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• Brand Vision and Designing Corporate Uniqueness – An Interview with Bruno Schmidt of MetaDesign
• What I am doing is new and exciting - An interview with Tom Rossau
• Meet enPieza! and Some of Their Friends – or How to Help Daily Objects Forget Their Initial Destiny for Fun and Profit
• The value of the material determines the value of the act of cleaning itself - an interview with Jurgen Bey of Studio Makkink & Bey
• The Road is Clear for Colors – an Interview with Lieke Ypma
• I feel more alive in insecurity
• Try not to repeat what already exists
• A sense of balance between pixels and pencil
• The Magic at Sun Rise
• To create means to express your inner self
• Muses of a Midwestern Maker
• We are perfectionists …
• Always start from scratch
• Don't Read This, Go Design Something!" – An Interview with Daniel Pelavi
• Design is a consequence of the process, which in turn is a consequence of the material – An Interview with Max Lamb
• Concrete: Material of the Future!
• Finding Beauty in Problem-Solving – An Interview with Illustrator Jean Tuttle
• Complaining is Silly - An Interview with Stefan Sagmeister
• My starting point is the graphic reworking of surface
• Self-sufficiency, environmental protection and cultural promotion – All in a day’s work for Ute Hübler and Sonja Nitschmann of espírito brasilis
• Designs Unseen – An Interview with "Micronaut" Martin Oeggerli
• The Passagen Interviews – Katja Gehrke
• The Passagen Interviews – Doty Horn
• Taking Security from Effects – an interview with Dieter Hermann of Printcolor
• Designers, have your say! The XYMARA.com Passagen Interviews!
• Personal magic – the art of Alison Ann Martin
• Design Trends in Asia - Nature, Harmony and the Embrace of the New
• What color is a piece of string?
• Straight Lines, Hidden Value
• I feel I gave a little something, a little beauty to the world
• We believe it’s a new industrial revolution
• How about good things? Or interesting things?
• Design also always has a function
• Wood is a Very Modern Material
• I don‘t care what color a car is, just as long as it is black.
• Every design process is inspired by something else, what the designer has seen, heard or felt.
• Aren‘t our color preferences always based on our childhood memories?
• There is a strong need for richness
• We live in an inflatable culture. It‘s hard to know which values are real.
• Colors that create value are trendy ...
• There is a corresponding emotion to each color
• We would love to live outside the city. But we stay and use countryside colors ...
• There are too many colors around. I only need black.
• Interview with Warren Neidich, Artist
• Interview with Simon Husslein, Product Designer
• Interview with Clarissa Tossin, Graphic Designer
• Interview with Uleshka Asher, PingMag Chief Editor/Artist

Finding Beauty in Problem-Solving – An Interview with Illustrator Jean Tuttle

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Jean, if I could touch on your web-site and its organization for a minute, I am a little curious about your "business model". You offer a wide range of products but how do you differentiate between them and generate sales?
I like to keep my presentation simple and straightforward and the categories (and the images within them) fluid. So I use a basic template which allows me to make changes easily.

At this point it makes sense to me to use thumbnails to represent each category of work I like to do (icons, covers, etc.), so an art buyer can easily find examples of what he or she is looking for quickly. If a visitor to my site likes what they see in one category, it is likely they will explore the rest of the images on the site at their leisure.

And if they have a project that doesn't fit something I have already done, the hope is that they can at least see examples of how I think and how I draw, and might risk assigning me something I haven't tackled before. Of course, these projects often turn out to be the most wonderful collaborations.

In addition, when I market or promote my work, I sometimes do targeted mailings to a specific kind of client. But, increasingly, I am doing larger mailings – printed postcards or "e-promotions" – to clients in different categories or markets all at once, including magazine art directors, design firms, corporate designers, art directors at publishing houses and art buyers at ad agencies. So presenting my work in categories on my website is also handy for this reason.

A collection of different icons for all occasions © Jean Tuttle

What got you interested in creating "icons"?
Designing images that work in a small space is a great fit for me, calling into play a number of things I like to do (in addition to more complex artwork) - such as solve a problem with a single image, work within a limited palette, and put the emphasis on the structure or design of the space instead of on the details. I like working with extreme restrictions sometimes, for example editing out what doesn't fit or isn't necessary, so an idea reads clearly within a postage-stamp-sized space. It's a fun challenge.

Jean, still looking at your design approach, can you provide some insight into your preferences in terms of color and texture?
I love color, and spend a lot of time experimenting and finessing this aspect of an image when I am creating an illustration. I don't think of myself as having one signature palette or single approach to color. But I do try to approach each drawing with a fresh eye, hoping to hit on something unique that works for that particular image.

My approach to texture is similar. I like trying things I haven't done before. Though the kind of texture I am interested in is linear, not "dimensional" or tactile per se. For the last few years I have been adding a lot of curvy, decorative linear detail to my work, because I like how it softens the hard edges of the graphic shapes, provides a more lyrical and feminine feel and adds more depth and interest to the image. More recently, I have been using some of the brushes in Illustrator, albeit sparingly, to bring a more irregular and tactile quality to certain details.

The artist with another of her colorful and playful, yet wonderfully textured pieces: Susan With Bird Mask © Jean Tuttle

How do you approach illustrations for use alongside an article, or when it has to "co-exist" with special typography within the illustration itself?
It can work one of several ways. Sometimes, a designer will approach me with type already in place (as it is sometimes with logos) and ask me to create an image that works around it. I like working this way a lot, because good typography never fails to inspire me. Plus, being given something "set" to start off with provides one of those limitations that I love to puzzle my way around.

Other times, a designer will just wait until I give them an initial sketch, then place type, which we might pass back and forth a few times, adjusting things on either or both sides. This is also a really fun way to work for me, because it becomes a kind of dialogue. I have tremendous respect for what a good graphic designer can do, in particular the magic they can work with letter forms, so it is fun to be invited inside their process and be allowed to participate in this way.

Occasionally a client will ask me to come up with my own type for a logo or book cover I am illustrating. If the project falls within my somewhat limited typographic skills set - this is simply not an area I have focused on to date as much as illustration - I am certainly happy to do this.

Where do you see not only your own work moving in the next years?
I do see what I do shifting in the next several years. While I love doing assignment and conceptual work, in the last two years I have focused more energy on developing collections of decorative work for the licensing market.

A secondary goal is to write and illustrate children's books. I have done assignments for the children's market over the years, but have not pursued it to the degree that I'd like to in the future.

First Night © Jean Tuttle

What advice would you give new illustrators starting out?
The illustration market and the business climate in general within which I got my own start thirty years ago is very different from the one new illustrators face today, so any advice I might give them about how to get started in the business is not likely to be relevant.

What I can share however, is how I have stayed in business for this length of time. From this, I would include marketing and promotion tips and suggestions regarding client communications that have worked well for me.

When I do make such presentations to students, I also talk about and show examples of my own artistic development, drawings from my youth through to the present. I hope this will encourage those starting out in similar fields to reflect on the themes and cycles in their own work, too. While an artist is likely to have a number of different stages and styles within their career, there is a core to one's viewpoint and interests and passions that does tend to be constant, I feel.

And it's important to get to know and stay connected with that core. It's the only way I know of to ensure that your work remains authentic and unique, even as it changes, such that it can potentially contribute to current trends, and not just be driven by them.

Jean Tuttle's work has been recognized by American Illustration, Print, How, The Society of Publication Designers and The Society of Illustrators, and has been featured in IDEA magazine (Japan), Step-by-Step Electronic Design, The Illustrator Wow! Book, Illustrator Illuminated and other publications. Jean is a member of the Society of Illustrators, and a former board member of ICON, The Illustration Conference, for whom she served as programming chair for their 2003 event in Philadelphia.

A native Chicagoan, and a longtime New Yorker, she now lives in Denver. Having just moved both her studio and also home, she graciously gave us more than our fair share of time. Among her next projects is a planned update to her website with new images and more, something she likes to do on a regular basis (so check back often!).

It was a true pleasure making Jean's acquaintance and learning more about her work.

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