Click on the thumbnails to see a larger image. Production notes can be found at the bottom of the page.

In the field of advertising, when you find a means of connecting with people, you take advantage of it. So considering that my previous blog posting, “Thirty Years of Illustration,” got triple the readership of any of my former posts, I decided to write another article along the same lines—that is, looking back over my career as an illustrator. I promise not to repeat myself (the film Rocky was good and Rocky II was palatable, but then Sly made the disasters Rocky III, IV and V). Read the rest of this entry »

Click on the thumbnails to see a larger image. Production notes can be found at the bottom of the page.

When I was in graduate school in the mid-1970s, I began illustrating to supplement my poverty-level student income. Because of my fine arts background I moonlighted as a magazine illustrator—secretly, since we fine arts students thought creating commercial artwork was prostitution. Even though we studied art history, somehow we missed the fact that all the greatest artists from Leonardo to Velasquez were, in effect, commercial artists working for paying patrons (usually the church or rich noblemen). After graduation and a few years of living abroad, I decided to become an illustrator full-time. Needing to earn a living trumped my grad school snootiness. Read the rest of this entry »

Hile Design LLC has created the corporate mascot “Gary” and associated characters “The Greens” for Grasshopper (formerly GotVMail), a Boston-based company aimed at empowering entrepreneurs to start and grow their small businesses from anywhere, using any phone. See full details »

Based in Costa Mesa, California, Roger has illustrated for many leading companies including AT&T, Bell South, DirecTV, Euro Disney, McGraw-Hill, Sprint Cellular and others. We wanted to find out how this award-winning illustrator got into the business and what he sees as the future of his industry. We think you’ll be interested too, so read on.

Hile Design: Roger, can you share a bit of your background and how you became a commercial illustrator?

Roger Xavier: I’m going to summarize this as much as possible: My earliest recollection of drawing was when I was 4 and started off with crayons. Then came my love of comic book art. The line drawings I grew up on in those comics would be ingrained into my psyche. I’d tried almost every medium used to create art, but pen & ink drawings have always been something that stayed with me.

Skipping ahead to college, I received my formal education in illustration, art history and design. In my senior year at college, I won a contest to create a poster for Molson Golden Beer. My entry became part of an exhibit and ended up gaining the attention of a book publisher in New York who not only hired me to do a couple of book illustrations, but also opened up an opportunity to work on a movie for MGM just 3 months after graduation. After that, I wanted to pursue the movie poster industry and started working for several Hollywood firms that specialized in entertainment advertising. During those early years, I tried everything from biomedical rendering to editorial art for magazines and working on any advertising job I could get. That was a time of growth and I didn’t really hit my stride until 1990, when I was awarded a project by Emmett Morava of Morava Design to create the annual report illustrations for the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power.  Emmett had great vision and instructed me to go bolder with my pen & ink drawings. He showed me how to design with ink and create something more than just a rendering.  The LADWP annual report went on to win many awards.  It was then that I started getting some recognition. Read the rest of this entry »