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Worth a Thousand Words
Area commercial illustrators tell stories to sell products
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Business New Haven
2/18/2002
By: Priscilla Searles
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Illustrator - an artist, first of all. But also a creator of an image or images that make a message come alive, help to sell a product or a company.
Four Connecticut illustrators, each with a distinct style of his or own, are getting messages across for everything from beauty salons to baby food companies. But while illustrators bring their own unique viewpoints to a project, they can't afford to lose sight of the client's goal for a project.
Robert Pizzo of Redding isn't reticent about promoting his artwork. A quote from his Web page gets right to the point. “To Honest, Ethical Creatives: I don't frown on comping. In fact, use all my images in ALL of your presentations! Need more? I'll send them.” Pizzo is, however, less generous to the group he call the “dishonest, unethical creatives.”
A graduate of New York's School of Visual Arts, Pizzo earned his BFA degree and then did what every artist does: He formed a rock 'n' roll band. But he got back into the act pretty fast. “Someone at Adweek called me the most un-neurotic artist they'd ever met,” he says. The Pizzo humor comes through on his Web site, over the phone, whenever you talk to him but he becomes very serious when he describes his art.
Pizzo's work has appeared on book covers, full page ads in the Wall Street Journal and on the front page of Business New Haven. Pizzo's work, which has won numerous awards, is very distinctive with vivid colors and hard, crisp lines. Once you've seen a Pizzo piece, you'll always be able to spot his work.
Designing icons, one of Jean Tuttle's specialties, is just one challenge that illustrators are often faced with. Sprint, Walgreen and Lucent Technologies are just a few of the companies that she has designed icons for.
“I'm often asked to create icons for businesses that would prefer an original concept or fresh interpretation, something unique rather than relying on clip art,” explains Tuttle.
Becoming an artist and businesswoman was a natural step for Tuttle. “I inherited a love of design from my mother, a graphic designer and painter,” explains Tuttle, “and my enthusiasm for business from my father, who co-founded a marketing design firm in Chicago.” Tuttle received her B.F.A. from the Parsons School of Design in 1978 and spent the next 22 years maintaining a studio in and around Manhattan. New to Connecticut, she now lives outside Hartford where she established an office in 2001.
Tuttle first became known for her hard-edged, high-energy scratchboard illustrations, before switching over to computer-enabled images in 1989, in pursuit of crisper shapes and better color capabilities.
“While my style has evolved along with technology, my approach to problem-solving and strong sense of design has remained a constant,” she explains. Her illustrations for a variety of international corporate and editorial clients have won numerous awards, as have her inventive self-promotions.
Tuttle's recent projects include developing the icons used on the U.S. Bureau of the Census' 2000 form and creating a set of internal communications symbols for Sprint. A longtime member of the New York chapter of the Graphics Artists Guild, Tuttle also belongs to the Connecticut Art Directors Club, where last year she appeared on a panel entitled “The Future of Illustration.
If the name Tony Falcone isn't familiar, the art he produces is. Major projects such as “Fast Track,” painted larger than life on the Sports Haven building off I-95 in New Haven, the New Haven skyline painted on the side of the Tyco building on Broadway and a massive mural of the New Haven area painted for the Greater New Haven Convention & Visitors Bureau are just a few of Falcone's gigantic projects.
A professional artist since 1974, Falcone established his first studio in 1977 in a dairy barn in Prospect. A self-taught artist, he specializes in custom-designed commissioned artworks such as architectural and family and executive portraits, fine paintings and murals. Describing his style as realistic yet “imaginistic,” he has painted on location in Portugal, Italy, the Caribbean and France, where he exhibited his work in Avignon.
His approach to some of his projects is almost spiritual. The concept for a calendar designed for 2000 was both celestial and nautical. “We're all one people on one planet,” saysd Falcone “and that was the idea behind the calendar. It's very meditative.”
Claudia Wolf of CW Designs in Bethany sells herself as a “creative, eclectic someone who can do everything, from ideas to illustration, storyboard to art direction, photos and fine art - all wrapped up into one Web-based graphic designer and digital illustrator.”
A graduate of Paier College of Art in Hamden, Wolf says she comes “from a traditional advertising, art and illustration background, trained to analyze, conceptualize and then fully realize marketing communications solutions.”
Working as an illustrator in her home studio, she also teaches at Vermilion Fields Art Studio in New Haven, co-owned by Wolf and artist Nina Loricco.
“I've worked extensively with airbrush, watercolors, acrylics, pastel, oil and clay and have mastered the art of computer drawing,” she explains. “I want to introduce these electronic tools to a wider group. I also like working with children. I think creative talents can blend into the student's lifestyle, turning them into sensitive and caring adults.”
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