07 
ILLUSTRATOR
BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA /
NEW YORK CITY, NY, USA
FERNANDA COHEN
Fernanda Cohen grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and splits her time between her home country and New York City, where she has her studio. Besides her illustrations for editorial and corporate clients, she has a line of illustrated kitchenware, notebooks, handbags, and tea towels. She is a teacher at the School of Visual Arts and a writer.
YOUR BRAIN IS A VERY PLIABLE AND ERASABLE SURFACE.
I love watching people at cafés and overhearing conversations. I’m inspired by patterns that I see a lot in architecture. The worst thing for me is to be inspired by other people’s work. I don’t have other artists’ work on my wall. I am inspired by real things, by photographs, by people, by things outside the art world.
I write down a lot of notes in my Moleskine sketchbook—phrases and sentences that will later trigger a thought or a source of inspiration. I sketch a lot in my head when I have an idea. My head is a very pliable and erasable surface—if an idea in my mind is too cliché, I’ll edit it until I get something that works and then I’ll write it down in words. Later, I will sketch what was in my head and written in my sketchbook, and that’s usually very close to what the client will see.
The Food Affair series came from an idea I had about fat people eating. This was a personal project that I sent into competitions and used as mailers that ended up getting me a lot of work, including, I found out later, my first cover for The New Yorker magazine.
Because I think in words, it’s easier to come up with ideas. I take careful notes when listening to a client because certain words will guide me in a direction.
When I think of a good idea I have to execute it. There are times when I write down a good idea and I don’t have the time to execute it and I get frustrated. So, if I come up with a great idea I just sketch it. I create my own work a lot from those ideas. My personal work has generated all of my commercial work.
I submitted “Honor Thy Broccoli” to the Step Inside Design 100 competition, and one of the jurors was quoted as liking my piece. I sent her a note thanking her for saying nice things. A few months later, she called me. She said she had a client, Ikram, in Chicago, that wanted to do a series of mailers and she was inspired by the piece I did about the kids and the broccoli. Ikram was one of the first clients to give me a shot.
I had submitted my work to a magazine where you needed to submit three different series. I submitted my Ikram series, Food Affair series, and Funny Petit series.
I came up with the Ikram concept idea in the shower. It just came to me. I get a lot of my ideas in the shower. And if not there, then on an afternoon walk.
I did a personal piece with kids holding up broccoli that says, “Honor Thy Broccoli.” This came from a dream I had about how all kids are supposed to hate broccoli. I did pieces like this all day long, and they eventually got me work.
I started taking pictures of myself, and by the end of my time working on the “Honor Thy Clothes” campaign I had three or four hundred pictures, and that’s what these illustrations are based on.
The only brief I had said to do a series of mailers based on “Honor Thy Broccoli.” So, I changed it to “Honor Thy Clothes.” I drew one girl each month in the piece of clothing she wanted me to highlight. They were all naked except for wearing the featured clothing item.
