Untitled Document


bobstaake.com

The New Yorker ..... TIME ... The Washington Post ... The New York Times ..... MAD ..... The Wall Street Journal ..... Vanity Fair ..... Amtrak ..... Reader's Digest ..... PBS ..... Chicago Tribune ..... Fortune ..... The Saturday Evening Post ..... Forbes ..... The Los Angeles Times ..... Parents ..... USA Today ..... Random House ..... LEGO ..... Little Brown ..... American Airlines ..... Young & Rubicam ..... Major League Baseball ..... Harvard Business Review ..... Billboard ..... MIT ..... Simon + Schuster ..... NBC TV ..... AARP ..... Cartoon Network ..... MacWorld ..... MTV Nickelodeon ..... Hallmark Cards ..... Ziff Davis ..... Little Golden Books ..... American Express ..... Scholastic ..... McDonalds ..... Kellogg's ..... Anheuser-Busch ..... SONY ..... RAW Junior ..... Abrams Books ..... Candlewick Press ..... Viacom ..... Fantagraphics ..... Time Warner ..... Barron's ..... Miami Herald ..... Blockbuster Video ..... Walt Disney Company ..... PETA ..... Hyperion Books ..... HarperCollins ..... Children's Television Workshop ..... Penguin Putnam ..... Mattel Toys ..... Hasbro ..... Viking Books ..... Conde Nast ..... Hearst Publications ..... Fairchild Publications ..... Ralston Purina ..... AT+T ..... National Football League ..... Time/Life ..... Paramount Pictures ..... Christian Science Monitor ..... and so many more

Untitled Document

 
New Yorker Covers by Bob Staake

 

Untitled Document

 

Santa's Little Schleppers
December 17, 2007

This was actually an alternate version of an idea I submitted during Christmas 2006 -- an entire year earlier. In the original version, I showed a huge, looming Santa figure amidst the carnage of midtown Manhattan (fires in the streets, helicopters hovering, people in frenzied panic, etc). The title of the piece was "He's Baaaaack". It was one of those color "sketches" that I'll do from time to time -- an almost finished piece of digital color art -- but often this is the most comfortable manner in which to work (especially when I'm trying to channel everyone from A.M. Cassandre to Jean Carlu, from Herve Morvan to Paolo Garretto in a single image).

I'm not sure why Françoise wasn't keen on the original idea, but she did like the power and design of the image, so we played around with it and felt with people mindlessly milling about with Christmas packages, it might work. I did the new version, we submitted it to New Yoker Editor David Remnick, but he didn't give it the go-ahead. A year later, Françoise called and asked me if I still had the piece (which I had long forgetten about), and this time when we submitted the cover to Remnick, he approved it.

I felt then (as I do now) that there wasn't a heck of a lot of an idea behind the cover, but that it looks pretty like a mid-20th Century European poster -- the symetrical characterization of th Santa figure, the coarse digital contrasting intended to resemble the spatter of paint from a toothbrush, the almost caricatured drop shadow against the buildings that helps "pop" the sneering Santa into the foreground. Lisa, Françoise's assistant at The New Yorker, called to ask if I had any thoughts on a title for the piece, which is usually a sign that the cover is headed to the printer. Françoise and I had referred to the image as 'Santa's Little Helpers' a year earlier, but now it didn't seem right.

I fired off a list of pretty lame titles:

Santa's Little Schleppers
Let Them Schlep! Let Them Schelp! Let Them Schelp!
Schlep The Halls
The Elf Days Of Christmas
Santa's Little Elfers

I didn't know until the magazine came out three days later that The New Yorker went with one of my faux-Yiddish lines -- 'Santa Little Schleppers'.

Oi, Vei!


Untitled Document

Untitled Document


All imagery on this site remains Copyright © 2023 by Bob Staake or the individual copyright owners. You are not allowed to cut and paste or use the imagery on this site without the expressed, written consent and approval of BobStaake.com. Please read our complete copyright notice. All Rights Reserved. The BobStaake.com web site is maintained, produced and administered by

 

About I Copyright Info I Privacy I Contact