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Lettering and Illustration with a little grit
february 2015
JON CONTINO
Up close and personal with one of the greats
DAN CASSARO On taking risks to achieve the dream
50 and 50: The State Mottos, a collaboration with Dan Cassaro and other designers
4 JON CONTINO
Up close and personal with one of the greats
8 DAN CASSARO On taking risks to achieve the dream
12 HANDS ON
Step-by-step guide to texturing techniques
16 MAKE YOUR MARK Advice from others to advance your career
ew York native Jon Contino is widely known for his unique illustration style, which uses a modern, minimalistic approach to combine old and new world aesthetics. His story as a designer and consultant is told through the images he has created for many brands including Nike, Jack Daniels, JCPenney, New Balance, Rachael Ray, and Random House. Jon is a cofounder of and creative director for menswear brand, CXXVI Clothing Co. Interview by Tina Essmaker
Describe your path to becoming an illustrator. I come from a long line of artists. When I was little, I specifically loved drawing letters and logos—I don’t know why, but I was always attracted to that. My mother and grandmother are both artists; my father is a carpenter; and my grandfather carves sculptures. There’s a lot of that kind of creativity in my family, so I think it was easier for me to be nurtured in that way. Early on, my mother saw that I was into art, so she pushed and taught me. She would go to the deli and get rolls of butcher paper and I’d draw on it like crazy. I learned calligraphy, cross-hatching, and other techniques from her. The rest I learned from copying my favorite cartoon characters, movie posters, and sports team logos.
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…the more personality I put into my work, the more people respond to it. I’ve realized that I don’t have to try to only do what others expect from me or what I expect to get paid for. with bigger bands needed artwork. I somehow weaseled my way into doing artwork for a lot of them and that made me want to become a package designer. I really admired the work of Asterik Studio, which is now Invisible Creature—those guys were my idols. I only wanted to do music packaging, but by the time I was able to be a grown-up professional, the opportunity was gone because the industry had changed so much. After high school, I went to a local college— not an art school. I made friends with all the teachers and they let me do my freelance work during class, so I basically got paid to go to school. (laughing) There were a lot of things I still had to learn though—the business aspect, printing techniques, and other stuff—but that just comes with experience. I started freelancing immediately after college. When you leave school, you’re conceited. I saw other people who were making money and I thought, “I’m better than those guys and I’ll make twice as much as them.” I tried the freelance thing, but I couldn’t get
I focused on drawing for a long time until I got closer to my teens. Then I forgot about it for a while. I played sports and went through a few awkward, angst-filled teenage years when I started playing in hardcore bands. Once I was in a band, we needed tee shirts, demos, and flyers. I found myself saying, “I know how to draw,” and that’s when I got back into art. Our band began to play more and more and our friends’ bands who got picked up by indie labels or started playing
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it together—I had no clients and no money. I ended up taking a job at a local agency that served only financial advisors and every client wanted the same thing done in the same way. It was very limiting and I was out of there after two months. The next job I took was for a print broker that did design on the side. Everyone who worked there was a designer, but the majority of their money was made from designing and printing club fliers, so it wasn’t the exact position I was looking for. I also took on some pet projects and got a taste of doing some cool stuff and actually making money. About a year after that, I decided to open up my own studio and try my hand at it because I was done working for someone else. Once I was working for myself again, I started to really pick up on typography and hand-lettering. I began doing some tee shirt designs for small clothing brands and learned from trial and error. I also picked up a few retainers and had a set amount of money coming in every month. Because of that, I started getting lazy lost that sense of urgent
originality I once had. However, the recession took care of that for me by closing all the companies I had retainers with. My comfort went out the window and I had to work a lot harder for the money and figure out how to get new clients. It was a struggle. Then, a few years ago, my business partner and I decided to start a clothing company just to see what would happen. We piggy-backed materials off of another order we were working on and quickly put up an online store and sold some stuff. People got really interested in it and that led me to a realization—I could do the things I wanted to do and there was a market out there somewhere for it. Starting a clothing company allowed me to art direct products and as that gained steam, I was able to pick back up with freelance work. I got back into illustration and lettering and focused on that—that was around 2009 and I’ve been going nonstop with design, art direction, and consulting since then.
Illustration used in motion graphics development for season two of “Louie” on FX Networks.
I’ve noticed that the more personality I put into my work, the more people respond to it. I’ve realized that I don’t have to try to only do what others expect from me or what I expect to get paid for. I worked so hard to get the dry-cleaner from down the block to hire me. I wanted to do stuff that people would see, but I never imagined I would get to the point where I could do stuff and people would say, “That looks like a ‘Jon Contino’.” It took a lot of perseverance and hard work to get to that point. It’s all thanks to failing time and time again.
That’s quite a path. Did you have any “aha” moments along the way when you knew you wanted to do illustration?
Promo sequence for Boardwalk Empire
I always wanted to be an illustrator and I never thought I had what it took to actually illustrate. I was always very interested in fine art, but the things I was good at were design and layouts and composition. I couldn’t find a style I could easily do. I had bouts of being obsessed with other illustrators and artists, but I couldn’t emulate their styles enough to become happy with it. That turned out to be a great thing because I ended up developing my own style, which is much more comfortable to me. I think the biggest “aha” moment I ever had about doing what I wanted to do full-time was when I got a call from Ogilvy Paris about a project for Coca-Cola. They were launching a new soft drink in Europe and asked me to design a font for the campaign. It was this massive thing and I remember sitting
Personal project featuring “Strong man Sam”.
nitty-gritty
on the phone call with them—Ogilvy Paris was leading it and Monotype was doing the programming of the font. Here were these two huge players saying to me, “Whatever you think is right. We trust you; you know better than us.” That’s crazy. Once I finished the project, it hit me and I thought, “If I can get a couple more jobs like that, I could really have something here.” I took that as the major “aha” moment and after that, I threw everything out the window. For lack of a better term, I said, “Fuck it!” I started doing what I liked; I put together a portfolio of stuff I liked, which had never sold before. That Coca-Cola project gave me the confidence to do what I wanted to do. Process photo of Jon’s Jack Daniels poster design.
What was it like growing up and was creativity a part of your childhood?
I grew up in Nassau County in Long Island, which is the West end of Long Island and closest to the city. My family is from all over the city though—Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan—a very typical Italian thing. All my family came over from Sicily in the early 1900s or so and lived in Little Italy. Once they grew out of there, some moved out to Brooklyn. The rest of the family scattered around the boroughs, but mostly to Queens. My immediate family is from Queens and right before I was born, my parents moved a few miles east to Nassau County. I grew up there and call it home, but spent time in all the boroughs because I still have family and friends in all five of them. Creativity was a big part of my childhood. I’m the oldest of three brothers and my second oldest brother was born with Down syndrome and a heart defect. He was on his deathbed so many times and my parents were with him at the hospital a lot. Many of my earliest memories are of waiting in the hospital and then going home with my grandparents. I guess that’s where drawing came in. Creativity kept me from seeing how terrible
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things really were at the time. Now that I’m older and my brother is okay, my mom and dad can have honest conversations with me about what was going on at that time. Growing up, my youngest brother and I had to make sure that nothing happened to our middle brother. A lot of people would pick on him or try to take advantage of him. We actually moved because I would get into fights all the time. I would beat kids up at the bus stop because they would say wise-ass things about my brother. It was tough. Kids are cruel and I didn’t want to be like that, so I learned very early on to accept people for who they are. All of that changed my outlook on life, especially when I was really into sports and kids would get competitive and nasty. It wasn’t anything I could relate to. Also, a lot of times my parents had to work because they had plenty of hospital bills to pay. I’d stay home and take care of my brother, so what else was there for me to do? I wasn’t a big video game guy and I couldn’t leave the house, so it was just back to drawing. That has always been the outlet for me to stay away from the tough parts of life. I think a lot of my creativity comes from having a unique childhood. Don’t get me wrong, it was a really good childhood, but it was definitely unique.
I’ve always used competition and doubt as my mentors…People think it’s a pipe dream to be an artist for a living—proving them wrong is the biggest motivation for me. 7
One last question for you. What kind of legacy do you hope to leave?
Oh man. There’s this guy named Brian Awitan who is one of the best people I’ve met in recent memory and he is a consultant for a lot of major brands.You name it, he’s done it. Everyone listens to what he has to say because he knows his stuff. He brought the idea of legacy into a new perspective for me. I asked him how he was so nice after all these years in a such a mean-spirited industry and he said, “I think of it this way. When I’m dead and in a box and my kid is standing up in front of it talking about my life, is there going to be anyone there? Are they going to say nice things about me now that I’m gone?” I think about that all the time. I would love to be known as someone who did what he loved and what he wanted to do without stepping on anyone’s neck to get there. If I’m going to succeed, I want to do it in a positive way and leave a good impression. If people can say, “He was a nice guy and he did what he loved,” that’s all I can really ask for. Integrity— that’s what I would want my legacy to be.
Dan working on his mural at the Ace Hotel.
an Cassaro is a graphic designer and illustrator living and working in Brooklyn, New York. He runs his own design shop, Young Jerks, and spends his free time using typography to make
to do before I could make any important decisions about my life.
to that moment when I chose to go in that direction.
I left college and moved around after that. There was a long period of time where I was waiting tables and figuring out what to do with myself. I lived in Connecticut and Savannah before eventually moving back to New York and going to the School of Visual Arts (SVA).
I am more satisfied than I’ve ever been creatively, but I’m not satisfied. This is why I like the name of your site—The Great Discontent. I think the reason I do this, the reason we do this, is that we’re all fucking malcontent; we’re all sort of unhappy.
You already touched on this in the first question, but did you have an “aha” moment when you decided design was what you wanted to do?
Was creativity a part of your childhood?
words accountable for themselves. Interview by Ryan & Tina Essmaker
Describe your path to becoming a designer. I didn’t always know that I wanted to be a designer—it happened much later for me. I was 23 when I went to school for design. I always knew I wanted to do something with the visual arts. After high school, I did a couple semesters at Alfred University, which is a fine arts college way, way, way upstate New York and as far away from Manhattan you can be while still being in New York. I think I was scared to go to art school in Manhattan. It didn’t really work out. I wasn’t ready and didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I think I had a lot of hanging out left
I think I had an “aha” moment about what I was going to do within design because design is so big—you can do anything.You can lay out magazines or be a typographer or be more of an illustrative designer. I remember at SVA when I had my sophomore portfolio review and the head of the department wrote a comment that said, “Your strength is typography.” Typography was something I had never specifically considered, but I had always enjoyed it just as much as everything else. I thought, “Someone thinks I’m good at this. Maybe I should try focusing on it.” Now I’m obsessed with it. I think I can trace it back
nitty-gritty
I grew up in Long Island about a half hour outside of New York city in the small suburb of Garden City.Yeah. I did lots of drawing and painting. I also wrote a screenplay when I was 12 years old. I just rediscovered it recently—you know, you go home to your parent’s house and start digging through all of your old shit. I came across this stapled looseleaf and thought, “Oh my god, I wrote a screenplay.” It’s terrible and painful to read. It bummed me out a bit though because, at that age, I think there was a lot of creativity going on and I had no inhibitions about what I was going to do with it, so I tried to do everything. It made me miss that optimism. I don’t think I am going to be writing any one-man plays anytime soon, but it definitely inspired me to try some new things.
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I think there’s a special thing we can do with typography and illustration—it’s a gift and not everyone can do it, so it’s our responsibility to be aware of what it can do and consider how we use it.
If you could give one piece of advice to another designer starting out, what would you say? Work hard at whatever you do and make it personal—don’t try to please this imaginary audience that’s out there because it doesn’t exist. I see a lot of designers pull inspiration into their work secondhand. Find the inspiration somewhere besides the Internet and do it for you.You can really tell when someone is personally invested in their work. If you’re doing work that you love, then other people are going to see that, and they are going to love it too. It’s as simple as that. Ideally, we all want to get paid for doing what we love, so we should push that if we can. I don’t know. It’s hard to say what kind of legacy I can leave as a graphic designer. I saw Aaron Draplin this summer in Portland and he referred to what we do as cake decorat-
ing, which I thought was hilarious and perfect. We’re not even making the cakes; we’re just decorating them. I don’t have any delusions that I am saving the world, but it would be nice to be thought of as someone who cared about the design work he did and didn’t take himself too seriously.
This past summer you took a trip with your girlfriend, Niamh, across the United States. What was the motivation behind that and how did it go for you guys? That was my victory lap for quitting my job (chuckling). My relationship with my girlfriend has always been based on traveling. When we were first hanging out, we travelled all the time and we’ve tried to take mini road trips every year. The only issue is that both of us are pretty romantically involved with our work too so it can be hard to reconcile both of those things. Six months
COYOTE — Digitized by Dan Cassaro
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before we did this trip, we hashed out a plan to try to work and travel at the same time. What she does lends itself to traveling—she’s a scientist. She has to do research at different field sites and a lot of them are on the West Coast. We figured I could freelance and she could work. The Internet is everywhere, so I just thought, “Why aren’t we?” Part of the inspiration came from when I worked on the Fifty and Fifty project with designers from across the country. I got to learn about different places and introduce myself to people all over the U.S. and then get totally bummed out because I was sitting in the same chair every day and not seeing any of these places. I wanted to be able to go and see all those places firsthand. That’s where the idea came from. Definitely the Grand Canyon. I think people might assume that it’s overrated, but it’s totally not. I got choked up when I saw it. Ron Swanson says it’s one of the few places it’s OK for a man to cry and I totally agree. We spent three days there hiking. There was something about it that was extra special and really magical.