Meet Our Student Show Illustrator Judges

We like to have art directors help judge our Student Show and are very pleased ot have Creative Director and Founder of Point5, Alissa Levin filling that role this year. In addition, we have a group of illustrators with outstanding credentials, many of whom have worked with young illustrators. It hasn't been that long ago that they themselves were entering the field. We are pleased to have illustrators Lisk Feng, China, Aad Goudappel, The Netherlands, Edward Kinsella and Pablo Luebert, Chile as part of our jury.

Lisk Feng is an award-winning illustrator based who is initially from China, and now a New York-based freelance illustrator. Her editorial and advertising work includes The New Yorker, Apple, Penguin, Airbnb, the New York Times, Chanel, to name a few. Her illustrations have received  recognition from the Society of Illustrators—a Silver Medal,  Communication Arts, 3x3—a Silver Medal, and American Illustration. She has also illustrated several children`s books with Flying Eye Books, Abrams and Kids Can Press. She was awarded the Art Directors Club Young Gun award in 2017, and the 2019 Forbes 30 Under 30 award in the art category. www.liskfeng.com

Aad Goudappel is a freelance illustrator living and working from Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He studied illustration at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam, in addition to courses at Camberwell College of Art in London and the Art Institute of Boston. His clients include EdenSpiekermann, Fortune, Golf Digest, Harvard Business Review, Herman Miller, Men’s Health,   to name a few. His work has received recognition from the Society of Illustrators—including a Silver Medal, American Illustration, 3x3 ProShow—including a Gold and Bronze Medal, Communication Arts, ADC Germany—including a Gold and Bronze Medal, Red Dot Award, Applied Arts, Society of Illustrators, LA to name a few. When not in his studio you’ll probably find him at home with his wife, two daughters and two cats. www.aadgoudappel.com

Edward Kinsella III is an award-winning Illustrator from St. Louis, Missouri. His accolades include five medals from The Society of Illustrators and three medals from Spectrum. His clients include: The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, The Criterion Collection, Reader’s Digest, The Wall Street Journal, Folio Society, Atlantic Monthly, Playboy, Penguin, Simon and Schuster, The United States Postal Service, Entertainment Weekly, Smithsonian Magazine, Wired, Texas Monthly, Scientific American, Washington Post, Scholastic and the New York Times. www.edwardkinsellaillustration.com

Pablo Luebert is a Chilean illustrator and author. He was born in 1985 in Santiago de Chile and studied philosophy and graphic design. His work is a blend of absurd spaces, a little humor, and a naive sense of wonder. His illustrations are heavily influenced by poetry of things and the simplicity of child painting. He have been working as an independent illustrator for more than 10 years, collaborating with expositions, agencies, artists, and projects from all over the world. www.luebert.com

3x3 International Illustration Awards Show No. 16
Deadline: Friday, March 22, 2019 without late fees
Final Deadline: March 29)
Show Chair: Melinda Beck

Enter Today

Meet Our 3x3 ProShow Illustrator Judges

We’ve introduced you to our art director judges, now we’re pleased to introduce you to our esteemed group of illustrators who will be judging the Professional Show.

In addition to Chad Beckerman, Sheri Gee, Dave Plunkert, Stephen Petch and Len Small we have illustrators Catarina Sobral, Portugal and Olimpia Zagnoli, Italy judging the ProShow.

Born in Portugal in 1985, Catarina Sobral is a published author and illustrator of picture books and animated films. After studying graphic design, she graduated in illustration in 2012. Her illustrations are a regular presence in editorial illustration, album covers and posters, and she has twelve books published in fifteen different languages.

Her work has been exhibited both in solo and group shows in many places around the world and recognized by the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, the Portuguese National Illustration Award, the Portuguese Authors’ Society and the White Ravens catalogue.

Olimpia Zagnoli was born in Reggio Emilia on the leap day in 1984. As a child she moved to Milan, where she currently lives and works. Olimpia studied illustration at the Istituto Europeo di Design in Milan, graduating in 2007. The year after graduation she was living in New York and began publishing her illustrations in Italian and international newspapers. Throughout the years she has collaborated with the New York Times, Taschen, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and Rolling Stone, to name a few.

She has illustrated three children’s books and created her version of  The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Her bright and ironic images have acted as a framework for advertising campaigns for Google, Apple, Barilla and Air France. She has worked with leading fashion brands, among them Fendi, Prada, Hermes and Marella (Max Mara group).

Along with her commissioned assignments, Olimpia’s personal projects meld illustration and different artistic media. She has experimented with the relationship between drawing and tri-dimensionality, crafting a series of design objects, kinetic sculptures and has directed music videos.

Her work has been showcased in numerous group shows around Italy and Europe, and in solo shows in Düsseldorf, Milan and Los Angeles (2018).

www.catarinasobral.com

www.olimpiazagnoli.com


3x3 International Illustration Awards Show No. 16
Deadline: Friday, March 22, 2019 without late fees
Final Deadline: March 29)
Show Chair: Melinda Beck

Enter Today

Meet Our Judges: Dave Plunkert, AD, GD, IL

Dave Plunkert is a man of many hats i.e. graphic designer, art director, illustrator, cartoonist, educator and design firm principal.

Plunkert's work has appeared in Esquire, Forbes, GQ, The New Yorker, Time, Reader's Digest, Playboy and Rolling Stone magazines, as well as in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. He has also worked extensively with publishers and recording artists; among his credits are the covers for Natan Sharansky’s Case for Democracy and Richard Thompson’s You? me? us? Major entertainment clients have included MTV and Capitol Records. He has illustrated postage stamps for the United States Postal Service and produced over 70 posters for Theatre Project Baltimore.

In addition, Plunkert has produced illustrations for the 2000 Sundance Film Festival and for Woodstock 94. In 1995 he created the art for the Yugo Next exhibition poster at New York's Grand Central Terminal; The National Endowment of the Arts in Washington, DC described Yugo Next as “one of the greatest ever examples of public art.”

With an early interest in cartooning, he self-published comics in high school which helped land him a summer job in a small printing company. A graduate of Shepherd University with a degree in Visual Communication, he worked first for a graphic design firm art directing and doing some of the illustrations himself.

His first big break as an illustrator was with Mid-Atlantic Country magazine. Unlike his present mode of production, this was all cut-and-paste. While he had art directed illustrators at the design firm, he’ll admit he had no idea how an editorial illustator operated on a day-to-day basis. This first assignment provided some practical essentials—things like nailing down the deadline, budget and keeping travel to a minimum. Seeking work as an illustrator was mostly door-to-door in the beginning until several of his pieces made the big time in American Illustration. Then it was katy-bar-the-door for the rest of the 90s and 00s. After freelancing for a few years in 1995 he and his wife, illustrator Joyce Hesselberth, formed Spur Design in Baltimore, Maryland.

Asked if being an art director affects his illustration work, he replied “I think being an art director/designer makes me more informed of how illustration fits into the thing. By thing I mean poster, animation, newspaper, magazine, etc. Illustration is one other thing in a designer’s quiver with photography and type to solve a visual communication problem.” He added a very helpful hint, “I suspect that a sketch is way more likely to get approved by the way, if the art director shows it to the editor in context on the page, or with the cover dress as opposed to on its own.” Working as an illustrator has made him a more laid back art director, “You generally get better work from people if you give them space to do their thing and getting pleasantly surprised is the best part of working with a talented illustrator.”

His illustrations have been recognized by American Illustration, Communication Arts and The Society of Publication Designers. Dave’s work has been collected by the Library of Congress and The Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum among others, and exhibited at the Baltimore Museum of Art and The Design Museum of London. He has received gold medals from the Society of Illustrators  and was awarded Best Magazine Cover of the Year by The American Society of Magazine Editors for his August 28th, 2017 cover of The New Yorker. His work is in the collections of the Library of Congress, the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, The University of California Design Museum and the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg. In 2011, Plunkert was inducted into the prestigious Alliance Graphique Internationale.

He has taught graphic design and illustration at his alma mater and Maryland Institute College of Art.

www.spurdesign.com

3x3 International Illustration Awards Show No. 16
Deadline: Friday, March 22, 2019 without late fees
Final Deadline: March 29)
Show Chair: Melinda Beck

Enter Today

Meet Our Judges: Chad W. Beckerman, Creative Director

Chad’s resume is quite impressive, especially for such a young man. His most recent job was Creative Director at Abrams where he oversaw the design of picture books, novels, graphic novels and art and entertainment books.

A graduate of the illustration program at RISD, he spent his first summer after graduation looking for work as an illustrator, his former teacher, Judy Sue Goodwin-Sturges gave him a lead at Scholastic based on some comp novel jackets in his portfolio. And after two interviews he went to work with art director, Elizabeth Parisi as a design assistant at Scholastic. He followed that with a move to the HarperCollins imprint, Greenwillow Books, where he started as a designer, later to be promoted to senior designer and in 2006 he moved to Abrams starting as an art director, eventually gaining the title Creative Director. While at Abrams he oversaw the imprints Amulet Books, Abrams Books for Young Readers and ComicArts. All total he has been involved with over forty New York Times bestsellers, received a gold medal and three silver medals from the Society of Illustrators and walked away with Caldecott, Newbery and Corretta Scott King awards.

Previous to his current judging duties he's helped judged the Society of Illustrators Annual—twice, Communication Arts Illustration Annual—twice, American Illustration, SCBWI, The New York Book Show and the Society of Illustrators Original Art Show. He’s a regular speaker at the SCBWI and offers portfolio reviews to aspiring children’s book illustrators.

Asked where his passion for art comes from, he answered, “I got a copy of Adventures with Superman and Dick Tracy and couldn’t put them down. I can’t remember what prompted me to pick up a pencil and try to replicate the bold lines and tones, but it was enough to make me fall in love with the medium of comics.”

When asked if he always knew he’d end up as a creative director he says, “Absolutely not. I knew I loved narrative, I knew I loved to draw. I knew that I wanted to do something that involved both of those but I never considered children’s books." He credits his training at RISD in helping him solve visual problems and credits his time as a TA (Teaching Assistant) in preparing him to interact with illustrators and bringing out the best in people’s work. “...the whole reason I went into the art field is that I knew I like to make things to be part of something physical. At the end of a project you get to hold onto something you helped make, that is so rewarding.” And as a true designer, the first thing he does when he gets a copy fresh off the press, is to smell the pages. The smell of ink is intoxicating.

The hardest part of the job is doing something everyone is going to like but doing what he likes first and then making everyone else like it. “You want to be happy with what you make at the end of the day, no matter how small.”

One of his great joys is working with illustrators and he's enjoyed working with many of the who’s-who in illustration. And looks forward to continuing that journey.

www.chadwbeckerman.com

3x3 International Illustration Awards Show No. 16
Deadline: March 22, 2019 (late deadline is March 29)
Show Chair: Melinda Beck

Enter Today