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www.coroflot.com/epete22/erik_john_designs

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Maybe you have hear the brouhaha over the London 2012 Olympic logo fiasco. Some folks don’t understand it, while other are complaining about the possibility of getting a seizure from the site’s flash animation.

It has been a long time since a logo has caused this much attention in the media. The logo is meant to embody four key “brand pillars” of access, participation, stimulation and inspiration.

Charlie Hoult has an interesting point view; stating:

“Don’t forget, this is a campaign, not a corporation… the logo and identity has got to be flexible to work massive or small, with straplines (cunningly allowed for in the quadrants) or as a plain partner endorsement.”

I like what Seth Godin says:

“A great logo doesn’t mean anything until the brand makes it worth something.”

Here are some links to some interesting articles about the controversy:

• London 2012 branding overview by following this link
• The company that created the logo, Wolf Olins
• Other news on the topic

Book cover and interior design and layout

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http://www.tianodesign.com

638 Fresh Pond Ave., #314 , Calverton, NY

631-284-3842

Today, we’re talking to Fian Arroyo, who is an illustrator out of Miami, but went to school at Southwest Texas State, graduated with an advertising degree there, and is now an illustrator working out of Miami. And he’s represented by Tom Maloney in the Midwest, and Dick Washington everywhere else.

How are you doing today, Fian?

Fian Arroyo: I’m doing great, doing great, Dan.

TDc: And how is the weather there in south Florida?

Fian Arroyo: Well, anytime there’s no hurricanes coming in the forecast, it’s great. But it’s beautiful here today.

TDc: And you work for yourself, of course. You’re an illustrator. And do you have a studio in the house, or a studio outside, away from the home?

Fian Arroyo: Well, it’s behind my garage. It’s a studio. It used to be like an in-laws quarters or a maid’s quarters that I converted into my studio. So I guess you could say it’s part of the house, but separate. I can’t hear anything that goes on in my house, so I’m kind of secluded in a way.

But I guess it is out of my home.

TDc: And how is that? Is that something that you need, this privacy where you can think about what you’re doing and work in that? Or is it just a matter of convenience, that it’s just right there?

Fian Arroyo: No, privacy is a big deal. I don’t want to be hearing what’s going on in my house, with my kids and my family and everything while I’m trying to get this stuff done. But at the same time, it’s just next door. I could just walk in the house and hang out with my family, or eat dinner.

I guess, to me, it’s the best of both worlds, because I’m still separate from the house, but I’m close enough to be part of it in a couple of minutes, or a minute or whatever.

TDc: Nice commute.

Fian Arroyo: And I don’t have to drive through rush hour any way.

TDc: Yeah, that may be nice.

Fian Arroyo: Oh, my gosh, because traffic here! Miami sucks. Oh, it’s terrible!

TDc: Yeah. Tell me, when did you first think, “Hey, I could make a living doing this!”

Fian Arroyo: Oh, when I was in college. When I was at SWT, I was freelancing. I was working for Commercial Image, where you were working at. Then I started doing freelancing for other agencies around, before I even graduated. I had a nice little client base set up. And I was thinking, “Hey, this would be the way it’s going to be for me.”

And when I graduated, one of my clients who was an art director, I believe, at Atkins Advertising, came here to Miami, and was looking for a big agency here. And he had called me on an assignment then they flew me down for a week down here.

And I looking around at the palm trees and blue skies and all the hot women on South Beach. And I said, “I’ve got to move down here.” And just a month later, I had moved down. And pretty much, that’s all I’ve ever done. I came down and so I showed my book around, and got work immediately.

TDc: Wow.

Fian Arroyo: So that’s all I ever had to do. So I’m pretty blessed with that, that I haven’t had to supplement my income with anything else. So it’s been great.

TDc: Yeah, that sounds great. What is your process? How do you go from thumbnail to the finished piece?

Fian Arroyo: Well, it depends. I used to do more pencil sketches on paper and scan them. But now everything is done from start to finish on the computer, because with Painter you can make it look like a pencil sketch, draw it directly into the computer.

But the way I go about doing it is, I just start doing rough ideas, sketching on the computer and trying to come up with an idea, probably several ideas. And I present those to the art director, and we’ll go over which ones we like, if we have any favorites. And we’ll pick the one that we want to work on and go from there, sometimes.

But most of the time, for me, I’ve been pretty lucky where I’d do a couple of sketches — but obviously, there’d be one that I really like, the direction that I really want to go to. And it’s usually the one that they pick. And there’s usually not much of a change after that. And rarely, after it’s done, is there ever any changes.

TDc: Your work has a lot of humor in it. How do you come about that?

Fian Arroyo: I actually don’t know. I’m just a fun person. I like to see things in a more fun way.

And I like to come up with ideas that can make light of a certain situation. Sometimes, it could be a story, something that’s a little heavy or serious, but you can shine a little positive outlook or humor into it, and show it in a different light.

Sometimes it makes a difference. That’s just the direction I like to go. I like to make things fun.

Life is fun. I guess that just carried off in my work.

TDc: So when the art director comes to you, you don’t get a lot of input from them? I guess the editor, when you’re working for a magazine, they tell you what the story’s about, and then it’s up to you to illustrate that in the way you see fit?

Fian Arroyo: Yeah. Well, sometimes, I’ll get a story and I won’t even have a story. Sometimes they’ll just have, “Oh, this is what the story’s going to be about. And we don’t even know if we have a headline for this yet. But you know, it’s going to be about such and such a thing. And just.. whatever you..”

What I like to do at that point is, I go, “Well, is there any key words that are going to be in the headline? Anything?” I like to get as much out of them as possible, not idea-wise, but what they want to convey in the story. And they’ll pretty much have an idea what they want, and I just put my twist to it. Or sometimes, they’ll tell me what they want and I’ll come up with a better idea, and they’re like, “Yeah, we like that better.”

Or sometimes, they’ll just give me complete free rein. Some clients, I don’t even have to do a pencil sketch. They trust me. And I’ll just go right to the finish, and it’s golden.

TDc: Wow.

Fian Arroyo: Yeah, I’m lucky sometimes. I have some pretty good clients that I’ve been workin gwith for a while. And they pretty much give me a lot of leeway, when it comes to the creation, the creativity process of the illustration.

TDc: You mentioned earlier that you use thumbnails, or you do everything on the computer. So you used to start in natural, or used to work in natural media. Now you do everything on the computer?

Fian Arroyo: Yeah, it’s amazing, because I got on the computer in `94. And it was like people were starting to get into it.

I remember Newsweek called me, because they had an article they were going to do on how illustration was going digital. And I don’t know if it ever came out, because they never pursued it after that. It was just a phone call and a couple of conversations we had afterwards.

But when everything went digital like that, I saw it coming. And I just thought that because I knew that you didn’t have to send in original artwork to get scanned. You can send everything via email or FTP site. You can do corrections immediately, digitally. And it was faster, I can work faster digitally than I could traditionally. And you can control a lot more the colors and what the final outlook was going to be.

And I think it’s great, that that happened. But of course, there’s a down side. You don’t have original artwork. And even for sketches, I don’t even have sketches much anymore, because I would do my sketches digitally.

TDc: Do you use a tablet?

Fian Arroyo: Yeah. It’s great. Wacom tablet is the best invention since sliced bread. It’s wonderful. You can do programs like Painter. Painter’s probably the best when it comes to using artists’ mediums, because you can simulate chalk or pencil sketches, you can do watercolor stuff. The pen and ink is great. The pen and inks are amazing in that program. And airbrush, whatever you want, oil paint.

But it’s not like you just click and it’d paint it for you. You have to be able to paint.

TDc: Talent has to be there first.

Fian Arroyo: Yeah, you have to have talent to do it. And I picked it up real fast. Because once I started, it just came naturally. I just enjoy doing it.

TDc: You mentioned FTP and instant and things like that. How has that changed the speed of how things happen for you? Back in the old days, before the computer, there was a time lapse where you could think about them for a while, and you knew that worked. But now it’s so instant.

How does that changed how you work?

Fian Arroyo: Yeah. Back then, you would do you sketch, and you fax it over. And you still had to FedEx it over, and it wasn’t overnight. Now, I think, everybody on the client end has gotten spoiled, where things could be pretty much done overnight, and have it the next morning, because you just email or FTP it over.

The Internet is really more reliable now with broadband. Back when it was just still dial-up, it was a little harder to send stuff. You couldn’t really send anything in email, because the files couldn’t get too big.

But now, even with email, I can send stuff like a 5 MB file to the client. And if it’s anything bigger than that, or there’s multiple images, I just pop it on my FTP site, and they can get it pretty much instantly when it’s done. Which is amazing, because there’s an extra day. Although it’s an extra day that I don’t have to calculate into sending it, but actually, it gets swallowed up, because everything’s done faster now.

TDc: Right.

Fian Arroyo: It’s kind of .. You’d think that it would facilitate, the technology would facilitate and make it easier, but sometimes, it just makes it a little crazier, everyone wants it even faster.

TDc: Right.

Fian Arroyo: But you know, the plus side is, any changes you can deal with a lot easier than going back in and retaining something, and oh my gosh. It’s just like going into Photoshop, or Painter and just redoing what you did with what they want changed, and voila, they’re done.

There it is.

TDc: And who negotiates the usage rights, is that you, or your rep, or a combination?

Fian Arroyo: We both do. We both do, because my reps will call me and we’ll discuss it. And sometimes we have a different idea of what we want.. He’d have a certain number and I’d have a certain number, and then we’ll talk about the amount and take it from there. And all things considered, what justifies the price that we want to get for the particular project.

But it all comes down to usage, and what it’s going to be used for. And that’s some. And when it comes to editorial and magazine stuff, I don’t think it matters either, because it’s the same, whether you want personal North American rights for an image for a magazine.

TDc: Right.

Fian Arroyo: Because pretty much, magazines will hire you for your mind as well as your hand, because they want your vision. They just don’t want a wrist, they want a wrist with a vision.

They’re hiring you for how you see things, and how you interpret that certain story that they want you to illustrate to them.

TDc: What’s your favorite project been so far?

Fian Arroyo: Oh, quite a few. I did something a couple of years ago, a few years ago, a bug book series for a publisher.

And it was a really fun project that entailed a kind of fantasy, come up with bug-type characters that.. Not really bugs, but characters of our own. And it was a publisher called PCI. And the writer was Stephen Cosgrove, who was well known in the late seventies for the Serendipity series. He really did great with those. And we came out with them.

But I don’t know what happened with the publisher. The publisher just dropped the ball pretty much on that. But it was a great series, there were 18 books in there. Hopefully, we get another publisher to pick it up. But it was crazy, being there. I had to do 13 illustrations in three weeks, and it was fully involved.

TDc: Right.

Fian Arroyo: And it was like, oh my gosh. I had to do pretty much one illustration a day.

TDc: Did you have to develop a personality for each of these?

Fian Arroyo: Well, no, the writer had all that. And he would tell me the personality, then I would create the character. Then we’d go over them and all that. Pretty much everything, there was a map to the world, and it was like a whole world we developed. And that was so fun. It was crazy, but it was fun.

And I’m doing a project right now for a business venture that is kind of similar, kind of fantasy orientated. And I think this is more like the trading card industry, but it’s totally different. And I can’t really talk much about it. But I can say that is going to be amazing. That’s another really fun project.

But through the years, there’ve been quite a few that I loved and had been fun doing. Anytime it’s creating some kind of creature or animal, or something really fun, it’s a joy for me to work on.

Especially animals, animals are fun to draw, especially when you come up with something that’s really exaggerated or fun, or any ideas that are really cool.

Those are a couple of the things.

You can hear your voice, you get excited when you talk about these projects and your things.

What keeps you motivated? How do you get that passion everyday? Keep that passion, I should say.

Fian Arroyo: I love drawing. And sometimes, I feel blessed that this is how I make a living. I just draw pictures. And it’s always fun, because I’m a kid at heart. And I always think that I’m just drawing pictures until I figure out what I want to do when I grow up. [Laughs]

But at this point, I don’t think I’ll ever grow up. It’s fun. Sometimes, you’re doing something, and you stop in the middle of creating an illustration, and you’re seeing it come to life, and it just gives you goosebumps.

TDc: Wow.

Fian Arroyo: It’s so cool. And it’s hard to describe it. You can almost say – I don’t want to sound hokey, or something – but sometimes, if it’s something really cool that I’m working on, and I’m really into it, it’s almost spiritual. I can almost feel God’s joy when I’m drawing something, and it’s something that’s really coming out.

It’s not what happens every time. It’s like there’s some project, there’re some things I do that sometimes, you get that feeling. You know?

TDc: Yeah.

Fian Arroyo: And that feeling, sometimes, it keeps you going. “Hey, this could be a project where I can create something that’s going to really be cool.” I love it. I don’t think there could be anything else except be a rock star. [Laughs]

TDc: And you’re working on that, right?

Fian Arroyo: Yeah. I’m still not very good on the guitar, but I can dream.

TDc: Yeah. Hey, you have to have the dream.

Fian Arroyo: Anything else?

TDc: No, I think that’s it. I think this has been great. I want to thank you for taking time out of your day to do this. And I want everybody to take a look at Fian’s work at fian.com. And again, he’s repped by Dick Washington down at San Antonio, as well as Tom Maloney in the Midwest. Again, thanks a lot, Fian.

Fian Arroyo: Yeah, no problem, Dan. Anytime.

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