National Archives Design
Although we primarily focus on animal art, we enjoy applying ourselves to new challenges and subjects. Angela Catigano, Retail Director of the National Archives in D.C., is both a muse and a rascal. The most provocative question she asks is: "Do you have any fresh ideas for . . . ?" Following are a few answers to:
Do You Have Any Fresh Ideas for a design that would highlight our capitol landmarks? After deciding which landmarks to feature, we created simplified, spunky 'pop art' tiles that could flexibly be used together or separated.
Do You Have Any Fresh Ideas for product that would support our Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Vote exhibit? After making a selection of women's rights heroines, we obtained images in the public domain, digitally restored and polished them for product development.
Do You Have Any Fresh Ideas for cherry blossoms? Each year, the National Cherry Blossom Festival commemorates the 1912 gift of 3,000 cherry trees from Mayor Yukio Ozaki of Tokyo to the city of Washington, DC. To refresh Angela's product selection, we developed fine art source material . . .
. . . as well as graphic art that can be resized and recolored for a variety of looks and uses.
And finally: We have this cool historic chart but it's in bad condition. What can we do with it? As the nation's record-keeper, the National Archives holds in trust the records of all branches of government, including the Department of Agriculture Forest Service. In 1974, as a joke, Engineer Cleve Ketcham drew up a detailed cocktail construction chart. To use it, it needed to be completely redrawn and recolored . . . it needed reconstruction. The resulting digital artwork could be resized, used as a whole or spilt out into individual elements.