Hugh MacLeod Cartoons drawn on the back of business cards
Hugh MacLeod
I’m Hugh MacLeod. I’m a cartoonist. Occasionally I write books.
gapingvoid is interested in start-up culture, because changing business for the better is what we’re about; that’s what Social Object Factory is about. We live and breathe it; we help everyone from lone entrepreneurs, to mid-sizers, to Fortune 500’s do the same. Check out our work here.
We create art that helps companies kick ass, end of story.
If you want to talk business, then it’s probably best to please contact my business partner, gapingvoid CEO Jason Korman, here. We look forward to working with you. Thanks!
1. This is my first Microsoft gig for a while [Bizspark is part of their massive startup outreach program], so it felt good to be back in the ol’ saddle again.
2. This piece is a riff on a familiar theme of mine, that a nation is only as good as its startup culture etc. As we see all the economic crap happening in places like Spain and Greece (Unemployment between 25%-60%, depending on the age group!), it’s somethng we urgently need to teach our leaders, by any means necessary. And yes, gapingvoid likes having clients who agree with us.
3. Though I love doing my more highbrow, introspective fine art schtick, I also love the more extrovert stuff for the office wall. Especially offices that belong to interesting folk doing interesting stuff, like the Bizspark gang. This “tense duality” between the inner and outer parts of existence is where the action is. Too much of either one would be BEYOND tedious IMHO…
Thanks to Mark Gagne and the rest of the Bizspark Canada team for making it happen. Rock on.
It’s time for another episode of Gape Into The Void! Join us as Hugh, Jason and Jeff talk about gapingvoid’s evil plan to disrupt the “office art” industry. We also are reminded about some big events in Hugh’s world and we give you a peek behind the scenes of some of our current client projects.
Thanks again for listening. If you are enjoying Gape Into The Void, please tell your friends and leave us a review on iTunes. If you have any questions or topics you want us to cover on the show email us at podcast at gapingvoid.com.
Recorded just before we left for San Francisco for TechCrunch Disrupt, in this episode of Gape Into The Void we tackle the topic of “culture” and the importance of a business articulating its purpose.
Here are links to some of the things we mention during the show:
In the next Gape Into The Void we’ll talk more about our experiences at TechCrunch and Hugh’s passion for “Live Tooning.” Stay tuned! Tooned?
If you have been enjoying the Gape Into The Void podcast, please tell your friends and leave us a comment or review on iTunes. You can also email us with your comments and feedback at podcast@gapingvoid.com.
I drew this quick cartoon earlier today; I was thinking about how many of the companies we’ve worked with over the last year or two have serious interest in The Cloud, and its future: Rackspace, HP, Cisco, SAP etc etc.
Though we do a lot of work around startup culture (e.g. Techcrunch and Movenback) we also do a TON of work in the Enterprise space. Maybe that’s because some of our biggest fans are aslo in that space– Sigurd Rind, Dennis Howlett, James Governor etc.
Enterprise work can be fairly dry, we take pride in making it A LOT more fun than most. Rock on.
Using cartoons to communicate about serious subjects is always an interesting challenge– and one that we deal with every day.
Where is the line that can’t be crossed? How do we communicate about something serious in a way that is memorable, whimsical, makes a point but isn’t frivolous?
We’ve proven 1000 times that cartoons are some of the most effective pieces of communication in existence — and we’ve been playing with animating my cartoons for some time, so when the folks at Hewlett Packard Enterprise Security contacted us, we thought, “Hey, why not do a little animation about ‘enterprise security…?”
Let’s face it, enterprise security is pretty dry stuff. Their customers are governments and giant corporations… perfect for a whimsical little animation about finding risk — kinda Pac Man-ish, it makes the point: You need help identifying all the risks to your data centers. With the nemonic binoculars (representing HP’s Enterprise Security Platform), one is able to see the big picture threats, and the threat levels they represent.
I love the little HP geek with the pocket protector. I dunno, it just works, somehow. Also check out the logo for our new venture at the very end.
She’s got all the geek-hacker, inventive DIY mindset of say, Mark Frauenfelder or Phil Torrone, but with a chic, playful style that doesn’t undermine her own femininity. Great to see…
The cartoon came from this idea I had that, in order to operate at Alison’s level, I’m sorry, you don’t get to hate your job. You don’t get to feel ambivalent. You don’t get to daydream about one day doing something less schleppy. No, you’ve got to totally be into it from Day One. No slackers allowed. And in order to do that, decisions have to be made.
[Alison, we’ll be in touch soon via gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com to collect your details for the back of the card, so we can print & ship a free box of 100 to you etc. Thanks!]
“We are not in the advertising business, we are in the decommodification business” is a line of mine that Vinny has been borrowing for a while now. So it seemed appropriate to design something around that.
A “Sacred Zombie Cow” is David’s term for an idea that, although it has far outlived its usefulness within an organization, is still treated like Gospel Truth. David advocates the killing of these sacred zombie cows as the best way to grow.
So long after you leave college, you keep asking yourself the question, “What do I want to do when I grow up?”
And to help you answer the question, you try out a whole string of different things. Working in an office. Working outdoors. Going to law school. Starting your own coffee shop. Freelance. Consulting. Writing books…
And hopefully, after a few years (or decades) of trial and error, hopefully you end up with your answer.
I think I’m finally ready to answer my own question, “What do I want to do when I grow up?”
Sure, they’re great social objects, but to me they have another purpose: They’re good tools for a company trying to engage in what’s called “Cultural Transformation”.
[The one that started it all: “The Blue Monster”. Backstory here etc.]
You change markets in your favor by changing the culture– either you own or the culture of the industry you’re in. In my world, that’s where the REAL opportunity lies.
That’s the change I want to help affect. That’s where I think my cartoons can be the most useful and valuable.
Always happy to talk further about it with people maybe wanting to do business. Feel free to ping me whenever. Thanks…
A few days ago, I wrote about how PSFK, the New York-based marketing and trend-spotting company, commissioned me to design a “Cube Grenade” for their upcoming conference on April 9th, 2010. Piers Fawkes, PSFK’s head evil genius just wrote a lovely blog post about the commission:
MacLeod told PSFK that he wants people to commission him to create original Cube Grenades to give to their clients and partners. Responding to a brief to subtly present an single idea he hopes these illustrations will sit on the walls of offices and other workplaces and as people pass by it over time the message might sink in with a few people. He argues that Cube Grenades aren’t really designed to ’sell’ like, say, traditional advertising. Instead, MacLeod hopes that they hit a nerve and start conversations that will help lead to sales down the road, but the primary purpose “takes a more indirect, perhaps more disruptive path.”
It’s a nice background story on the whole “Cube Grenade” concept. I hope you’ll go check it out. Rock on.
Today I’m flying to St. Louis, to give a talk at Purina, the giant pet food company that’s owned by Nestle. It’s their big, annual digital summit. All their top digital marketing folk (and their top ad agency digital folk) will be there.
Above is the “Cube Grenade” they commissioned me to draw for them. I like how it turned out. “All products are information” refers back to something I wrote a few years ago, “The Kinetic Quality”.
How often do large, well-known companies call you up and ask you to draw a cartoon for them? Exactly. I’ve worked in the tech world for big clients before– Sun, Dell, Microsoft etc– but this is my first “Cube Grenade” with a large, FMCG brand (Fast-Moving Consumer Goods). Not to mention, I’ve always held Nestle and Purina in very high regard. So naturally, I’m pretty excited. Rock on.
Paul Fabretti, an old social-media PR buddy from my UK days, asked me to draw him a “cube grenade” for his Manchester-based PR 2.0 company, Gabba. Rock on.
As the idea behind their company was partially inspired by my writings on Kula and Social Objects, they commissioned me to design a special Cube Grenade for them, which I gladly did.
I’m very happy with how the piece turned out. It illustrates nicely a point I’ve been harping on for a while now– “People Matter, Objects Don’t”- i.e. what makes a product or brand interesting is not thing itself, but the human conversations that happen around it.
Congrats to Kula Partners on their launch, and Big Thanks for being such great clients! Rock on.
The groovy cats over at Shit Creek Consulting commissioned me to design them their own “Cube Grenade”. After looking at the half-dozen or so ideas I presented to them, they chose the one above. I believe they’re looking to use it for their business cards, for example.
Shit Creek are a Microsoft Gold Partner. It seems a big part of their business is coming in and cleaning up the mess left behind by the large tech consultancies [I’m not naming any names]. So that’s the idea I ran with.
The name of their company implies they have a lot of attitude. They wanted a cartoon that conveyed this. Easy. It was a fantastic commission and I’m very happy with the cartoon they chose.
I’m looking to take on more of these kinds of commission. Feel free to e-mail me if you think you could use my work, Thanks.
The groovy cats over at Shit Creek Consulting commissioned me to design them their own “Cube Grenade”. After looking at the half-dozen or so ideas I presented to them, they chose the one above. I believe they’re looking to use it for their business cards, for example.
Shit Creek are a Microsoft Gold Partner. It seems a big part of their business is coming in and cleaning up the mess left behind by the large tech consultancies [I’m not naming any names]. So that’s the idea I ran with.
The name of their company implies they have a lot of attitude. They wanted a cartoon that conveyed this. Easy. it was a fantastic commission and I’m very happy with the cartoon they chose.
I’m looking to take on more of these kinds of commission. Feel free to e-mail me if you think you could use my work, Thanks.
[“Open Brands”. Commissioned by Agencia Click, Sao Paulo, Brazil. Click on image to enlarge etc.] I’m delighted to announce my first privately commissioned gapingvoid print.
A couple of weeks ago I was invited down to Brazil by Agencia Click to do a bit of public speaking and some consultancy work for them. While I was at it, they also commissioned me to design a print for them, something that articulated their “Open Branding” idea. So I designed the drawing above, which goes into production next week.
The black lines represent “The World”, as it were. The red lines represent “The Brand”. In “Open Branding”, the brand is “Everywhere”, not “Controlled” or “Isolated” somewhere specific.
I took their idea, filtered it through my own visual language to create a third thing, an image that captures the “Purpose-Idea”.
I did pretty much the same thing with Microsoft and The Blue Monster…
I love this kind of work. It allows me to do my drawing thing, while still getting my brain out of the studio and out into the real world. Not to mention, I get to visit Brazil! Heh.
Thanks to Abel and Jeff for making it happen. Rock on. [NB: If you’re in the market to commission a limited edition print, feel free to email me at gapingvoid@gmail.com. Thanks.]
[Click on image to enlarge etc.]
A few weeks ago my buddy over at Edelman Europe, David Brain commissioned me to draw a PR-related cartoon for an ad they were running. Though like all commercial illustration gigs, there were a few changes made in the end, I liked my first offering so much I decided to just go ahead and blog it here.
There are some new ideas in there, and some old ones I borrowed from my attic, most notably our friend, the ever-cheerful and optimistic Social Media Specialist. A lot of the ideas were inspired by the interview I did with David back in early November.
Considering how tight the deadline was at the time, the project turned out rather well. I was happy, so was David. Hopefully Richard Edelman was, too. Rock on.
[The lithograph I did for last month’s Techcrunch party in Menlo Park, sponsored by Stormhoek. Click on image to enlarge etc.] I’m going to be hanging out my shingle more in the cartooning department. I think it’s time.
I’m looking at lots of ideas, but here are the four that currently interest me the most: 1. Lithograph Commissions. Like the lithograph I did for Techcrunch above, or the Blue Monster one I did for Microsoft, I’ll be taking on corporate commissions. If you have a company that you think could use a high-end “social object”, please feel free to send me an e-mail, thanks. [This is a cartoon I designed for Jerry Colonna’s business card, about 2 years ago, which he still uses.] 2. Business Card Commissions. Sure, getting one of my cartoons onto your business card is easy enough via my Streetcards site, but if you fancy something a bit more personal, a it more unique, again, feel free to email me.
3. Cartoon Commissions. People want cartoons for all sorts of reasons. One of my favorite gigs this year was a series of cartoons I did for Sun Microsystems. I’m open to discussing all sorts of ideas here. Let me know. 4. Events. Every now and then people will sponsor me to come to their events, draw cartoons live and hand them out to attendees. Here’s a link to one I did a few months ago. I’m in the market to do more of these. Again, feel free to send me an e-mail.
My one caveat is: I’m not as inexpensive as I used to be. Basically, I charge corporate rates. Just letting you know…
Looking forward to seeing where this goes. I’ll keep you posted. Rock on.
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