Charlotte Marchal's Drawing Board
As most girls her age are tweeting about their aspirations and goals, Charlotte Marchal is already accomplishing her own. At only 12, Marchal created a graphic design for Australian singer Troye Sivan, and her creation is currently being sold as official merchandise on his North American tour entitled Blue Neighbourhood.
Charlotte Marchal’s creativity may have started due to her diverse hometowns. “I was born in the outskirts of Paris,” Marchal starts. “When I was three months old, I moved to Hong Kong, and when I was three, I moved to Shanghai. When I was seven I moved to California, and when I turned 12 I moved to Toronto. That is where I live today.”
Marchal’s artwork contained the words “you make my” with three hearts following. The first heart appears to be shaking, the second is bending, and the third is breaking. The design represents Sivan’s lyric “You make my heart shake, bend, and break,” from his debut single Wild off of his first album.
“It was a mindless illustration that took barely ten minutes to draw,” Marchal states. “It took a little longer to perfect afterwards. I’m not going to lie: it was just a doodle.”
The backstory behind this opportunity? Sivan and his tour management team held a contest to see what fan can make the most creative design on their own, no rules applied. The winner, of course, was promised their work to appear on official tour merchandise and be sold at every show.
“Around 2000 entries were submitted,” Emma Barnes, Troye Sivan’s manager, professes.
“My friend told me to check my Twitter,” Marchal exclaims when asked how she found out about her win. “I didn’t have connection to the internet at the time, but when I finally did, I saw that Emma was messaging me.”
Prior to her win, Charlotte Marchal’s design was commended by Sivan himself. He posted her art on Instagram, crediting her to his millions of followers. He also reblogged it directly from Marchal’s Tumblr account.
“Troye selected Charlotte’s design on his own,” Barnes adds. “He said the ‘simplicity really appealed to [him]’”
Fans of Troye are already purchasing the white tee that displays Marchal’s illustration. One being Karla de la Pena, a friend of Charlotte Marchal.
“I thought the design was very creative in the sense that the hearts were used to tell lyrics,” Pena commented. “It was simple.”
Marchal replied, “So many people have messaged me, including Karla. It’s so cute.”
It seems that the simplicity of Marchal’s design is what seems to grab the attention of buyers and even the famous. However, the process of creating the art is much more complex when overlooked by the average individual. “I used photoshop to sketch the idea, and then I thought, ‘Yo, that’s cool,’” Marchal describes. “So I opened a new document and started working on the final product. Basically, it was coloring the background pink, sketching hearts in black, and filling them in with blue.”
Although this is a memory she will never forget, Charlotte Marchal considers this opportunity as experience for her future career path. “I want to be a graphic designer, an artist, or an illustrator,” Marchal concludes. “I love digital art.”
