Tell us about yourself

We’re Coulson Macleod. Or really that should be Coulson & Macleod as there’s two of us. Mark’s the Coulson. I’m Hannah, the Macleod half. We’re business partners and engaged; getting married next June.

We make the perfect team. Mark designs and I do the marketing. We work from home, in an office that would have been our dining room. Weirdly it’s only when we leave the office that we have our best business chats. Our marketing meetings really flow in the pub over a glass of wine and it’s where we get all our new ideas.

What do you make/design?

We specialise in the design and production of handmade, typography-based, artwork printed onto natural and reclaimed materials including wood, metal, stone, fabric, and recycled paper.

Mark has been a graphic designer for nearly 25 years. So I guess we see ourselves as designers, rather than artists. It definitely means we’re just as passionate about the material our artwork is printed on. And not just the printed image. The wooden pieces are individually handmade by traditional craftsmen that are based locally to us.

Our design aesthetic is to mix old and new. Both at home and with our artwork. So we take modern quotes and print onto reclaimed Victorian roof timbers. Or we’ll use hand-stamped lettering alongside high-end digital printing. Or we’ll distress computer-generated text by repeatedly running it through an old photocopier. Or we’ll leave shiny new steel sheets outside in the rain until they’ve developed just the right patina of rust. We totally love any imperfections in the material (like knot holes in the reclaimed wood or chips in the stone). This way no two pieces are ever exactly alike.

How and when did you start?

We launched the business in 2009. Simply because we wanted art for our own home. Whenever we saw art that we liked, Mark always said “I could do that”. The business was very much a sideline business to start with. But we were pretty convinced there’d be other folk out there with similar tastes to us.

Where do you sell?

Mainly through our own website and we sell globally. 26 countries to date. But there is an increasing number of bricks and mortar shops that stock our art. Currently eight in the UK. One in the Channel Islands. One in Milan. And six in Norway.

What inspires you?

We obviously get asked this lots. And I always wish we could say the view from our office; crashing waves; rolling hills; snow-capped peaks. But the reality is that ideas just pop into ours heads in the most mundane of places. Driving up the M1 or at 3am – and finding yourself scribbling hastily in your notepad and having to decipher the scrawl later on. Oh, and the view from our office (a residential road) is not very inspiring.

What plans do you have?

We’ve just returned from our first trade show. Top Drawer at Olympia. Which was very successful and lots of fun. So much so, that we’re down to Olympia again in November for the retail show Spirit of Christmas.