07 December 2010

Ben Sanders recently wound up a rather substantial job for Career One, led by a crack team at Clemenger BBDO in Sydney. As you can see above, the finished product is now plastered all over city billboards, train stations and national broadsheet spreads. We thought you’d like to know exactly what kind of work goes into a project this size. Ben kindly fielded some questions…

What was the original brief from Clemenger? The brief was to visually interpret the headlines their creative team had come up with. Each line contains two often opposing thoughts about how people see success differently.

How did you interpret this? Good question… hard to answer! Well, early on the creative director (Chris Badger) and I decided that we needed a single image that could convey the two ideas in each headline. Initial thoughts were to create two illustrations and link them visually to make them one. The concepts worked but were not as strong as a single image that quickly and immediately communicated both points of view about success. Conceptually it is much more challenging to get this to work well, but far more rewarding once we got it right.

Which aspects of your style do you think were appropriate? They already had in mind a basic style that I worked with and tinkered with until we were all comfortable it was going to do the job of communicating the ideas clearly. I don’t normally work with outlines, and this particular style is all about the outline. So it is a very different style for me, it’s modern and symmetrical, smooth and orderly. My usual style is irregular and weathered and somewhat nostalgic.

Did you apply any specific techniques? Yes, theres are purely vector illustrations. The line work is smooth and even, accentuated with a thicker outline around the entire illustration.

What was your process? The process is a bit different to most illustration jobs as some of the time I’m only given the headline, so the second half of the idea is entirely up to me. The line succeeds or fails depending on my visual solution to the headline, which is something I used to do when I worked as an Art Director. My sketches were basically pitching ideas back to the creative team to see what sunk and what swam. Very satisfying when your idea succeeds.

How long did the job take to complete? Some of the illustrations are turned around very quickly, others are a process that stretches over weeks.

Did you find any aspects of the job particularly difficult / fun / awesome? Coming up with the ideas is both the most difficult and most fun. I continue to enjoy the challenge of creating something unique that also communicates their two messages simultaneously.

How do you feel seeing your work up all over the place, even in the Daily Telegraph underneath a Russian femme fatale? Not aware of the Russian femme fatale but I’m intrigued… was nice to see my beer bottle above Young and Jackson though. I took a ride on a tram with a big illustration of mine on the side. Gives you a bit of a buzz…