Boggle-Eyed Pre-Jarvis

Before James Jarvis [studiojarvis.com] began filling the world with blobby, boggle eyed creatures there was another equally prolific illustrator from Australia who was doing a similar thing back in the 70s and 80s. If you grew up ‘down under’ during the 1980s there was no escaping the graphic handy work of the Mambo group [mambo.com.au], Ken Done [kendone.com] and, the much more anonymous, Alex Stitt.

Best known for the, now slightly creepy, ‘Life. Be in it.’ campaign used to promote health and efficiency to Australians nationwide; it featured a character that was to become a household name – the archetypical lazy man on a couch – ‘Norm’ [lifebeinit.org]. His work also appeared in a lot of educational materials such as annual sing-a-long books distributed to government run schools. At the same time he was helping run the graphic design agency Weatherhead and Stitt. A rare interview with the quietest of the Aussie design and illustration behemoths appears in the latest edition of Doingbird magazine [myspace.com/doingbird].