Corporate cartooning
Let’s face it; all of us, whether we consider ourselves illustrators, high-brow artists or mere cartoonists, would love to be able to make a living doing only what we want to do. But the fact is that my graphic novels only have a cult following among my friends and are never likely to sell enough so I can retire to that yacht in the Caribbean I’ve always dreamed of. Instead, we’re forced to pimp our talents out to the highest bidder, dressing up in business suit and pretending professional to secure corporate contracts.
We all pretend we don’t do corporate work, but any artist who says he’s never created something to a direct brief from a client is a liar. Even great painters like Michaelangelo had their patrons, and would have to paint whatever and however they were told to if they wanted their pay cheque at the end of the month. I was watching a documentary about American art on TV the other night and discovered that a lot of the early pop artists – those renegade rebels who rejected all the norms of society – actually painted advert on billboards for a living before they made their name in the art world. It made me feel a lot better to know that someone as influential as Andy Warhol had also sold his skills to the highest bidder in order to pay the rent!
My corporate work isn’t quite on the scale of the Times Square billboards that Warhol and his fellow pop artists used to create, but I did manage to secure quite a lucrative contract with a local company the other day. Well, lucrative compared to the peanuts and money-off vouchers that I usually get paid! Unfortunately, it really is the most depressing contract. I’ve also won – creating a series of logos and designs for the local anti-windfarm campaign which is being bankrolled by a businessman with more money than sense whose scenic view is going to be “ruined” by the turbines. I actually toyed with turning it down, but I can’t afford to be that picky. Maybe I can just do a really crappy job and bring down the campaign from within….?
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