Hasta La Ideas

Cartoonist Neil Kerber has started a model agency with a difference. No more divas or no-shows, and they’ll always look fabulous… because all the models are cartoons.

Working as a cartoonist for the last 20 years, Kerber’s work appears daily in UK national press, with regular fixtures in Private Eye, the Daily Mirror, and various other publications over the years. The London-based cartoonist was a doodler from a young age, being persuaded at 20 by a family friend “that it’s possible to do something you really enjoy, and that work can actually be fun,” says Kerber”. Soon after this he pitched his ideas to the Sunday People and his cartoons were picked up for weekly slot.

He references Jim Henson, Dr. Seuss and Ronald Searle as key early influences, and says that Gary Larson (creator of The Far Side) was undoubtedly his biggest inspiration when he was starting out. “His daily cartoons used to make me belly laugh, a rare achievement,” he says.

A day in the life of the cartoonist in his office, a few doors down from his home, involves coming up with ideas for cartoons, working on characters, and meeting up with his Daily Mirror cartoon partner, chatting to the paper about stories and working up ideas for the following day’s cartoon.

Much of Kerber’s time is now spent expanding his newest venture, Cartoon Model Management, developing characters and models, emailing PR companies, completing commissions and so on. The CMM project developed after Kerber sketched a cartoon supermodel several years ago. “I thought that if I drew her wearing the latest trends, giving the drawings a slightly funny twist, she could feasibly appear in the pages of fashion magazines, or on billboards, just like a real supermodel,” he says. “I’ve been creating a cartoon strip in Private Eye for 20 years called Supermodels and I have some understanding of how the industry works, albeit limited.”

And the character of Polly Bean was born – a stick-thin figure that Kerber sketched into several campaigns featuring well-known fashion brands, sending the ‘shots’ to various prestigious London model agencies. Accompanying them was a letter from Polly herself, explaining how she was dissatisfied with her current management and was looking for new representation.

The very next day Kerber received a call from Premier, one of the world’s top agencies, who have handled big names including Naomi Campbell and Christie Turlington. After a few meetings Polly was signed, appearing on the model board next to the human faces at the agency. “The trick was to not mention she was a cartoon, and hopefully build up her fame, eventually hiring her out at supermodel rates,” he says.

Polly has since been signed up for regular appearances in Vogue, hired by brands including Harvey Nichols, DKNY and Evian, and written about in various major magazines.

Ollie

She recently left Premier, remaining with three other agencies internationally, and a few months later Kerber created a model boyfriend for her called Ollie, and together they were the first models on the Cartoon Model Management books. They were closely followed by Lolly the curvy plus size beauty, Herbie Power, “the world’s most successful person ever”, and a dog called Harvey Licks.

All have already found success, some being commissioned for major brands, with Polly even find a fan in Donna Karen, who recently sang her praises to Vogue. “Polly is my kind of gal,” Karen said. “Funny, creative, passionate, obsessive and definitely a bit naughty; you have to love her. It doesn’t matter how amazing the dress may be, she’s always the star.”

Lolly

Herbie and Harvey

Instead of photoshoots the shots are drawn, which comes with its own unique advantages. “The clothes and products (and settings) always look amazing. Clients will always find CMM models a lot easier to work with than human models: less temperamental, turning up on time and not drinking or taking drugs, or having eating disorders,” says Kerber. “And there are no extra costs involving stylists, hairdressers, make-up artists, photographers, flight tickets or hotel rooms.” There is also the opportunity for CMM to create a bespoke model to suit the client’s needs.

The unusual idea continues to build on its success, with CMM just announcing that Ollie will be featuring in a 5 page summer fashion spread in the May issue of GQ. “It’s very exciting and will hopefully push Ollie into the world of menswear in a big way, says Kerber. “For a male model, you can’t get much bigger than this.”

www.cartoonmodelmanagement.com
www.neilkerber.com

Former Guinness brewer and author David Hughes is giving a talk at St Bride Library in London next month on the recently re-discovered ‘lost’ Guinness artwork painted by John Gilroy.

Between 1930 and 1962, Gilroy worked with ad agency S H Benson, producing hundreds of illustrations for some of Guinness’ most iconic campaigns. Many featured animals – lions, ostrich, octopus and rhinos as well as the famous toucan – while others referenced artistic and cultural figures. In 1936, he produced illustrations featuring Nazi imagery for a German distributor, but the posters were never used:

The oil-on-canvas paintings were stored in the S H Benson archive but when the agency closed in 1971, they were lost. Many were bought by a private collector and others were donated to the British Museum and the V&A.

Around 40 years later, Gilroy’s art resurfaced in the US antiques market and since then, around 320 oil paintings have been found. 250 of them are showcased in Gilroy was Good for Guinness – Hughes’ third book on the stout brand’s history.

Most of the artwork featured in the book had not previously been published and many of the illustrations are from rejected campaigns. Hughes will be discussing Gilroy’s work and methods at his talk on St Bride on Tuesday March 4.

The talk will take place at 7.00pm in the Bridewell Hall, St Bride Foundation, Bride Lane, Fleet Street, London EC4Y 8EE.

Tickets cost £15 or £12.50 for Friends of St Bride and concessions are available for students.

For details and to book a place, see stbride.org

Images above (excluding German print) taken from a set of 22 done in 1952 and never used commercially. Titled The Art of Guinness and Old Masters, they were later re-worked by Gilroy to become adverts for Guinness.

All images © David Hughes

Each year, the BAFTAs recruits a different studio to design invites, passes and programmes for its A-list guests as well as posters promoting coverage of the ceremony. This year’s were created by Human After All and illustrated by La Boca…

Human After All was founded last year by Danny Miller, Rob Longworth, Alexander Capes and Paul Willoughby – former directors of The Church of London and the team that launched cult magazines Huck and Little White Lies (we wrote a feature on HAA back in May).

In 12 months, the studio has designed print and digital communications for Facebook, Google, YouTube, Adidas and the World Economic Forum, but the BAFTAs is perhaps their most high profile project to date.

The poster

When pitching for the project, the studio recommended a handful of illustrators to produce programme covers and a lead image for posters. La Boca was chosen based on its previous poster designs for Black Swan and King Kong. “They do such iconic, reduced compositions,” says creative director Paul Willoughby. “I first found out about them when I saw the Black Swan poster in 2010 – it was the kind of design where you look at it and think, ‘I wish I’d done that!”

The poster appeared in Tube stations and on London buses and features a spotlight shining through a BAFTA mask onto a small protagonist standing in front of it. The black and gold design is suitably elegant for one of the UK’s most prestigious awards ceremonies, but offers a playful take on traditional BAFTA imagery.

Early concept images featured rich, deep colours with a vintage, disco feel, in a nod to the golden age of cinema, says Willoughby. This would have required four-colour printing, however, and would not have worked so well on tickets, so Human After All opted for a two-colour design with white text in the BAFTA’s official font, Wilford.

“We were really happy when we saw the font – it’s crisp and stylish, and communicates clearly,” says Willoughby.

The tickets

The black, white and gold scheme used on posters was also applied to tickets, partly to avoid confusion among staff checking them in dim lighting. Regular guests received a white and gold invitation and VIPs a black and gold foil one, and each contained a breakdown of the evening’s events and party passes printed on red, purple and green paper. Both tickets and passes were printed on GF Smith stock.

“In previous years, it would be difficult to tell the tickets apart, so we needed the biggest contrast possible,” says creative Evan Lelliot. “In terms of the design, we wanted to create a really easy journey – there’s quite a lot of information to pack in and we wanted to streamline that and create the best user experience we could,” he adds.While the focus was on simplicity, there are some charming added touches, such as an image of the small protagonist from the poster in ticket folds.

While BAFTA has its own shade of gold, Human After All opted for a standard shade on tickets and passes to ensure maximum opacity. “The BAFTA gold just didn’t look as we’d intended. It also has the same mid tone as the red party passes, so when we tried printing it out you could barely see it,” says Willoughby. Car passes (above) are equally bright, printed on yellow, teal and purple paper to ensure they are visible from afar.

The programme

As well as their ticket to the event, each BAFTA guest receives a printed programme featuring editorial on nominated films and actors, an ‘in memoriam’ section acknowledging those who have passed away since last year’s ceremony and a photo essay, shot this year by Dr Andy Gotts.

Programmes are the same inside but as with previous years, they feature one of five covers, each depitcing a nominated film (see previous year’s cover designs here and here). Films selected for this year’s covers were 12 Years a Slave, American Hustle, Philomena, Captain Philips and Gravity.

“Each cover had to speak to the film but in a metaphorical way,” says Willoughby. “Evan and I watched trailers for each, made a list of the iconography in them and sent La Boca a list of words. I didn’t want to steer them in any graphic direction, just set them on the right path with ideas,” he adds.

Covers contain several references to key themes in each film and each uses a different key colour. Together, the whole set makes up a full spectrum, says Willoughby.

The cover designs are also used inside programmes to introduce features on each film, where they are accompanied by headlines arranged in playful compositions that reference the imagery. In the headline for a piece on 12 Years a Slave, for example, the 1 and 2 make up a violin. In another feature on Philomena, words are arranged like a cross in a reference to the film’s religious themes.

“When designing [Huck and Little White Lies], we would spend a lot of time getting images and type to talk to each other,” says Willoughby. “We returned to a lot of techniques we’d refined designing magazines over the years for this project,” he says.

“We wanted everything to communicate the ‘cinimersive theme’ we’d been keen to convey from the start – the headlines, imagery and page furniture all had to offer something extra, a little more involving,” adds Lelliot.

When designing the photo essay, Human After All applied the same playful approach, cropping Gott’s head and shoulders portraits of actors to create extreme close-ups, toying with the idea of how much we really need to see of celebrities to know who they are.

Gotts’ portraits are powerful and present an intimate look at some impressive names. “You can tell he has a big rapport with the people he shoots. His images are very evocative and often, he takes shots you that wouldn’t expect from celebrities of such status,” adds Lelliot.

Human After All’s attention to detail throughout is impressive: all images were treated with the same colour code to ensure they appear vibrant on uncoated paper, pages of the photo essay feature a gold trim for an added sense of luxury, and the in memoriam and listings sections feature varied layouts to ensure readers remain engaged throughout.

Human After All and La Boca’s styles work well together, and the studios have produced a scheme that is fun, creative and carefully executed.

Each February since 2005 Marian Bantjes has sent out handmade Valentine’s gifts. This year, she posted a series of rather unusual letters – ones originally sent to the actor Robert Wagner in the late 1950s…

Two letters turned up at CR this week, postmarked ‘Canada’. Inside both were envelopes containing other letters; both of them were addressed to Robert Wagner. These had postmarks from Santa Fe in Argentina and Mandaluyong in the Philippines and were dated – four days apart in fact – June 1957. What was going on?

After turning the letter around and studying the envelope things became a bit clearer: a red “Timeless Love” was stamped on the paper and “Marian” was handwritten alongside. The stamp, I realised, was in the shape of a fan.

Over the years, artist and designer Bantjes’ Valentine’s Day efforts have included sending out artworks printed on ‘glassine’ (2005); making 150 hand-drawn hearts (2007) and 300 names made out of a heart-shaped alphabet (2008). In 2009 she mailed out ‘found’ fragments of hand-written love letters; the following year it was used Christmas cards laser-cut into intricate, lace-like hearts.

As unconventional as this year’s approach was, it did get me thinking. Had these letters ever reached the actor, who at the time they’d been sent had just appeared in The True Story of Jesse James (he was 26 then). Or had the letters at least reached someone who looked after his fan mail? (One has an officious ‘Not at MGM Studios’ stamp on it). If so, did the senders – Viviana and Conchita – ever receive their signed photos?

That we had two letters, posted from opposite sides of the world, made me think that someone who worked for him had kept them.

Twitter confirmed that the actor was the link in Bantjes’ latest project: there were Instagrams and Twitpics of letters from Germany and South Africa, each one sent to Wagner. Scrolling the tweets also made me think how relatively easy it was to send a message to someone famous these days. Do people even still write letters to film stars?

This is the 10th year Bantjes has been sending out her Valentine’s gifts; Wagner’s 84th birthday was February 10. Coincidence? Only the sender can say. Either way, it was a nice surprise to receive a hand-written letter – a very rare thing these days. Even if the letter wasn’t originally meant for me.

All of Marian Bantjes’ Valentine’s projects are collected on this page at bantjes.com.

Via eBay

Star Wars, Shining, 2001, l’Odyssée de l’Espace ou encore Orange Mécanique, voici un échantillon des films incontournables que l’illustrateur et architecte espagnol Federico Babina a représenté en 17 illustrations rétro. Tout en respectant les codes couleurs, il a illustré les pièces-phares de chaque film.