How the Corona-Crisis brought illustrators together to prove that challenging times are no excuse to keep ideas locked down.

“Build the new normal” by Andre Levy and Chris Hess for Kombinatrotweiss’ #LetsCollab

Truly feeling like part of a team is a rare opportunity for most illustrators. But working on commission and changing teams so often makes adaptation one of our best calibrated skills. With all the priceless perks of being our own bosses, being rather the near end of the creative chain put us in situations in which we have to compromise – in order to find the common ground between client’s expectations, agency’s aspirations and the opinions of anyone else who might have a say in the project (while still being careful to stay true to what brought you in in first place!). Many of my most enthusiastically creative experiences happened in environments in which I could fearlessly expose my flaws and allow myself to get those gaps complemented by others people’s talents. That’s the basis of collaboration: this safe feeling of never fighting alone. It takes time to achieve that. And if there’s no time we have to make it work, anyway. It’s called adaptation.

My contribution for for the 2020 Anti-Racism campaign by Kombinatrotweiss.

Under the horrifying reality of a global pandemic – aside the privilege of being able to work from home – creatives immediately faced uncertainty too. Many jobs and businesses were suddenly at risk without the possibility of a face-to-face negotiation. Even though it was already clear that creative solutions would be key to overcome this open-ended “new normal”, fear drove clients, publications and advertising agencies to freeze their budgets. We felt alone, all together. And we needed to adapt. Even activism was now limited to the digital platforms.

Personally, social distancing brought me to reevaluation, which in turn let to reconnection: with myself, with relatives, with nature, with friends, with my personal/political beliefs and underlining all this, reconnecting with my creativity and my creative process. But it also made me see that even isolated, there were creatives around me going through similar experiences.

I’ve been gladly working since years with Kombinatrotweiss. They represent me and a fantastically diverse group of illustrators. From our real or our virtual windows we could see other colleagues and partners in the creative industry facing their own professional struggles: photo shootings within safety regulations became extremely challenging, agencies and clients needed time to adapt their structures/policies to enable home office, client were dropping out as well as communication budgets freezing. The market also needed to adapt, creation could’t stop. And we illustrators seemed to have a solution in our hands all the time: our job is literally to give shape to ideas that sometimes are not even ours. We illustrate. We animate. We bring ideas to light.

When Svetlana Jakel, Kombinatrotweiss CEO asked us for inputs, collaborating among ourselves was a no-brainer to me. With so many different styles, the possibilities were infinite. By combining our styles and our individual personal experiences I saw the opportunity to generate joint-creations wich we could use to expand and connect with people outside of our own group.

The #LetsCollab Logo is itself the first result of our joint-project: a collaboration between me and lettering-artist Petra Wöhrmann.

My own social isolation routine, which involved re-contacting friends by sending postcards, also resonated with the group and inspired the format chosen to bring the collaborations to life. This way we could allow other creatives and clients to forward our motives and ignite new connections. It was an opportunity to share our own personal journeys of overcoming the difficulties of the lockdown, but on a professional level, putting ideas out even while we had to stay in.

Together, 44 illustrators randomly combined their visions and styles to design 26 inspirational motives based on themes like solidarity, motivation, confidence, acceptance, connection and collaboration. Mine illustrate this text. All the others you can check here.