View from the Zoo

Ritzenhoff did a great job with my coffee cup design for their My Darling 2008 collection. This sunny lion is king of the Java Jungle in the morning with his brew. Notice how the cup and the packaging are related to form a complete character that looks really good in the store display. The challenge is not only to make the cup interesting on all sides but also to create a character that a coffee lover can relate to.

A bit of background
The design started out as a business card for a very small corner café (now closed unfortunately). The owner, Remo, is a Leo. I developed a number of lions in different café settings and this one was Remo’s favorite. It also became the poster for my first exhibition of animal art at the café called «Les rois animaux» (The Animal Kings). Later on I submitted a revised and adapted version to Ritzenhoff but I didn’t hear from them for quite awhile, and then, surprise, one morning they announced their intention to produce the cup for this season.

I change business cards like I change clothes - every season a new outfit! And it’s a lot cheaper than in the old days of offset printing. This season I printed 100 4×6 inch postcards through Gotprint.com and cut them up to achieve the clothes tag size cards which is smaller than the standard 2×3 inches. Six different colors on one side and six different animals on the other. I also simplified my job description to read «illustration» which works in English and French (cards have to be bilingual in Quebec). And, voilà, 600 glossy business cards advertisng my website www.julienchung.com! I like fishing so I placed a very small fish under my name. If you would like a set, please e-mail me at julienchung@hotmail.com and include your postal address.

This is part 2 of 3 of the interview with Rob. I really enjoy Rob’s imagery especially his personal work. Above we have selection of commercial and personal illustrations.  Check out his new portfolio of character design on his blog. 

Q: How and why did you start to draw animals?

A: I’ve been interested and sympathetic feeling toward all kinds of animals my entire life. We lived out in the country so there were plenty of opportunities to explore and discover things. My childhood dreams of wanting to be a zookeeper or veterinarian evolved into an environmental consciousness when I hit my teens. Art has been the other passion obviously. I was disappointed that my studies in Fine Art (BA painting, MFA sculpture) led me to conclude that “serious art” had no business depicting animals. You could talk about landscape but not the organisms that were part of its ecology. That has changed but I think in general, animals are often used in an ironic or symbolic way in order for the art to be about itself rather than the subject it appears to be about. Anyway, luckily, I discovered the work of Morris Graves and a few other artists that depicted various animals in a sympathetic light. In order to experience animals in art, I just had to expand my search criteria a little: children’s books and Disney films, comics, other design and illustration art.

What is amazing about this beautiful wooden coffetable is that the ladybug pattern is actually made up of 1600 wood dots, all inlaid by hand! This imitates the halftone screening process used in printing newspaper photos, for example. Furniture designer Michael Iannone says, «I chose the ladybug because I think many people consider it a nonthreatening insect and it seemed to lend itself well to the halftone graphic.» It takes between four and five hours to inlay the dots. The coffeetable retails for 1800 $ US and can be ordered from Iannone Design Ltd. (a Philadelphia based design/build firm dedicated to the creation of eco-friendly modern furniture).