language of the 20th century.
Keith Haring died of AIDS related complications at the age of 31 on February 16, 1990. A memorial service was held on May 4, 1990 at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, with over 1,000 people in attendance.
Since his death, Haring has been the subject of several international retrospectives. The work of Keith Haring can be seen today in the exhibitions and collections of major museums around the world.
Last week we completed a tidy little promotional pack that will be used as a Direct mail piece for a new medical facility down in Waterford. The newly opened 
