Posters, editorial, and the first peeps

Early Illustration

2010–2018Illustrator · All the drawing · Editorial work · Character design

Before the libraries.

Club flyers, band posters, editorial pieces, character studies… the drawing that came before Open Peeps and Robyn and everything else.

This is the archive nobody asked for. Gig posters from the club-flyer era, editorial illustration, a poster series of bands, character studies, and the first sketches of things that later grew into systems.

Most of it was one drawing at a time, made for a deadline or a friend's show. Then somewhere in here I started drawing the same little people over and over… and that turned into peeps.

The club-flyer era

Posters and clubs

Disco nights, club nights, a lot of red. This was learning to make one image do all the work: grab you across a crowded bar, tell you where to be and when. No system, no reuse. Just draw the thing and print it.

Editorial

Drawing for words

Editorial work is a different muscle. Somebody hands you an article and you find the one image that says it without saying it. Esquire, an octopus, a Godzilla… you learn to be quick and a little strange.

The Dribbble years

2017 and 2018 were the Dribbble years. Icons, little loops, animation tests, and the first peeps sketches. I was posting almost daily, figuring out flat shapes and motion, and drawing food that punches above its weight.

Super avocado

Watermelon

Icepop

Lion tamer

Early peeps, moving

The first peeps. Same little person, drawn again and again, until it became a library.

The Making of a Manager

Illustrations for a book

I drew the illustrations for Julie Zhuo's book, The Making of a Manager. Lemonade stands, managing yourself, all the awkward parts of leading people, turned into simple pictures that could sit next to real advice.

Series and characters

In between the paid work there were series I made for myself. Soñadores, the Dreamers. Character studies… Anna, Kody, a ninja, Rusty. This is where I got comfortable letting a drawing be a whole person, which is the thing everything after this depends on.