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Jenise RoqueCDMG 1112 - Section D304Professor Thelma BauerDecember 19, 2018Designer Research Paper

Jamie Hewlett: The Designer for Popular Culture

Designers are well known for changing the world through providing accessibility and

entertainment through their skills of Technology and Aesthetics, and there are some designers

that are really big today through changing the world of Pop Culture. Illustrators, Animators,

comic book artists, and a lot of different designers are well famous for developing franchises

through their skill of art and technology, which has resulted into major cult followings and

dedicated fan bases based on those franchises. One Designer that I will be discussing has had

made a major impact in Pop Culture for 30 years; from working on comic books to creating

cover art for notable bands, and most notably, co-creating the iconic virtual band, Gorillaz, Jamie

Hewlett is the designer that has attributed to changing pop culture.

Jamie Christopher Hewlett was born on April 6, 1968 in Horsham, Sussex, England. He

attended Tanbridge House School, a co-educational comprehensive school where he contributed

to doing artwork for a road safety campaign that ended up on a runner-up in a national

competition. When a 20 year old Hewlett was attending Northbrook College Worthing in 1988,

he met comic book artists Alan Martin and Phil Bond to create a fanzine called Atoman. This

fanzine had brought the attention of now late comic artist Brett Evans, whom then offered

Hewlett an opportunity to create a new comic for a new Magazine called Deadline. Collaborating

with Martin, Hewlett co-created the comic, Tank-Girl, a series of misadventures of an unruly and

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violent anarchist punk girl who drives a Tank and goes on misadventures in a futuristic Australia.

Tank Girl

When discussing the design of Tank Girl on The Economist, Hewlett stated that he

wanted to create a heroine that stood out from the average superheroines in most comics. Hewlett

stated that he wanted to create “Strong Women...the foul-mouthed women, the drinking, fighting

women, the women who would scare most men”, using Joan Jett and Chrissie Hynde for

inspiration for the character. Tank Girl became a hit success with Deadline Magazine, as she was

“a new emblem of female spirit”, according to the economist. The Tank Girl series has

developed a cult following in the early 90’s, and the series still continues on to this day, with

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other artists often doing the art for future Tank Girl comics. As Tank Girl was now in the hands

of Deadline Magazine, Hewlett took a break from writing and drawing for Tank girl, as he

decided to aim to work on other projects, making other comics such as Phoo Action and Get the

Freebies, along with creating cover artwork for musical artists and bands, most noticeably,

artwork for the punk bands, Senseless Things and Mindless Self Indulgence.

(Left) Senseless Things The First of Too Many 1991 album cover . (Right) Back cover art for the Mindless Self Indulgence album Frankenstein Girls will seem strangely sexy, released in 2000.

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In the year of 1998, Hewlett was sharing a loft with Damon Albarn, frontman of the

Britpop band, Blur. The two first met when Hewlett was given the opportunity to interview the

band for Deadline Magazine. Both Hewlett and Albarn recall spending hours watching MTV

together and feeling “disillusioned with the lack of connection that manufactured bands had with the

creative side of their music, and we're finding the music videos they were watching increasingly

lacking in substance”. Thus the duo came up with the idea to create a cartoon band, with Albarn

writing and recording the music while Hewlett comes up with the art and characters. This idea of a

fake band called Gorillaz would end up serving to be one of the iconic bands all around, being

recognizable all around for their character design of its band members.

Gorillaz in 2001. (From left to right) Noodle, Russell Hobbs, 2D, and Murdoc Niccals

The band members for gorillaz were inspired by a lot of the things that Hewlett liked and the

people he knew. What was really unique about the gorillaz is that the band members were able to age

and develop, unlike any other cartoon would just remain the same age and stay with the same For

example, Noodle, the guitarist of the band was able to develop as a woman, as shown through the

phases of Gorillaz, as Jamie described “which is something cartoon characters tend not to do,”.

These character developments of the band members would play along with the story plots of

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each album, where the albums are a representation of phases in the Gorillaz universe, affecting

how these characters would look and act. Gorillaz would go on to achieve worldwide success, as

each of their albums for the past seventeen years would earn them a lot of awards and accolades

and sell millions of copies. Gorillaz is what Hewlett is most prominently known for.

Noodle, age 28, drawn by Hewlett in June 2018.

In Conclusion, Jamie Hewlett is the designer that has contributed a lot to pop culture

through his illustrations, comics, and animation overall. He is the designer that is aimed towards

designing for entertainment and promote a new wave of creativity. Combing his art to Albarn’s

music is what made his most well-known project successful, and this is something that I would

like to pursue in the future, which is my reason for why Jamie Hewlett is the designer that I feel

is excelling at what he does.

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Works Cited

1) D.B .“Jamie Hewlett and the Aesthetics of Pop Culture”. Published on July 5, 2018.

Retrieved from: The Economist. Link:

https://www.economist.com/prospero/2018/07/05/jamie-hewlett-and-the-aesthetics-of-

pop-culture

2) Dazed Magazine. “Inside the mind of Gorillaz co-creator, Jamie Hewlett”. Published on

February 8, 2018. Retrieved from: Dazed.

Link:http://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/38932/1/jamie-hewlett-interview

3) Ruth Faj. “Gorillaz co-creator Jamie Hewlett just wanted to draw comics”. Published on

November 28, 2017. Retrieved from: Vice Magazine. Link:

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qv3gep/gorillaz-co-creator-jamie-hewlett-just-

wanted-to-draw-comics

4) WePresent magazine. “Jamie Hewlett: That’s all is drawing really, just putting some lines

in the right place”. Published on November 7, 2018. Retrieved from: WePresent. Link:

https://wepresent.wetransfer.com/story/jamie-hewlett-gorillaz/