Lauren Sanders is an award winning art director and stylist with 15+ years of experience in wellness and lifestyle brand development.
A seeker of beauty and clarity.
Lauren is a true multi-hyphenate creative supported by a rational framework and an intuitive method to create and explore one of a kind strategic, beautiful and impactful solutions for brands.
With a background in product development, Lauren takes the methods, analysis and tools for creating great human centered design, combines it with her years spent in the editorial world, and curates it all with an art director/stylists eye to bring it to the heart of every branding project. Committed to design as a way to change the world, she is interested is supporting the ideas behind purpose driven individuals and brands. A wellness expert herself, Lauren walks the talk of many of the brands she collaborates with.
How we work—
Curated and nimble
creative teams
With Lauren acting as the key creative director and sitting as the key point of contact of the creative team, we assemble teams on a per client basis. We gather the best talent based upon the content and expertise needed for the development of your brand.
My Approach—
Creating clarity by embracing complexity, intuition and rationality, consistent frameworks and fluid ecosystems, creating rules and breaking the rules, images and words, light and shadow, sound and silence, movement and stillness, small and large, black and white, density and white space, pure magic and testing, leaps of faith and systematic implementation. It’s masculine and feminine.
Design is a collection
of polarities:
My Approach—
As long as we have eyes, ears, noses, taste buds, we will be designing for the senses. Whether that experience is a 2-D piece, a digital experience, or an in person experience.
Design is a discipline that is inspired by the senses.
My Approach—
The classic craft of making images and words will always form the foundation
of communication.
Technology will continue to evolve and the application of our words and images will change, but images and words will always be the foundation of our industry, as long as we are human.
My Approach—
Some say the magazine died but it’s approach is alive and well. To me, the digital world became an extension of the editorial world. It’s all the same parts and pieces, just a different technology. The editorial lens is always in my back pocket. To me, magazines are films in static form, and films can be static social posts and interior design is like a website.
It’s all inter-related.
The digital world became an extension of the editorial world.
Notable Projects
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Lifestyle | Pets
BRAND DEVELOPMENT
from seed to design to marketRemember when Target started their designer collab series? Wetnoz Pet Products was the first designer collab in the pet products category at Target. Sitting on the shelves next to the Michael Graves’s teapot.
Pet loving designers, the kind who bring their dogs to work, noticed an opportunity in the pet industry for an upscale line of products. (Think Alessi meets BluDot) Developed a high-end line sold in boutiques around the country as well as a value line sold mass market in Target.
We aren’t designing objects, we are tapping into exisiting lifestyle moments and turning them into lifestyle movements with brands sitting alongside. Modern brands are movements.
Key Disciplines:
• Market Research
• Design Thinking
• Product Design
• Brand Development
• Art Direction of brand assets
• Lifestyle Photography
• Packaging
• POP
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Lifestyle | Automobile
BRAND DEVELOPMENT +
FORECASTINGLondon, UK
Founded by legendary designers Richard Seymour and Dick Powell in 1984, a team of forecasters, designers, strategists and makers all united by the same founding belief that great design makes things better. Helping brands and businesses in every category to shape the future.
Land Rover tasked Seymour Powell to tap into the next generation car design. Because the car industry works five years ahead, forecasting becomes crucial to the development of products. Being able to notice the patterns, the attitudes, and the values of the user informs and inspires design innovation. It’s where you find the gold.
I was a part of the Global Network of researchers that would provide research and forecasting to the design team.
Deeply tapping into the user experience/audience brings powerful insights that inspire world-class design and innovation ahead of its time.
By starting with people, we uncover the hidden truths which lead to ‘why buy’ design features that sell themselves.
Key Disciplines:
• Market Research
• Design Thinking
• User Research
• Trend Forecasting
• Future Lifestyles and
Persona Creation• Design Ethnography +
Consumer Insight -
Lifestyle | Housewares
BRAND DEVELOPMENT FROM THE RETAIL PERSPECTIVE
Crate+ Barrel | Cambridge
Crate+Barrell has been curating inspiration for the home, connecting the creative work of artisans and designers to people and places around the world for 50 years.
Stylist / Merchandiser / Designer / Sales
Visual merchandiser and store designer of seasonal homeware product lines in a historical modernist building designed by Marcel Breuer.
Originally home to America’s first lifestyle store, Design Research, founded by Ben Thompson. Design Research introduced the Finnish brand, Marimekko, to the States whose legacy through vintage fabric was a part of our merchandising.
I was a part of a team of managers, salespeople, and corporate executives working to meet monthly sales goals.
After the product design phase, the storytelling of the brand and products begin. How do we create store environments and displays that continue the design ethos identified in the product development and strategy phases? What is the product story? How is it an extension of the brand? And how do we get the sales team on board?
Key Disciplines:
• Styling
• Visual Merchandising
• Product Analytics
• Sales Skills
• Inventory Management
• Brand Development
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Lifestyle | Wellness
BRAND DEVELOPMENT + CONTENT CREATION/EDITORIAL
New York City
Pioneering brand development, content, photography and design in the lifestyle, gardening, entertaining, cooking, wedding, DIY, homesteading and wellness content pillars. MSO brought a high standard of beauty to a dated industry and led the way for modern content creation and channel activation.
Art Direction for the influential omnimedia brand. Aspirational content and storytelling for the brand’s target audience.
Sitting alongside legendary stylists, creative directors, and photography editors, many of who have influenced what we know in content creation today. I learned from the best of the best in the industry when it comes to graphic design, photography, and refined aesthetic standards.
Martha had acquired an exisiting wellness magazine, Whole Living. I helped to create a space in the wellness industry that was elegant and beautiful and took organic lifestyle content from crunchy to chic and desirable.
Key Disciplines:
• Art Direction
• Graphic Design
• Layout Design
• Photoshoot Art Direction
• Photoshoot Production
• Style Direction
• Moodboard development
• Typographic systems
• Custom typefaces
• Content Development
• Print Production
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Lifestyle | Wellness
BRAND STORYTELLING + CONTENT CREATION/EDITORIAL
Dr. Andrew Weil
Bringing the alternative medicine niche to middle America. Leading the way for a $6.2 trillion wellness industry. Making magic mushrooms mainstream.
Dr. Weil had a very niche market in the wellness space, my job was to bridge the gap and bring him to middle America through a strong brand identity and art directed on brand content.
Key Disciplines:
• Art Direction
• Graphic Design
• Photoshoot Art Direction
• Photoshoot Production
• Style Direction
• Moodboard development
• Typographic systems
• Custom typefaces
• Content Development
• Print Production
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Interiors
BRAND DEVELOPMENT + INTERIOR STYLING
Swadoh
Paris, France + New OrleansStyle Director + Interior Stylist
Swadoh provides exclusive access to a curated selection of materials, collections, and art from France’s most skilled artisans creating pieces defined by precision, artistry, and one-of-a-kind expression.
Swadoh was a new business venture from Interior Designer, Valerie LeGras. Valerie hired me to establish an elegant brand identity which included logo design, brand identity elements, photography art and styling direction, and storytelling strategies.
Key Disciplines:
• Art Direction
• Logo Design
• Brand Identity Design
• Style Direction
• Moodboard development
• Sourcing
• Graphic Design
• Photoshoot Art Direction + Styling
• Photoshoot Production
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Wellness
BRAND DEVELOPMENT + CREATIVE DIRECTION
Creative Director
Situated in the Lower Garden District of New Orleans, Spyre is a centralized space for the community to foster whole-body wellness through education, healing therapies and respected integrative and alternative practitioners.
The former Norwegian Seaman’s Church designed by mid-century modern Norwegian architect, Nils Erling Hansen, turned inclusive urban sanctuary, houses the former chapel turned community gathering space, former sailor lodging rooms into practitioner treatment rooms, EMF free meditation rooms, a cafe, hot + cold plunges, a sauna, and meditation gardens and a labyrinth.
A full scope project that included everything from research, space planning, naming, programming of services, launch, interior styling, feng shui, art direction of photography, UX design, application of biophilic principles, to custom furniture.
Just like healing the body asks you to look at healing from all dimensions: physical, spiritually, vibrationally, creating healing spaces requires you to approach it from many different angles as well: sensory, color, material, light, and sound. The relationship between design and healing is a powerful one. Sometimes your job as a designer is to simply reveal the beauty that is already there, refining it’s relationship with the natural world, and expanding it in simple, modern ways. Much akin to healing the body.
Key Disciplines:
• Naming
• Programming
• Style Direction
• Moodboard development
• Art Direction
• Graphic Design
• Interior Styling
• Photoshoot Art Direction + Styling
• Photoshoot Production
• Website Design