Illustrations to celebrate Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn’s first ever Community Resource Fair, an event to connect the neighborhood to resources & services like jobs, housing, and care.

Deliverables: Ahead of the event, we worked together on a design for their promotional posters & sidewalk signs, and a design for the big banners they had lining Myrtle Ave, from Fort Greene into Clinton Hill!

For this & other summer events, we also adapted the main illustration into a fun coloring sheet, and designed a little “street sign ♥ brooklyn pigeon” temporary tattoo to give out.

Process: With the brief in hand, I took the excuse to walk down memory lane on a drizzly April day—taking a trip back to the neighborhood I went to college in & hadn’t seen since before the pandemic. I took a lot of pictures, brainstorming how I might weave these references into the art—the brick buildings and signature small business storefronts, the new community gardening initiatives I saw advertised, and the white flowers opening up on the trees; a marker I’ve come to associate with the beginning of spring in Brooklyn.

🌼 I wanted the art to represent neighbors co-creating / building their community, and decided to play with the idea of treating the poster copy as storefront signage; integrating it that way.

〰️ We went through a few rounds of sketches for our vibrant event images——exploring how it could look with more or less bustling detail, refining the hand lettering, and finding the best ways to forefront the information.

Feelings: Working on this campaign with them was a beautiful opportunity to illustrate on one of my favorite themes — COMMUNITY; and all of the coexistence and collective blooming and shared hope & vision & work that’s wrapped up in that. 🌱 🤲🏼 🤲🏾 🤲🏿 💓 To have done this for / with the neighborhood I studied in & have so many warm feelings about was the loveliest honor I could imagine!

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Created in May, 2021