PanicRoom 10: Matt Blease

Last week saw the latest PanicRoom event take place at PostPanic HQ and with a promising set of speakers announced on the bill in the weeks before, Amsterdam's ad community gathered for a stimulating evening of entertainment and inspiration.

Introduced as a graphic designer turned illustrator, London-based and Breed represented Matt Blease took to the stage first to present a snapshot of the work he does on a daily basis, which is heavily inspired by British comedy and  funny wordplay.

Below, he talks about his love for a good pun, how Instagram has created commissions for his work and how he has found inspiration from other mediums and his surroundings.

I’m Matt Blease, an illustrator from London. I’ve worked with the likes of Penguin, the BBC, Financial Times and Random House and have a weekly spot in The Guardian Newspaper.

Having a background in graphic design and advertising I know about the importance of having a big idea. My work is pretty playful and based around silliness, puns and captions. I communicate it in the most effective way I can.

It was really difficult to get asked to show one project or example of the sort of work I do. I thought it’d be better to just show you images from my sketchbook. I always carry around a sketchbook or a scrap of paper and I’m constantly scribbling down ideas that pop into my head.

For example, here’s a visual reminder for my extreme forgetfulness:

And here are some general life thoughts:

I’m fascinated with wordplay and the misuse of the English language; quirky little day-to-day phrases that we use to communicate with each other. All of these sketches have been drawn after either seeing something or hearing a funny phrase.

I started doing these drawings and I know it’s dumb, but I can’t help it, it’s like a really bad habit. So…

Since I started posting my sketchbook drawings on Instagram I’ve started to get some nice commissions based on this sort of thing.

I like wordplay and in particular the dark art of the pun. I’m absolutely hooked on making puns. I’m really sorry; I am that guy and it drives my girlfriend completely nuts.

My obsession with puns traces back to three people; the two Ronnies, Corbett and Barker, and my dad. The below clip is probably my earliest memory of wordplay and puns.

That clip is a great example of English humour and that’s the level of humour that inspires me. It’s a classic clip from The Two Ronnies.

For many of us a pun starts and ends with our dad’s bad one-liners but actually it goes back to the hieroglyphics system 35,000 years ago and when the Egyptians used smutty puns. I actually couldn’t find any examples but I’ve read that this actually happened. Shakespeare also had over 3,000 puns recorded within his works. For example, the line from Richard III: “Now is the winter of our discontent. Made glorious summer by this sun of York.”

And despite the pun having been often associated with the lowest form of humour, John Lennon used one of the most iconic puns for his band name: The Beatles. It’s so strong that writing it the correct way looks weird now.

And then obviously you’ve got James Bond; love it or hate it there were some very punny moments, like this:

Another place where puns are everywhere is in names for small businesses. I think small businesses are the wittiest because they can afford to take themselves less seriously.

And a medium that has an interest in crafted wordplay is hip-hop. Rap music is an art form dependent on language skills and it must be true that for this genre there are more words per song than any other lyric-based music. Hip-hop provides rappers with the opportunity for witticism or wordplay. For example, this quote from Jaz-Z:

And then there are the clever album names including the following: 

Beastie boys Licensed to Ill

Snoop Dogg Doggy Style

Ludacris Incognegro

Big Daddy Kane Long Live the Kane

Ice-T Rhyme Pays

De La Soul Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump

Salt-N-Pepa A Salt With A Deadly Pepa

Bun B Trill OG

Nas Nastradamus

Tupac Shakur 2Pacalypse Now

Another place is newspaper headlines:

Advertisers try to avoid puns like the plague and believe that there isn’t really room for them anymore but I really feel differently; I think that a pun can make an ad impossible to forget.

Look out for highlights from Jamie-James Medina and Johnny Hardstaff's sessions on shots next week.