In the fall of 2019, illustrator Veronica Lawlor was asked by Tzelan Design to create a series of on-site reportage illustrations of the most beautiful neighborhood in Boston, to be used for a campaign to announce the launch of The Newbury Hotel, a re-imaging of the class Ritz-Carlton. The hotel sits at the entrance to the Boston Public Garden, with a perfect view in every season.
Veronica’s delicate line and colour interpretations of Beacon Hill, Newbury Street, and the Boston Public Garden were turned into a series of postcards, and can be found on all of the hotel collateral, from gift bags to umbrellas. A selection of the illustrations are shown here.
“At times like these,” Veronica says, “I feel so lucky to be a reportage illustrator. My work combines all of the things I love to do – drawing, traveling, meeting people, and spending time in beautiful places.”
The hotel continues to have a relationship with the illustrator, and commission her to create their yearly holiday card.
You can read more about this reportage HERE.
In 2018 Greg Betza was commissioned to create a series of illustrations for the Style section of the New York Times. The illustrations needed to work with photos of different cosmetics as the article was about How to Wear Spring’s Most Inventive New Makeup. Combining the elements was a bit of a challenge but challenges often lead to interesting solutions. The art director was very happy with the work and told Greg it was one of her favorite series of the entire year.
In 2014, Chase Private Client sent illustrator Veronica Lawlor across the United States to create reportage illustrations of cultural icons of American cities. Veronica spent two weeks traveling across the country, visiting NYC, Miami, Seattle, Columbus, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco and many more. In total, she created 22 on-site illustrations, that were used by Chase in their marketing materials for the Private Client Arts & Culture program. In December her illustration of a classic holiday scene was used as an animated poster in many branches across the country.
“This is what is called a dream job,” said Veronica.
Agency: Bradley and Montgomery
Awards: A Silver Addy award for the campaign. American Illustration Selected for the Public Market illustration.
Henri’s Reserve is a private company based in Connecticut. They sell an array of small Family Estate Champagnes imported from the vineyards of France. The champagnes are boutique, single-vineyard champagnes prided for their uniqueness of taste and quality. These illustrations by Margaret Hurst were created to emphasize the personal and unique nature of Henri’s Reserve champagnes.
For over 450 years, Canson Paper has been one of the leading fine arts papers in the world. So illustrator Veronica Lawlor was thrilled when she was asked to create cover illustrations for their new Artist Series line.
“I enjoyed the challenge of working in different mediums to find the right feeling for the various paper types. Plus I had the opportunity to work with all of them!”
From top to bottom: Cagrain drawing paper, acrylic paper, tracing paper, vellum, and marker paper: Next time you are visiting your local art supply store you just might spot one of these babies in the wild.
In 2016 Greg Betza was commissioned by Smith Creative Labs to illustrate 3 short animations for the InterContinental Hotel Group’s Live the InterContinental Life campaign.
The animations were based on podcast interviews which told stories of empathy, worldliness and fascination and were recorded in London, Beijing, and New York City. Smith developed the script and storyboards and animator Mark Bellncula brought Greg’s illustrations to life.
The illustrations were created in a mostly traditional way, using sequential hand made drawings and paintings.
In 2018, Potion Design asked illustrator Veronica Lawlor to explore the idea of an interactive donor wall for the new NYU Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital. The ask – to find a way to not only share the names of contributors who made the Hospital possible, but to tell their stories, their goals, and how they were inspired by the project. And while there are always foundational donors that need to be acknowledged, an institution that lives on will continue to have people joining in its efforts. So they needed an idea that would allow the project to grow.
Styled to match the hand-drawn children’s book aesthetic of her illustrations for the nearby City Explorer installation, The “Giving Tree” Donor Wall features an interactive animated tree composed of over 90 individually painted and collaged leaves. Each leaf connects to the story of a donor, and the scale of the leaf corresponds to the scale of the donation.
A light wind blows through the leaves to cue users to touch them, and doing so expands different types and styles of stories about the donor, and their relationship to the hospital. Larger donor stories are illustrated in a reportage style, allowing for a more intense narrative, and smaller donor stories are illustrated with a graphic symbolic style.
The combination of line art and cut paper throughout creates a cohesive aesthetic that can encompass multiple points of view. An updatable back end allows new leaves to be added with stories of their own.
Images, from top to bottom: Early concept illustration, Giving Tree // Final Illustration of tree with 93 collaged leaves // Studio view: Tree in progress // Leaf highlight – Sala Family donation story // Leaf highlight – Hassenfeld family donation story // Short Form Story: doctors, parents and patients working together // Short Form Story: soft care for families of patients.
Leaf highlight design by Steph Goralnik.
Awards: Honorable Mention from the Society of Experiential Designers, 2018.
In July 2017 Illustrator Greg Betza was contacted by Atlantic Re:think, the marketing division of the Atlantic Magazine, to create a series of illustrations to help promote the PBS release of the new Vietnam documentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novice.
The first part of the project was to create a print illustration which would accompany a brief article about the series in the The Atlantic. The piece had to communicate the comprehensive, objective view that the documentary takes, interviewing people from both sides of the war and the political divide.
The second phase of the project dealt with interviews of 7 of the documentary’s participants. Greg was asked to create one illustration per interview. He decided to develop one symbol per interview that most strongly embodied the audio.
Greg’s work on this project was included in American Illustration 37.
In late October 2013 NBC Sports reached out to illustrator Greg Betza to help conceptualize and illustrate an animation for the inaugural games of the National Hockey League’s Stadium Series.
The proposed schedule was challenging as it was set to air for the first time on New Year’s Day. With less than a week to develop a budget, interview animators, and create the storyboards he dropped everything and got to work. With help from members of Studio 1482 he was able to meet the deadline and impress the client’s creative team.
NBC Sports was an amazing client to work with. They had the creative vision to try something unusual and fresh on national television, and allowed the creative vision to come to life.
