Stefan G. Bucher / 344 Design
Los Angeles
Graphic designer and illustrator Stefan G. Bucher is the man behind design studio 344 Design and the wildly popular online animation series Daily Monster, recently collected in the book 100 Days of Monsters. When not bringing monsters to terrifying, inky life, he produces award-winning work for clients as diverse as the L.A. Louver gallery, NYTimes.com, and film director Tarsem.
NO ONE WHO has visited dailymonster.com and watched one of the 200 videos of Bucher creating a monster from a random ink blot will be surprised to learn he is a prolific sketcher. The man clearly knows his way around a pen. Still, he admits that while he used to do a page or two a day in his sketchbooks, he isn’t drawing as much lately as he’d like. “A lot of that activity has gone into making the monsters,” he says. “I do put a lot of doodles on the backs of bills, postcards, and envelopes on my desk, and I try to save those because it’ll look so damn authentic and impressive once the Smithsonian gets my estate. But doodling random sketches here and there isn’t the same as committing to a sketchbook. I started my current volume on October 1, 2005, and I’m not even halfway through. It’s embarrassing!”
“Sketching is more free and immediate than working on the computer. It’s very quick and easy to run through basic ideas on paper. Also, anything that involves complex curves has to start on paper. Curves really benefit hugely from the natural motion of the hand.
The Roxio logo started as a tag on ads I was designing for Modernista! in Boston. Roxio wanted to brand them with the slogan ‘Burn clean’ to make clear their products (Toast and EZ CD Creator) are intended only for burning content you own. The ads did well, and when Roxio approached Modernista! about designing a new company logo, they called on me once more. I told them they already have the perfect logo, and the M! team made it happen.”
—Stefan Bucher
“I started drawing a series of hybrid animals about ten years ago. They’ll be a book someday, you just wait. In the meantime, Honda has licensed the warthen, the moosetrich, and the pengvark to advertise their line of hybrid vehicles.”
—Stefan Bucher
Even for someone whose work makes frequent use of hand-drawn elements, it can be hard to take the time sketching’s slower pace demands. “There are always excuses for not sketching enough. Sketching is like going to the hand-eye gym: It rewards consistent, disciplined effort; it’s easy to lapse; and it’s yet another way to feel guilty about doing too little of what’s good for you.
“Sketching is perfect for logos, because in the end anybody anywhere should be able to doodle your logo in seconds. For layouts, sketching hasn’t been that useful to me; it’s too easy to cheat dimensions and proportions in a thumbnail. I prefer working with the actual ingredients as soon as possible. The computer allows me to run through more configurations than a sketchbook because it’s so easy to manipulate colors and scale.”
In the end, combining both tools works best for Bucher. “I think if it’s a good idea, and you develop it with care and discipline, it’ll become a good piece whether you work on it with a pencil or a computer. I don’t think tools have anything to do with conceptual depth.”
Maverick Records
“David and Joanna from the Solar Twins had a strong vision that they wanted their music and stage show to transport their audience into a parallel reality. We conceived of a minimalist penthouse that functions as a giant teleportation device—the Tardis meets Edna Mode’s house. Throughout the project, the band and I had a great mind meld, which makes this my favorite music project so far.”
—Stefan Bucher
Open Intelligence Agency
Identity
“One job that went from the very first sketch (made on a comp for my gallery client L.A. Louver) to final item are the squids for the Open Intelligence Agency, an international team of account planners. They’re a global network. They’re incredibly smart. They’re set to take over. Just like octopi.
Between that and conflating in my memory the posters on page 45 of my favorite design book, Genius Moves, everything was set for a squiddy ID. I made a dozen squid icons, and—since these are very cool clients—we used them all.”
—Stefan Bucher