The University of Arizona Alumnus / Winter 2010
FEAR AS FUEL
Alumnus cover illustrator Brian Stauffer uses risk as an antidote for complacencyby Alaina G. Levine
Floating in a pool is how Brian Stauffer ’89, illustrator, gets out of a rut. “If I’m stuck on something,” the bachelor of fine arts graduate describes, “I put on my snorkel and mask and float face down in the pool. I just have to tell my wife beforehand so she doesn’t think I’m dead.”
It may be hard to believe that someone like Stauffer, whose illustrations have graced the covers of such publications as The New Yorker, Time, The
Village Voice, and Sports Illustrated, and who produced more than 300 pieces of art last year, could ever get into a rut. More to the point — does he ever feel stuck when presented with a 30-minute deadline? The New York Times is known to call Stauffer and request an illustration to accompany an op-ed piece with only moments to spare.
“There’s no time to be fearful,” says Stauffer, of these thrilling instances. But that’s OK with him. “I enjoy these fast-turnaround projects.” Besides, “fear is not a bad thing — it keeps you from becoming complacent,” he continues. “I use fear as a fuel. If I feel stagnant it’s usually because I haven’t put myself in a situation where there’s enough risk.”
His mentor and former instructor, Ellen McMahon, visual communications associate professor in the University of Arizona School of Art, notes that The New York Times often ends up using headlines that Stauffer suggests to accompany his illustrations. “He’s distilling the story to the essential elements,” she says proudly, “making the meaning immediately accessible” to the reader.
Stauffer began his career while he was a design student at the UA, something he advises others to replicate. “Students should take a chance now,” he encourages, “The reason I got what I got was because I did other things (as a student).” Stauffer and his fellow classmates launched an arts magazine which they dubbed Chromophobia, or fear of color. Unexpectedly, the publication won Best of Show in the ADDYs, the Tucson Advertising Federation’s annual awards program.
After he graduated, “I worked for a dumpy, two-man ad agency in Phoenix creating ads for shopping malls,” he recalls. But in the evening, operating out of a Tuff Shed, he helped start another magazine which surprise, surprise, won Best in Show in the Phoenix advertising awards.
Eventually moving from design to illustration, a chance meeting with a legendary art director propelled Stauffer into the national spotlight and his career into the stratosphere. After hearing Fred Woodward of Rolling Stone magazine speak at a design conference, Stauffer introduced himself and handed him a few samples of his work. Two weeks later, he received an assignment to do a full-page illustration for Rolling Stone. This led to assignments for GQ and the Village Voice. He was 27 years old.
Stauffer’s career has been guided by his entrepreneurial nature, says McMahon, so it is not unexpected that he also was involved with a unique start-up. In the late 90s, he and some friends launched Star Media, a funded venture that was to be a Latin American version of AOL. But his heart and (after the 2000 dot-com bust) money were in illustration, and that’s where he has made his mark.
In 2008, as the country celebrated the election of Barack Obama as President, Stauffer got the opportunity of a lifetime. The New Yorker said “yes you can” to Stauffer’s concept for a postelection cover illustration entitled, A Very Long Tunnel. “Anyone can submit an idea to The New Yorker,” explains Stauffer, although of course very few are accepted. But “I pursued it,” he says, and sent them a sketch. “It just happened that they liked it.” In November 2008, Stauffer’s iconic illustration of a dark-red tunnel leading to a blue-sky egress served as the cover of the magazine’s postelection issue.
Stauffer’s new major career focus is on animation. He’s done some commercials for companies such as Teva and antismoking PSAs, including The Truth campaign. “As print becomes more and more of an endangered species,” he says, “motion is a really smart thing (to be involved in).” Animation makes sense, he continues, because it allows him to apply his style and creativity to TV and the Web in new and innovative ways. Right now, he’s developing the animation for the rebranding campaign of a major cable network.
But he won’t stray far from illustration. He just finished a major poster series for a Canadian theater company, and the February/March 2010 issue of Communication Arts magazine, considered the most prestigious publication devoted to design and illustration, will present a 10-page feature of his work. “I’m happy but humbled,” admits Stauffer of the honor. Stauffer “absolutely loved Tucson” and the UA. He was in the last class of the graphic-design program that did not incorporate computer instruction. “I went into the field with no (computer) experience,” he recalls, “but it was perfect the way it was because it left so much more time to develop the process and value of creative concepting.”
The UA viscom program, which takes only 20 undergraduates in illustration and 20 undergraduates in graphic design each year, “emphasizes concept development and translation of ideas into visual form,” explains McMahon, who recently hosted Stauffer for a visit with students and coordinated his October through December 2009 exhibition at the UA Museum of Art.
Stauffer recalls his days in Wildcat country with great fondness, although he jokes that some of his memories are unprintable. He remembers “pulling all-nighters” with other seniors in the UA design studio and listening to the 80s hardcore punk-rock band Black Flag.
And then there was the time that he accidentally glued his friend’s hair to the sofa. “I was working all night on a project and my roommate was passed out on the couch,” says Stauffer. In an exhausted haze, Stauffer was cutting out letters and spray-mounting them on posterboard lying near the slumbering roommate. Stauffer didn’t realize that with every spritz of the aerosol adhesive he was bonding his bud’s “do” to the damask. Fortunately, it wasn’t very strong adhesive and as the sun rose, so did his roommate, sticky but relatively unharmed.
Hard Eyes: Images in Empathy
by Ellen McMahonBrian Stauffer’s illustrations often depict and explore the dark side of the human condition. His process begins with hand-drawn images that he then builds upon using mixed-media collages of traditional and digital processes, painted elements, and scanned found objects and surfaces. Trained in the visual communications program at the University of Arizona, Stauffer earned a bachelor of fine arts degree, with an emphasis in design, in 1989.
Stauffer’s work often exemplifies the philosophy of the UA visual communications program which approaches design and illustration as means of critical inquiry, documentation, interpretation, expression, and communication, as well as powerful vehicles for social change. Stauffer is recognized as one of the leading practitioners in this genre of illustration because of his strong political and social commentary, distinctive visual voice, incisive concept development, focused visual problem solving, and clarity of communication.
The images included in this story are works exhibited at the UA Museum of Art in fall 2009. The illustrations are the result of assignments from a wide range of clients and art directors. But some of them began as personal responses to world events that were later pitched to art directors. The concept for A Very Long Tunnel popped into his head, without a specific assignment. He submitted a concept sketch to the art director of the New Yorker and it became the Obama cover the week after he was elected.
In 2005, the American Society of Magazine Editors named Stauffer’s Worry cover for the November 13, 2000 issue of The Nation magazine one of the Top 40 Magazine Covers of the Past 40 Years. Stauffer’s images are in the permanent collections of the Museum of American Illustration at the Society of Illustrators in New York City, American Institute of Graphics Artists, Newseum of Washington, D.C., and Art Directors Club of New York.
Stauffer is a contributing artist to publications including The New York Times, Time magazine, The New Yorker, The Nation, The Village Voice, Rolling Stone, Esquire, GQ, U.S. News & World Report, and more than 300 others.
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