98–100. OTTO STEININGER
“In my personal work I don’t necessarily start with a given subject that I want to illustrate. The actual ideas come about serendipitously,” says illustrator Otto Steininger. “Something that I think is visually arresting comes to mind, and then the idea evolves around it.” Such was the case for the piece called “Shackled by Your Genes,” which depicts a stork carrying an infant, while shackled. He explains, “I wanted to make a point against reducing a person to his or her genetic outfit and deriving disadvantages from it. However, it can also be read as an illustration about the problems of hereditary diseases.”

“I once did an illustration about digital fingerprinting for a medical publication. The fingerprint with the barcode was rejected by the client but I thought the idea was strong enough to do something else, so I turned it into a political piece about John Ashcroft’s policy of curtailing civil liberties in the name of patriotism in ‘Famous Ashcroft Brand Glue Trap,’” Steininger explains. “Since the barcode melded with the fingerprint suggested something sticky, the glue trap came in handy as a metaphor for Ashcroft’s witchhunt. The use of texture and warm colors are intended to suggest something warm and fuzzy, trusted, harking back to old-fashioned packaging and branding. It’s an ironic take on what compassionate conservatism comes down to.”

In “Literature vs. Suspense,” the artist started off with the idea of using a book as the hair of a man. “Playing around with that a little further I arrived at using the fanned pages of a book as the hair of a man reading a ‘hair-raising novel’. Then I decided to juxtapose the two by adding a little play on words: Je pense is French for ‘I think,’ vs. Suspense.”

Steininger’s client work is much more literal than his personal projects. “Most of my commercial work revolves around business and technical issues. My clients don’t always appreciate my concepts, or they water them down. I’m rarely hired to do illustrations that comment on politics and society, so it comes out in my personal work,” he admits. Emily Potts