Meet Our Judges: Martin Gee, Senior Art Director

We’re pleased to add Martin Gee, Senior Art Director at Time magazine to our 3x3 ProShow jury.

Not only is Martin an art director, he’s a freelance illustrator with clients including Wired, NPR, AARP, Variety, The Washington Post and others. Look at his curriculum vitae and you’ll see his twenty-two years of experience runs the gamut from Xerox to the House of Blues Entertainment where he created motion graphics for HOB-TV. To a number of newspaper jobs in his native San Jose, Miami, Chicago, Boston, Portland, landing in New York to work at the Huffington Post’s weekly iPad magazine. And finally to Time.

Ask him how he likes his current job and he’ll tell you it’s pretty much a dream job with the exception of not being able to use more illustration. As with most illustrators, Martin has been drawing since he was a child gaining his inspiration and rudimentary talent from comic books and cartoon shows. And it’s nice that in his job he can even assign himself a spot or two in a pinch. Asked which he prefers, illustrator or art director, his answer is art director, but just by a hair. He tries to be an illustrator-friendly art director and an art director-friendly illustrator.

He caught the design bug early working on his college newspaper and magazine at San Jose State University as well as the role as publication director for the college radio station. Today outside of work he enjoys everything Star Wars, building Lego robots, doing improv and listening to the Tron Legacy soundtrack daily.

No stranger to awards, he’s had his share from the Society of Publication Designers, the Society of Illustrators—where he’s also judged the student show, the Zankel Scholarship award and been an instructor at their summer illustration art academy. He was featured in the Washington Post’s 50 Great Illustrations from 2016 and won an Emmy for Peguin Love. Not to mention his first award, a 2nd place for Presentation Karaoke where we walked away with a fondue set.

What Martin will be looking for: 
“First and foremost, I look for drawing skills. After that, I want concepts, narratives, sensibilities towards the topic, style, humor, emotion… Well, essentially everything! I want to be moved and wow’d!”

3x3 International Illustration Annual Show No.15

The 3x3 International Illustration Awards Show is open to all illustrators in all countries. There is a separate jury for each of our three shows: Professional, Student and Picture Book. For full details download our Call for Entries pdf, to enter go to our homepage.

Deadline: March 23, 2018