Ahhhh…Safe Baby Handling Tips. The onesie illustrations that became the 2005 board book I co-authored with my wife, Kelly, which launched a bazillion social media posts that don’t credit us as authors or me as the illustrator. Sigh. But once in a long while, someone will use a cool, free tool called “Google” and they’ll see that these funny Tips actually came from a real person. And then they work with that person to make new, funny things! Dude! That totally happened to me!
If you have a minute, you can read how this super fun project for Iceland’s public bus network, Strætó, came about. And, how bananas successful it was (over half of Iceland’s entire population was reached organically). True story! Basically, Strætó wanted to educate their riders on bus etiquette. It wasn’t my idea (it was theirs), but I wish it was (so badly), because it’s the perfect use for the Tips format.
Of course the baby one is my favorite of the series. And thank God I’ve never seen THIS happen on the bus. The tea set one? All those dudes are my brother. And yes, he really had that amazing mustache.
My Handling Tips formula is hard to nail, even though it’s pretty straightforward. Have a simple base instruction, and a victim. I’ve expanded the Handling Tips format into non-baby topics before, and that’s what really sort of brought this formula to light. I happened to have spent 15 years riding the bus in San Francisco, and let me tell you…I’ve seen some shit. So to me, there were PLENTY of victim opportunities to exploit for some juicy Bus Riding Tips.
When I did what I did for Safe Baby Handling Tips, I roughed out scenarios, then shot some scrap to work from for final. It was 2005, so I drew all the images on paper, scanned them in, cleaned them up in Photoshop before bringing them into Illustrator for layout. But now, I’m all Procreate on a first gen iPad Pro. For the Strætó project, I drew each part of each scenario in Procreate, exported the PSD to my desktop to clean it up, imported to Illustrator, and vectorized. Each Tip became its own layered Illustrator file so it could be scaled to meet any need Strætó might have for it (social media posts, bus shelter posters, etc.).
Hi, I’m Dave! World’s worst photographer! I like to shoot my own scrap to reference for the drawings because it makes it go faster. You’d think I’d enjoy that part the most - drawing it all. But the real fun is in placing the drawings in the template. Because that’s how you find out if what you thought was funny actually is funny. And most of the time it’s not. Hahaha. I have to redraw stuff more than you’d think so that everything works together like it’s supposed to.
We had such a fun time working together so I was made an honorary Strætó bus rider with my own pass and everything! I can’t wait to go visit and use the new bus riding skills I learned. I even got my own Icelandic last name. Did you know that they use your fathers name and then add “son” or “daughter” (dóttir) to the end. Yes, my dad’s name really is Clyde.
A lot of the characters in Strætó’s riding tips are my family members. My brother and his wife were visiting from California when I was working on this, so they ended up being in a LOT of the drawings. My son was home from college and made a cameo in a few, alongside Kelly, my wife. Of course, my clients were also drawn in. Hahaha. Guðmundur, whose awesome idea this was, appears as a driver while his teammate, Camila, appears as a passenger. We handled the title translations in the end because Icelandic is Greek to me (see what I did there?). I love that no matter what language they were in, these drawings could work anywhere in the world. Because idiots on buses is so universal.
DAVE SOPP – Creative
Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com
