COMMUNICATION ARTS ILLUSTRATION ANNUAL 59
Little Jacket Here Be Dragons Maxine Helfman Exhibit
Manifold
May/June 2018 Twenty-Four Dollars commarts.com
BY JUDE STEWART
s there anything that peeves Joey Parlett and Roger Frank about the branding and design worlds? “No peeves. I’m a perfect Pollyanna. I have more of a fear than a peeve,” says Parlett, Skyping in from Little Jacket’s Brooklyn outpost. Which is? “You follow a formula, you get formulaic work. We have to apply rigor first, but you also need that play element.” Frank, chiming in from the branding studio’s home base in Cleveland, explains further. “Everyone has a [creative] model. You would not be a good practitioner if you didn’t have a model. But you also have to allow for happenstance, those great imaginative leaps.” Parlett interjects. Turns out he does have a peeve. “That thing in branding when people say look at me, look at me, and don’t acknowledge no one wants to look at you. It’s our job to start a conversation worth having. No one cares about what you want to say [as a brand]. You have to say it in a way that provokes [people] to care or gets them to stop for a moment.” Parlett pauses for emphasis, embodying two qualities that are rarely mixed: Midwestern-nice and Brooklyn-straight. This exchange happened relatively late in our 90-minute call. But within minutes of our conversation, I was left with some interestingly conflicted thoughts. First, is it possible to reek of integrity? Because these guys do. Second: their brand of Midwestern-nice entails its own forms of bluntness. Third, and perhaps most important: play can have weight. All these enigmas reveal themselves in Little Jacket’s work style and approach, best described as straightforward, humble and dogged. Little Jacket began in 2004 when Parlett and fellow cofounders Ken Hejduk and Mikey Burton, then all students at Kent State University, began designing concert posters in their
basement. “We were really into this single by [the band] LCD Soundsystem, ‘Losing My Edge,’” Parlett recalls. “It was basically about getting a little older in New York and losing your edge to some 22-year-olds. There’s a line in the song: ‘Little jackets and borrowed nostalgia from the unremembered eighties.’ Being that we started in the music industry, we called ourselves Little Jacket based on that really small lyric that isn’t even quoted correctly from that song.” (Even this remark reveals Little Jacket’s precision and modesty— that lyric quote is absolutely correct.) The team moved from one-off poster design to branding work over time. Burton later left Little Jacket to pursue illustration full-time, while Hejduk left in 2017 to work on product design. Both partings were amicable: Hejduk remains a minority owner, and his wife still works as Little Jacket’s office manager. Parlett stayed on as a designer, and Frank joined in 2009 as a partner and creative director. (The transition was an easy one for Frank because he had frequently collaborated with Little Jacket while he was vice president/associate creative director at Cleveland-based ad agency Marcus Thomas.) Today, Parlett and Frank lead a team of four full-time staff with two part-timers they call “instrumental” to the firm. Teamwork runs deep for Little Jacket, as does a strong multidisciplinary streak. Not so for shallow eye candy and splashy, thoughtless execution. “We are small but mighty,” says Parlett. “There’s no one allowed on our island who doesn’t plus-up what we do.” Design director Christian Woltman says, “I always felt like an owner, even though I’m not.” What attracted him to work at Little Jacket (a job that he secured by accosting Hejduk in the bathroom at an AIGA event) was that “the idea and the execution always matched. Lots of agencies have a good idea that they don’t fully finish. Or beautiful work that doesn’t necessarily have a real idea underneath. Little Jacket had that marriage of idea, design, writing and strategy.”
Captions supplied by Little Jacket. Right: “LAND studio, a nonprofit which specializes in connecting people in Cleveland through public art and spaces, brought us this dream project: making the type provocative in its environment. Our team included a writer who lives in Cleveland’s Buckeye-Shaker neighborhood—he brought a beautiful voice to the project—and Alan Giberson of Alan’s Signs, who impeccably executed the type.” Damien Ware, writer; Joey Parlett, designer; Roger Frank, creative director; Alan Giberson, contributing artist; LAND studio, client. 20
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FOR SALE 1 (series) Chris Buzelli, illustrator SkullKitties, Gummies and America. “A series of paintings I created for my show at Talon Gallery in Portland, Oregon.” Various sizes, oil on wood.
2 Brian Britigan, illustrator Helikon Gallery & Studios, client For Dreamlogic, a group exhibition held at Helikon Gallery & Studios in Denver, Colorado. 11 × 14, colored pencil on paper.
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ANIMATION 1 (series) Marion Bordeyne/Rafael Mayani/Eric Pautz, illustrators/art directors Henrique Barone/Sitji Chou/Conor Whelan, animators Hammadi Faouzi/Nicholas Ferreira/Jay Grandin/Anne-Lou Graoww/ Shawn Hight/Matt James/Diego MacLean/Salvador Padilla/Taylor Peters/Junyi Xiao, animation Jay Grandin, creative director Giant Ant, director Cory Philpott, producer Teresa Toews, executive producer Spotify, client “Silence = Death—Pt.1” :50, “Silence = Death—Pt.2” :60, “5-4—Pt.1” :50, “5-4—Pt.2” :50, “Bathroom Bans—Pt.1” :50, “Bathroom Bans—Pt.2” :45 “We’re honored to have worked with Spotify to commemorate Pride Month. This series highlights some of the most important milestones in the LGBTQ movement, from the Reagan Era to Gavin Grimm. Taking cues from their chosen illustration aesthetic, we created these fun and informative videos that will live within their curated Pride Playlists.”
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FRESH MOTH STUDIO
Monday cinema nights and Friday Vietnamese lunches bookend a typical workweek at London, United Kingdom–based Moth Studio. “If you’re not having fun, you are doing something wrong,” say cofounders Daniel Chester, Marie-Margaux Tsakiri-Scanatovits and David Prosser. Seven full-time creatives compose this animation studio’s small but mighty team. Three years after launching as a full-time studio, Moth has already taken on projects for the likes of Facebook and CNN. For a dose of the studio’s charming work, hit “play” on the animated spots it created for The Salvation Army’s 2017 holiday campaign. “That project allowed us to grow in a directorial and technical way as we embraced new creative challenges and learned about managing a team under a tight schedule,” the cofounders say. With this large-scale project in its portfolio, Moth is poised to tackle even bigger challenges, like the 60-minute animation—complete with a live orchestral soundtrack—it hopes to make one day. moth.studio
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