the journal of
illustration and
made images
www. v aroo m-ma g.com
ILLUSTROLOGY:
THE VISUAL THEORY OF THE FUTURE
BY JOHN O’REILLY
11 12 13
.
7 8 9 10
Mighty Scared Whitie Elevator Fake-out The New Yorker The New Yorker
Matthew Vescovo, 2003 Matthew Vescovo, 2003 2005 1931
11 – 13 14 15 16
Carlos Magazine MAD MAD Wired
Issues 9, 11,12, 2005-6 1989 2006 1997
Cover illustrations by
Johnathan Schofield.
Published by John Brown 14 15 16
Citrus Publishing for
Virgin Atlantic.
5 6
1 (page 13) 2 3 4 5 6
Style & the family tunes Soen Personal work Form Personal work Jean
Zoren Gold and Minori, 2005 Zoren Gold and Minori, 2005 Sergei Sviatchenko,2003 Genèvieve Gauckler,2003 Sam Weber, 2003 Stella Vine, 2005
Gold and Minori combine Fashion editorial. Man meets beast in Gauckler constructs multi- Weber layers paint and ink Vine portrays celebrated artist
hand-drawing, collage and Sviatchenko’s mismatched faceted worlds from the real and photography to create this and painter, Jean-François
photography. montage. and the hand-made. mystical portrait. Basquiat.
7 8 9 10 11
Art Grandeur Nature Form Robot Head, Heart & Hips Love and Peace
Genèvieve Gauckler, 2004 Genèvieve Gauckler, 2004 Genèvieve Gauckler, 2005 Genèvieve Gauckler, 2005 Genèvieve Gauckler, 2005
Gauckler’s first steps into Editorial Personal work An image from Head, Heart Personal work
digitally manipulated & Hips, a book presenting
constructions paved the way the multidisciplinary agency
for her new spatially-driven Big Active, published by Die
experiments. Gestalten Verlag.
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12 (page 18) 13 – 14 15
Lane Crawford as Times Square or Pacific Lane Crawford Lane Crawford
Genèvieve Gauckler, 2006 Place with scenes that mix Billboards in Hong Kong Genèvieve Gauckler, 2006
Gauckler’s unique visual fictional characters with “The money you earn with
language has now come ‘pedestrians’ and urban advertising buys you time to
into play in advertising for landmarks. Her billboards explore new directions.”
the newly opened Hong inspire a sense childlike awe
Kong department store and sell Lane Crawford as
Lane Crawford. Her series a dazzling toy shop for
15
transforms store locations such grown-ups.
21 – 22
Untitled
Sergei Sviatchenko, 2004
Sviatchenko’s montage draws
influence from art, architecture
and science.
www.sampaints.com
28
23 24 25 26 27 28
Flaunt Vampire J is for Jenny who came from Eden Karla Homolka Snow White Weber draws lines from
Sam Weber, 2006 Sam Weber, 2005 the sea Sam Weber, 2005 Sam Weber, 2005 Sam Weber, 2005 Frank Frazetta to Tim Burton,
Cover image art directed by Editorial art directed by Jacob Sam Weber, 2005 Personal work Edtiorial for Dose, art directed Personal work from wood block printing
Lee Corbin Covey for Fantagraphics Personal work by Jemai Hamilton to decorative tattoo art. His
stories tell old tales with a
new graphic twist.
31 32 33 34 - 36
Superman ‘Hi Paul, can you come Mandy and Christine Blackbook accessories of Marc Jacobs
Stella Vine, 2004 over…’ Stella Vine, 2005 Stella Vine, 2005 are brought to life in Lily,
Private Collection, Israel. Stella Vine, 2005 Private Collection, UK. Vine’s pop-culture commentary a character who reads 35 36
Vine’s subjects span icons of Private Collection, UK. continues in her commissioned Nietzsche, wears Chanel
popular culture to capture the work. The clothes and No.5 and dreams of a date
cultural repertoire of our times. at the Ivy.
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37 38
Blackbook ‘I only make love to Jesus’ accusations made against with ‘Holy Water Cannot Help perspectives on the story
Stella Vine, 2005 Stella Vine, 2005 supermodel Kate Moss, You Now’ and pictured here, and delved into the celebrity
Private collection, UK Vine recast the front-page ‘I only make love to Jesus’, and culture and its relationship with
Vine reworks the news photograph in ‘Must be the were subsequently used in a the media.
with artistic metaphor and season of the witch’, shedding Sky One documentary aired in
awkward cultural references. a new light on the media- October 2005. Her rewritings
As the tabloids revelled in frenzy. The series continued had sparked different
41-42 43
Qvest Style & the family tunes
Zoren Gold and Minori, 2004 Zoren Gold and Minori, 2005
Gold and Minori use modern Editorial
tools to make complex
multilayered images. Here
photography and illustration 43
are combined in a painterly,
Klimt-esque fashion portrait.
44 45
Atomica Soen
Zoren Gold and Minori, 2005 Zoren Gold and Minori, 2005
Editorial Editorial
“I CAN’T RECALL
give it try.” Knowing Niemann as I do, this painting in a museum. All I thought of was square inches) where each is so smart that
means he’s hooked. While many in his position having a drawing in MAD magazine.” there is not one single, solitary clinker.
EVER THINKING OF
would decline, he revels in taking these Niemann, who is nothing if not Niemann’s show, Little Niemann: 1000 Spot
difficult illustration assignments as a personal regimented, segments the heroes who Drawings, which hung at the New York Times
WHAT IT WOULD
challenge. Ten minutes later – and true to influenced his career the following way: Tomi Gallery Nine throughout December 2005 and
form – he sends me his idea. It is Ungerer from age four-nine; Albert Uderzo, January 2006, despite the false advertising
BE LIKE TO HAVE
2 a vampire’s face, his mouth in the from 10-14; and Mort Drucker and Don (what did happen to the other 200?), is the
shape of a spiky fever chart that also Martin, aged 15-20. “Heinz Edlemann, who most awe inspiring display of visual acuity
A PAINTING IN
looks like fangs, with a subtle hint of blood was my teacher at the academy, influenced and wit I’ve seen in decades. So, as long as
where the arrowhead at the end of the fever me a lot. He introduced me to a modern idea Niemann maintains his unflappable energy
A MUSEUM. ALL
line tapers down; opposite the vampire is the of illustration. It is embarrassing to admit, (thanks in part to plenty of coffee – milk,
victim’s face (the American public) profusely but until Edelmann showed me their work, I no sugar – and silence), conceptual editorial
I THOUGHT OF
bleeding from the neck, the wound resembling had no idea who Steinberg, Holland, Glaser illustration has a champion. ◆◆
the shape of the spiraling chart. Once again, or Chwast were.” Once informed, however,
Further reading:
WAS HAVING A
Niemann has taken conventional symbols and he was hooked by their talents and became a
tweaked them into a memorably surprising confirmed emulator. Infiltrate: The Front Lines of the New York Design
Scene, Alexander Gelman, BIS Publishers,
DRAWING IN
image. Who could ask for anything better? One thing is clear: Niemann could not
conceive viable ideas at the rate he does if 2004. Contains long interview with
Christoph Niemann.
MAD MAGAZINE”
he were insulated from the world. So out of
passion and necessity he is politically aware. Review of 100% Evil: www.a-g-i.org
www.christophniemann.com
IT IS NOT THAT
“I was always an avid reader of newspapers
and magazines,” he explains, “but when I
I’M SADISTIC,
came to New York and started working for
At this point you are possibly thinking that The New York Times’ Oped page I turned
BUT I DO GET
this is hyperbole. You might also be asking into a complete addict. It was the time of the
where is my critical detachment – nobody Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton scandal,
3
OFF ON TESTING
is that perfect and even if he is, shouldn’t I when politics was a terrifically entertaining
have a more analytical evaluation? If it were spectacle. Unfortunately it is a lot less fun to
NIEMANN’S
anyone else, I would probably agree. But I be political now, especially since I take it all
am reporting on the quantifiable fact that very seriously, so goofy caricatures of G. W.
TOLERANCE
Niemann hits the mark on difficult subject Bush don’t do much to ease my pain.”
matter considerably more than he misses Yet to allay this pain he draws incessantly,
(yes, he does miss on occasion). always searching for the Holy Grail of ideas.
Why? Technique plays a large role. After What makes the best solution? “It may sound
a phase in his young career when he was spineless, but I have to admit that I believe
Well, I guess I could. It is not that I’m producing more time-consuming, detailed that it’s funny when people laugh,” he notes.
sadistic, but I do get off on testing Niemann’s renderings, he settled on a curiously generic “Sometimes I come up with an idea, and I
tolerance; so at 9:53 I wrote the following pictorial sign-symbol mannerism that am convinced it is the Mona Lisa of the 21st
email: “Christoph, nice job! But maybe there’s allowed him an ironic stylistic framework. Century, but once the third person I show it to
a better solution that won’t insult those of our His economical linear (instructional manual) gives me a forced smile or shakes their head
timid readers who find vampires offensive?” approach is fairly popular these days, but I have to accept that it sucks.” On the other
I press send, lean back in my chair and Niemann doesn’t simply mimic the style, he hand, he says it often happens that clients
patiently wait until 10:03, when he wordlessly incorporates it into a keen ability to make praise “a piece that I thought was rather
replies to my email with three more sketches. believable renderings. mediocre. There seem to be some pieces
Of course, he had other solutions and each Unlike the great conceptualists Ralph people like and I have no idea why.”
was smarter and funnier than the next, yet Steadman, Brad Holland, or Seymour Chwast, When Niemann came to New York in the
I actually preferred the first one, and that’s for instance, whose work relies on their early-90s, more than two decades had passed
what he ultimately sent back as a finished quirkily distinctive expressive gestures, since the first wave of Eastern European
4
piece by 10:47 a.m. (minus the hint of blood). Niemann uses minimalism as a styleless- illustrators had introduced symbolism and
The entire process, from my original style. Even his more narrative images, where metaphor to editorial problem solving. In
1 (page 39) 2 3 4
Arming America US deficits The Legacy of George W Bush 100% Evil email to Niemann with the manuscript in a complex story is allowed to unfold, are fact, the references to Dada, Surrealism, and
2003 2006 2005 2005 tow to receiving his final EPS file took only 77 pure and concise, allowing the concept to Futurism, the influence of Steinberg and the
New York Times Book Review. New York Times Book Review. Esquire magazine. Ink drawing from a book minutes. This was not the first, second, reign. His style is so boldly transparent that sharp satire that had made such a mark on
called 100% Evil, by Nicholas
or fifteenth time he’s made such a speedy each image is a veritable logo for the idea he American conceptual illustration had become
Blechman and Christoph
Niemann, published by turn-around. Niemann is a conceptual is conceptualizing. My favorite of his Book something of a stylistic cliché. Niemann’s
Princeton Architectural Press. illustration machine – a force of nature – Review covers illustrates this point. For a computer generated clarity and brightly
9 10 11
12 13 14 15 16
5 17 18 19 20 21
5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 – 21
Prêt-à-Porter Anniversary issue United We Stand Real Estate Bubbles Have we Reached the Let the Games Begin Fall Chores Financial Column
2003 2002 2002 2005 Bottom Yet? 2002 2004 2000 – 2006
Front cover, The New Yorker New Yorker front cover Front cover, The New Yorker. Front cover, The New Yorker. 2002 Front cover, The New Yorker. Front cover, The New Yorker. Various illustrations showing
magazine, Prêt-à-Porter – featuring bitmapped version Front cover, The New Yorker. Niemann’s sharp wit.
Japan Style issue. of New Yorker ‘dandy’ logo. Commissioned for the New
Yorker Financial Column.
“ONE OF THE
the commercial world, while simultaneously I hardly ever used it as a way of modelling the RCA Communication Art & Design course I occasionally come across anti-RCA feeling. developing attitude, not only to my own work
pursing artistic and ideological interests. images, but as a way of putting down as being ‘hard to locate’. In other words, some You select the people who come here, and so but to a relationship with landscape, with the
FACTORS THAT
During the 1980s and 90s, Fern was one areas of flat colour. It was attractive and it of it might be illustration, or it might be design. you are open to a charge of elitism. What’s your earth. It’s a sort of political thing as well. I
of Britain’s most fashionable commercial reproduced well. I’d do a bit of airbrushing What do you think is the difference between view on that in our egalitarian age? am increasingly thinking about green politics
IS ENORMOUSLY
illustrators. His finely-judged collage work, on one piece of paper, and cut it out and graphic design and illustration? We choose from hundreds of applicants from and sustainable development, alongside my
often incorporating stray letterforms and paste it onto another piece to build up a When I started working professionally, the all over the world, so you could say that it is growing interest in the landscape where I
RESTRICTING TO
fragments of printed ephemera, revealed his multilayered image. stereotypical graphic designer was regarded as an elite, but it’s an elite of merit rather than have a studio in France. All this made me
early tutelage in graphic design and was a high You abandoned collage when the computer a problem solver, and the illustrator a kind of anything else. The students come from an want to think and write about having a closer
ILLUSTRATION IS THE
point in the illustration of the time. arrived on the scene. decorator. The graphic designer would come enormously wide range of backgrounds, so it’s relationship with the earth.
Fern has since moved away from purely If I was asked to illustrate a story, or a book up with the concept, and then they’d wheel not as if their family or anything like that has I had always been excited by cities and
LACK OF DARING
commercial work to produce imagery that jacket, or a record sleeve, instead of creating in the illustrator to carry it out. They always any bearing on the possibility that they might modern buildings, and the sort of accidental
is infused with an intensely personal and a single image, I’d make a collection of seemed to need to have a brief in order to have come here. Around 60% come from outside of images you see when someone rips a poster
AMONGST THE
meditative sensibility. fragments that I’d gathered from different an idea. One of the things that differentiated the UK. But it is definitely elitist and I don’t off a billboard. I still liked all that, but I was
Walks With Colour, a book and exhibition, sources and collage them together. Text, designers from illustrators was that illustrators see how you can avoid that. getting more and more interested in the way
PEOPLE WHO
is his most recent project. It shows Fern images and photographs, brought together in a had a working methodology; they either drew, I know about the criticism, and I know we trees grow on hillsides, and the light on cliff
entering a new phase. Inspired by the way that satisfied my own aesthetic needs, and painted or made collages. They had a day-to- get a lot of it from parts of the design press, faces, things like that. It grew partly out of my
COMMISSION
countryside that surrounds his studio in also the requirements of the brief. day working method they adapted to whatever and from graphic designers for whom graphics interest in mountaineering and climbing but
rural France, his new work exhibits a more Of course, making multiple images is what the circumstances required; and through that is a sort of visual wing of marketing and also out of a need from somewhere inside me
WORK. I’M
naturalistic and painterly aesthetic. He is also the computer does best, and in the late-80s process they developed an individual ‘voice’ or consumerism. But one of the big shifts that to think more about my physical environment.
involved in making films, often produced to and early-90s a lot of people were starting to style that was recognisable. A lot of designers has happened with young people generally, it also coincides with concern about climate
NOT TALKING
accompany performances by musicians – a make the type of images that I was making didn’t have that. They’d take each job on its and not just here, but all over the world, is change, and some of the projects that are
collaborative activity that Fern is especially in much less time than it took me! I wasn’t own merits. It was as if they were starting from that they don’t necessarily want to spend going on at the RCA to do with sustainable
DIRECTORS. I’M
spartan office at the RCA in Kensington, do things that I had developed a skill for; and Many designers still find it difficult if they’re got the rest of their lives to do that if they about these things, a sort of self-evaluation
London, during March 2006. that I needed to move on. not working within certain parameters, want to. So for this precious time, they can period. It was a way of just stepping off the
TALKING ABOUT
so it’s more difficult for them to exist live outside of that. To lend creative talents escalator for a while and asking, ‘where am I
outside a commercial framework. Whereas entirely to the service of consumerism doesn’t now as a creative person?’
THE MARKETING
illustrators, and especially the sort of make sense to me. I’m not against it for part You’ve always used bright clean colours in your
illustrator that I’ve been advocating, have of the time, far from it. But I don’t take the work, now there’s been a change. You use
PEOPLE.THEY SEEM
working methodologies that enable them to D&AD view that that is what it’s all about. much darker, more naturalistic tones.
do commissioned jobs or, when that isn’t an Education should be far broader and deeper I’ve always loved colour, but I’ve tended to
TO BE PUTTING A
option, to make ‘their own work.’ I’ve always than that. Graduates from the RCA are among think of it as decoration or pattern. I’ve put
felt that this was an important distinction the most commercially successful people in colours together because they’re attractive,
HAND-BRAKE ON
between illustrators and designers, and that contemporary design; a recent survey of all and not because they’re real. I wanted to start
designers needed to pick up on this, which our graduates over the past five years showed using colours that were actually an honest
THE POTENTIAL OF
they’ve done more and more in recent years, that more than 90% are employed in the record of the colours that I saw. For the Walks
especially in places like the RCA. profession they were trained for. With Colour project, I’ve also written poetry to
IMAGE-MAKERS”
A new generation of graphic designers have How would you summarise the benefits of fill in a gap that I couldn’t fill with images.
become interested in notions of self-authorship the course? The whole project has taken up a lot of
and self-expression. I associate this attitude I think that we recognise how precious these time over the past five or six years, and the
strongly with what goes on here at the RCA. two years are. It’s a fantastically valuable time book and the show is the outcome of that. The
There are now more designers interested in in somebody’s creative life. It’s a time when book itself has been made as part of a bigger
setting their own agenda. And I think the RCA really anything ought to be possible. It may well I think one of the factors that is research project here, focused on digital print,
is fairly central in promoting that mindset. be that graduates go and work in mainstream enormously restricting to illustration, and involved a lot of processes that were,
Self-expression is a slightly pejorative way of graphics, but the things that they’ve learned particularly at the moment, is the lack of in themselves, a form of thinking – thinking
describing it – but they have ideas, concepts, here and what they’ve experienced here daring amongst the people who commission through making. ◆◆
projects that they want to do, that they’ve will carry on sustaining them in whichever work. I’m not talking about the art directors.
thought of rather than been asked to do. You area of work they go into. And that’s to do I’m talking about the marketing people. Further reading:
could call it a form of self-expression, but it’s with attitude, and about being able to share They seem to be putting a hand-brake on the Works With Colour, Dan Fern, edited by
more complex than that; they’re using the ideas, to collaborate, to articulate ideas, to be potential of image-makers and designers. If Rick Poynor. Architectural Design and
tools and the strategies of graphics to make responsive and to be socially responsible; we your work is tough and daring and individual Technology Press, 1990.
personal statements. always encourage people to work in socially it scares the marketing people because they Dan Fern, The Reputations Interview,
At the RCA, although there is always responsible ways wherever possible. think that too few people are going to relate to by Rick Poynor, in Eye 22 Vol. 6, Autumn 1996.
2
a strong ethos of self-authorship, both in At the same time there’s nothing worse it. They want something that’s going to hit as www.rca.ac.uk
illustration and in graphics, the notion that than dogma in education – people have to arrive many people as possible. I don’t think they are
you’re able to adapt what you do to the at this mindset for themselves. We encourage taught how to relate to images. I think their
commercial world, but do it on your own people to look at sustainable development, experience in business schools, or whatever,
terms is prevalent. I think that’s one of social responsibility in design, working for doesn’t include having contact with people
the key things that we are about here. The ageing populations, the dyslexic, all of those who are creative, it’s all to do with economics.
1 (page 45) 2
general atmosphere is very optimistic and sorts of things. There is a very strong ethical Go into any bookshop, and you can count
Walks With Colour old linen maps, reproduced Toulouse-Lautrec anniversary of the death idealistic. It’s not an accident. We’ve created framework here, but it’s a discreet one. the number of attractive, strong, appropriate
2006 as high quality digital prints. 2001 of the founding father of it. It comes partly from me, but also from Where does the working illustrator who is images on the fingers of one hand. And that’s
Walks With Colour is a book, Threads are pulled from Poster commissioned by European poster art.
the tutors. They all have, without exception, sympathetic towards these views go for not the fault of the illustrators; it’s the people
an exhibition and a research the linen, painted by Fern Musée Toulouse-Lautrec
project. Shown are two and added as tracery to the in Albi to produce a poster an idealistic, positive and optimistic way of inspiration? Should they look to contemporary who market the stuff. For all sorts of perfectly
examples of Fern paintings on finished surfaces. commemorating the 100th approaching professional life. art and artists? understandable reasons, they are timid.
6 7
10
11
3–4 5 6 7 8/9/11 10 12
CD covers Record sleeve Architects Journal Vol de Nuit Salvo Selection of the Jury of Ten Film stills
1990 1985 1984 1978 1998 1986 Showing Dan Fern’s interest
Two from a series of covers Contemporary choral work Cover story about innovative Cover for limited edition Three laser colour copies Section heading for Annual of in the natural world and
for Shostakovich Symphonies Cry by Giles Swayne on the theatre design. Image based publication, Royal College from a work called Salvo. Dutch Advertising performance related work.
showing Fern’s interest in theme of The Creation. Client: on architectural plans and of Art. Published by Royal College of
Constructivism. Client: Decca. BBC Records. Art Director: drawings. Art in a signed, limited edition
12
Art Director: Ann Bradbeer. Mario Moscardini. Client: Architectural Press. of 300 copies.
14
13/14
Walks With Colour
2006
More paintings on old linen
maps from the Walks With
Colour project.
“WHAT’S BEEN
with her two very young sons. Deuchars is in the future.
exhilarated by the sight of her work in print on Before talking to Deuchars and Porter,
HAPPENING IN
Saturday morning, but equally liberated by its my assumption was that illustration was less
redundancy the next day. likely to be controversial than photography.
OF MONTHS
becoming addicted to “the newspaper-buzz.” draw a Muslim?”
This frantic timetable utterly contravenes “If you blur the distinction between
GOES TO SHOW
my assumptions about illustration. In the illustration and cartoons,” comments Porter,
past, I have held with hackneyed associations “what’s been happening in the last couple of
BE JUST AS MUCH
set against the immediacy of the more there is by photography.”
commonplace editorial photograph. Deuchars’ So, not uncontroversial, but controversial
CONTROVERSY
process, however, far from characterised by in a different way: an illustration is less likely
lengthy consideration and laborious technique, to intrude on a person’s privacy, or aestheticise
GENERATED BY
is distinguished by speed and flexibility. When their hardship, but it can easily lapse into
I ask her if she ever feels frustrated that she is caricature or stereotype. Illustrations are
ILLUSTRATION
given so little time for thinking and making, she useful for communicating abstract ideas,
replies quite to the contrary, “It’s a fantastic job and tend to be a more appropriate place for
AS THERE IS BY
for an illustrator,” she insists. “My whole way the deployment of cliché (hence Deuchars’s
of working has changed. Before, I would have dove), but if their content fails to rise above
PHOTOGRAPHY”
played about, coming up with an idea indirectly the blindingly obvious they become at best
through fuzzy logic. Now I’ll brainstorm. I think a meaningless decoration and at worst a
it is much closer to the way that graphic design detraction from the writing.
works.” Discussing her relationship with the Contemporary newspapers need
2 9 10
writing, Deuchars suggests that, “You have illustration and photography to draw their
to adapt to the way they think, coming up There is little to match the Guardian’s use increasingly visual readers to their pages.
with an idea first.” ‘They are the journalists of of illustration in current British publishing, but Pictures not only make us want to read,
course and although Deuchars refers to them Porter points to the newspapers of Spain and but also influence the meaning of the text.
as the other, I wonder if she is coming around Poland as important contemporary examples, Deuchars takes this responsibility very
to their attitudes and mores. both countries with a strong tradition of seriously, thinking hard about the demands
Asked about her favourite Guardian political graphics. In the UK the Guardian is and desires of both readers and writers. She
pieces, it is obvious that her mind goes unique in maintaining an expanding stable of tells me that she gets no feedback from the
temporarily blank. Then, gathering herself, illustrators, both young and more mature, and columnists whose work she illustrates, and is
she tentatively suggests the image from in its commitment to enabling illustration to curious to know their opinions. I pursue the
the previous Saturday. The illustration to escape the editorial ghetto of the financial and matter with Mark Porter, who promises to
which she refers is an effective technology pages. try and think of a writer who might have an
3
4 juxtaposition of well-known symbols The central Guardian formula for the opinion, but cautions me by saying, “I suspect
4
– the barrel of a gun pointing at use of illustration is straightforward. News that they [the writers] don’t have much to say
a branch-proffering dove, a hand holding is visualised through photography, ideally about it, because they are still very focussed
a flower crossed out in red. It is an apt colour photography, which Porter believes on the words. They are not hostile in any
11 12
visualisation of the text by Jenni Russell, readers respond to as an ‘event’ rather than way, but they are not interested in how you
which describes the State’s subtle incursion being tempted to see as ‘artwork’, while design the paper, or how you use illustration.”
into our freedom, and its measures to police comment and analysis pages are enhanced Porter’s view appears to be confirmed when,
even the mildest of dissent – but it is far from with illustrations. Justifying this policy, Porter after a week or so, the name of a potentially
the most striking example of Deuchars’ work. suggests that, “although there are innumerable interested writer is not forthcoming.
I suspect that like a true newspaper pro, she exceptions, a photograph tends to be more So much for the journalists. Thank
operates on the basis that she is only as good about information and an illustration tends to goodness then for the energy and commitment
as her last piece. be more about ideas.” of the Guardian’s art director and designers,
When I suggest this theory to the The designers of the Guardian’s feature and its visually literate section editors who
1 (page 73) 2–3 4 5 – 12
Guardian’s art director Mark Porter he sections, however, use illustration in a maintain the newspaper’s pages as a model of The Danish Cartoons Masturbation and Terrorism Loss of Freedom Saturday ‘Comment &
concurs. “That’s what happens when you more flexible way than their central news contemporary editorial illustration ◆◆ Marion Deuchars, 2006 Marion Deuchars, 2006 Marion Deuchars, 2006 Debate’ illustrations
work in newspapers,” he explains. “It is so counterparts. A number of factors determine This year, illustration made The simplicity of the silhouette Duechars’ editorial Marion Deuchars, 2005 – 06
quick that all you can remember is the last whether a text is illustrated, the most Further reading: the headlines as a result of the draws the links between gun illustrations deploy a mix Deuchars’ skill at direct visual
controversial Danish cartoons. violence and male sexuality. of styles and techniques to symbollism and her ability to
thing you did.” This long-term memory loss important being the suitability of the subject, The Fixer: A Story from Sarajevo, by Joe Sacco, Deuchars’ illustration On the following page the convey complex ideas. play with words creates an
notwithstanding, Porter boasts that the but also in play are the usual implications Jonathan Cape, 2004. highlighted questions over shapes converge to form a alternative commentary on
paper has a long history of taking illustration of deadlines and budgets. These sections, www.mariondeuchars.co.uk rights to free speech, as the phallic symbol. current affairs.
public tried to contextualise
seriously. “One of the things we’ve managed in particular the weekday newspaper-cum- www.olivierkugler.com
the tragic consequences
to do in the 20 years or so since the [David] magazine hybrid G2, offer a chance to of the Danish newspapers’
Hillman design, is to make sure that the experiment with the role of illustration. commission.
13
14
17
13 – 15 16 – 17
Joe Sacco on Torture story responded to growing Yangtze / Fruit & Veg his meandering soundbites
Joe Sacco, 2005 scepticism over the Olivier Kugler, 2006 and detailed drawings create
Sacco’s controversial mistreatement of suspected The personal and emotive a space in the Guardian’s
illustrated essays delve into terrorists with a story of two nature of Kugler’s character G2 for a quiet cultural
topics difficult to cover in recently released prisoners, portraits allow an intimacy commentary, and provide
conventional journalism, struggling to come to terms often unattainable through insight into the corners of
allowing recollections and with their experiences whilst conventional interviews. While contemporary British society.
unsavoury truths to come into detained by investigators. his drawings capture the
15
the public eye. This recent personality of the interviewee,
“I REMEMBER
him written in both 1996 and 2004. says. “I feel as if I’m mopping up everything, because Detroit money was so good.” and backwards. For most of his career he has Such a willingness not to know, with
The repetition is intentional. Fella’s getting to all the things I never got to.” But Some of the illustrations in Fella’s booklet worked with a filing cabinet of clip art and reference to his sketchbooks at least, is at
IT’S HORRIBLE.’
options are limited. He describes himself as nine major art studios that served them in guy, a salesman maybe, clicks his fingers, lets printed black on both sides, on uncoated he was an illustrator because, as he puts it,
an “exit-level” designer. “There’s no future business. Illustration and layout, therefore, go of his cane and high-steps it across the sheets in muted hues of brown and grey. Those “whereas graphic design is more anonymous,
’ I SUPPOSE IT
for me, only a past,” he says. “All I can do is to was a lucrative career choice and attendance centrefold, a naked lady on his tie, a cigarette who attend his lectures each receive a flyer, all illustration is sold for its particular and
reclaim my work.” at Cass Technical High School, essentially tucked under his braces and a small rent in not as a promotion for the event – “the next individual style.” In the late-50s, for example,
WOULD BE THE
The idea of the archive – and particularly an industrial apprenticeship, ensured Fella one of his trouser legs; a clergyman walks generation has to do the advertising; I don’t Fella was interested in the Art Deco or
his archive, which comprises some cardboard a fast-track entry to Skidmore Sahratian, on painted toenails; and an imposing gent in want to interfere with that” – but as a souvenir. Moderne detailing and lettering that he found
IF A STUDENT CAME
of Fella’s right now. When I spent some time the studio used to sell their work. portraits of businessmen and fat rich couples archive building. Even though the flyers are brand of potato chips, New Era, which “had
with him and his CalArts (California Institute 2 On the cover of one of Fella’s 1960’s don’t seem out of place in the booklet, but predominantly visual, with the typographic its packages done in Art Deco style.” When
TO ME SAYING
of the Arts) students last October, he talked brochures is a satirical portrait of the Britishness, the Imperialist digs and elements used as illustrative rather than verbal he started to incorporate elements of this
a good deal about design archives, and the a slick commercial artist with shiny black the references to Victorian engineering are components, Fella describes them as a form Moderne-style in his work, “I remember the
OLD STUFF BY
concerns Fella. The topic was on his mind, I links and pointy shoes. He’s sitting on a box mid-west. The booklet is an eloquent However, the language is a very personal one, be the same thing now if a student came to me
think, because he had spent the summer of safe that, one presumes from his fancy getup demonstration of Fella’s facility with many and even though Fella believes it is available saying he’d found this old stuff by someone
SOMEONE CALLED
2005 working with his 19 year-old nephew to and enormous grin, contains his plentiful illustrative styles, the international range of his to others if they “sit down with this stuff and called David Carson or Ed Fella. I would say
develop his website – a digital corollary to his earnings. Whether it’s autobiographical or references, and his obvious relish for satire. unpack it like a poem,” some of the references ‘what are you doing?’”
DAVID CARSON OR
archival plan chests. The site is still a work not, it’s certainly a telling image of the times. Fella makes an art of being contrary. are pretty obscure. Referring to a poster he Fella’s ability to be always attuned to
in progress, and dependent on the voluntary Bill Teodecki, an artist who specialised in While most designers have ditched the deeply made for a conference I organized in Berlin, he what is overlooked or unfashionable at any
ED FELLA. I WOULD
efforts of various relations, but its scope is car illustrations and their backgrounds, unfashionable term ‘commercial art,’ Fella admits, “you’d have to know a lot of references one time is surely a post-modernist trait.
continues to use it emphatically to describe and know the context: German design, “Postmodernism is about a knowingness,”
YOU DOING?’”
know, the American modernist railed against Hofmann, various styles of German stamps, our work, its context, history, limitations,
idiosyncratic commercial art. I think graphic and a range of Bauhaus lettering. possibilities and so on. There can never be
designers should reclaim ‘commercial art.’ Most of the flyers use the location of the a naïve or authentic art again, except for
Hack. That’s another word I reclaimed…” I talk as the stimulus for their content, but for Outsider Art. Everything else: anti-art, art as
wonder if they are actually useful terms, or is a recent lecture at Pratt in Brooklyn pure philosophy, art of the insane, amateur
Fella just being stubborn? “It’s satirical, but it’s 1 Fella’s subject was himself or, rather, The flip side is filled with small images, all art, low-culture, vernacular, it’s all in there.
also serious,” he says. “I want to reclaim the his past. The theme of the flyer, interconnected as if part of some crazy plastic Everything now is known and academic.”
honesty of commercial art.” stated in an undulating line of handset small model airplane kit. In the top left a fisherman It’s interesting to hear him say this as some
Fella’s insistence on such terminology courier caps, is ‘Nothing new was made for casts his rod, the end of which has caught might regard Fella’s spontaneous outpourings
may come from a sense of nostalgia. When this piece’. Fella achieved the wave effect by upon a stack of clip art – a decorative pagoda of his subconscious – illustration-lettering-
he was in his late-40s, after three decades cutting notches in between each letter and building silhouetted atop a graphic outline of layout-art – as a kind of ‘outsider’ design.
in the business, Fella famously gave up then bending it “any which way.” He says of a stopwatch, atop an eye looking out to the Fella acknowledges, however, that despite the
commercial art and embarked on graduate the flyer, made in the spring of 2005, “there’s left, contained in a circle atop a demented- inclusiveness of our current attitude to art,
studies in design. It was 1985 and Katherine the whole history of my practice here.” looking sun which radiates rays of light. An there’s still a hierarchy of quality at work. “I
and Michael McCoy had recently started On one side of the poster, a stylized ornate frame in the centre is built up using don’t pretend I’m a vernacular innocent,” he
the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. drawing of a hand holding a pencil grows out Art Deco references processed through a 70s says, “there’s a craft, skill and artistry to the
Fella’s hands-on knowledge of the then-exotic from the right edge of the page. The pencil lens of irony, and on the bottom sits a wide- work I do that makes it unique. I try to make a
vernacular of commercial art was a powerful is pointing towards, but not quite touching, eyed cartoon cricket dating from Fella’s 60s body of work that’s undeniable…On the other
influence on fellow students and tutors alike. an electrical socket into which is plugged a period of caricature illustration. To the right is hand it’s hard to say what that is.” ◆◆
His work from this period, a peculiar and shiny plastic Pop Art plug. Connecting the a highly ornamental flower, the stem of which
hard-to-categorize hybrid of illustration, hand- two elements is a genie-like winged creature takes the viewer’s eye down to the layer of Further reading:
lettering and composition that had derived with devil’s horns. It has its single foot poised images below. It is dense composition, one that Edward Fella: Letters on America.
from years spent as a Detroit “layout guy,” on the back of the pencil and one enlarged rewards in proportion to close study. Essays by Lewis Blackwell and Lorraine Wild.
gained him an international reputation and a hand, curled into a fist and extended towards The other place Fella continues to Laurence King Publishing, 2000.
definitive position in graphic design’s avant- the socket. This character bears resemblance produce or “discharge” work is in his All Access: Behind the Scenes – The Making of
garde, which at the time was keenly focused to a picture Fella drew in his 60s promotional sketchbooks. He has 75 of them, each with Thirty Extraordinary Graphic Designers
on deconstruction theory. This position has brochure, of a devil in evening dress with around 100 pages which he compulsively fills by Stefan Bucher. Rockport, 2006.
continued to be chronicled and confirmed cloven hooves, and horns easily mistaken for with expressive gestures that occasionally www.edfella.com
by design critics. Numerous accolades have two wings of slicked back hair. Beside him is spawn a half-recognisable word or phrase such
further cemented his status: in 1997 Fella an electrical socket and in one hand his tail as ‘Beauregard’ or ‘Loose end in 2nd sight’,
received the Chrysler Award for Design hangs limply, its pointed end charred and or a phantasmagorical figure that looks as if
2 Innovation and in 1999 an Honorary Doctorate curled. The text of the poster – the title of it has been summoned from his imagination
from the Centre for Creative Studies in his talk, ‘An Exit-Level Designer: Ed Fella through a Cubist painting and then a Saturday
Detroit. Three pieces of his work hang in At Pratt History, Commercial Art, Art, and morning cartoon. He uses one of those four-
MoMA’s design and architecture gallery. He the American Vernacular’ and the date and colour plastic ballpoint pens that primary
1 (page 79) 2 – 3 (page 82)
speaks of their inclusion in the museum’s location – is broken down into phrases in school teachers use to mark papers, and a
Flyer/poster for Pratt Institute previous Ed Fella artworks Self-promotional booklet of a commercial artist. Like
2005 dating from the 1960s to Mid-1960s much of Fella’s work from collection, and their positioning next to Paula which the words are stacked and staggered yellow Prisma pencil to add some tonal value.
Promotional item advertising the 1990s. Cover and spread from 20pp this period, there is a marked Scher’s Public Theatre posters, with a mixture horizontally and vertically. The conjunctions “They’re not sketches for anything,” says
a talk at the famous New York booklet showing various English influence. As Fella of bemusement and delight. “I like the idea of ‘An’, ‘At’ and ‘And’ are framed in diagonally Fella of the characters and distorted phrases
art school. Offset printing, recurring themes in Fella’s notes: “In the late-50s, I was a
black ink on tan bond paper. early work: small feet, big fan of Ronald Searle.
being history,” he says, “I feel like I can relax.” thrusting ovals which give the composition that crowd the pages, “they exist in process.”
All the illustrations used in this elongated figures and self- I had all his little books about As for the future, Fella makes space for movement, and serve to connect the disparate There is a dialogue between the sketchbooks
piece were taken from deprecating view of the life English school life.” his students to take care of that. He has been pieces. It’s a beautiful piece of design – deft and flyers, however, which results in a printed
6
7
4 5 6 7
GMC truck advertisement. ChevyVision 70 Chevrolet 1915 auto Hudson’s Contract Division “It’s not air brush, but done
Illustration dating from the 1969-1970 Early-1960s advertisement with one of those small water
4
1970s Art Deco style lettering for One of around 50 ink and 1971 soluble spray cans, popular in
front of foldout promotional wash illustrations depicting the Illustration for contract the 70s, now long gone.”
item. history of Chevrolet cars. furniture division of Detroit
department store. “l think
the ad was run in Time
Magazine,” recalls Fella.
12 13 14
15
8 – 14 15 16
Self-initiated work “l was trained in the mid 50s experimental art movements of people like Moholy-Nagy Self-initiated work Self-initiated work
Mid-1980s in a technical high school,” like Dada and Constructivism – all movements that used 2005 Early-1980s
Collage work (page size he explains, “and in our 20th (along with American collage.” Front and back of postcard,
7x10”) from Fella’s post century art history classes we regionalism), but especially part of a series, showing
16
‘commercial art’ phase. studied all the European the Bauhaus and the work collage work.
19 20 21
17 – 18 19 – 21
Self-initiated work Self-initiated work
Early-1990s Late-1990s
Pages from sketch books More pages from sketch
(7x10” approx) showing hand- books, this time executed in
rendered lettering. Executed in 4-colour Bic ballpoint pen
Prismacolor pencil.
86 ED FELLA 9/9
£12
US$25
€20