Knicks: An Interview With Graphic Artist Elliot Gerard
What drew you to the challenge of designing for the New York Knicks?
Elliot Gerard: I was living in White Plains and I saw the team members all the time. I even gave some players like Tony Douglas and coaches like Jim Todd illustrations and they really appreciated it. However, it was a few years later that I started actually working with the team. Not sure if it was connected to these interactions, but it opened my relationship with the organization for sure.
Players like Amare Stoudemire and Metta World Peace started reposting my work after that. Iman Shumpert even used my, “Do the Shumpty Shump,” illustration of him for his Twitter Avatar for over 6 months.
After I started working with ESPN, SNY’s Anthony Donahue hired me to do a logo for his, “The Knicks Blog Podcast.” He has a huge following and it caught the attention of the Knicks’ digital team. They approached me about creating a recurring “comic book” on their social media. The rest is history.
I have created over 50 illustrations/graphics for the team. Going way beyond just the digital comic book concept. I have created infographics, animations and have even created merchandise for players like Kristaps Porzingis.
Do you have experience working directly with professional athletes? If so, what type of art do they request?
EG: Yes, I have worked with both players and agents directly. I work with a lot of Jets players like Lorenzo Mauldin because of my relationship with NYJetsFans.com. I create all the merchandise for the site and our designs have been worn by a lot of the players including my personal favorite Jet of all-time: Darrelle Revis.
When J.R. Smith was on the Knicks, I started working directly with him, his brother, Chris Smith, and their organization; they have an anti-bullying social media application called Reach. They were great to work with. We created some really creative graphics together.
My favorite project was an illustration I created for their official launch of the app. It coincided with the Avengers: Age of Ultron Movie release, so we created a illustration based off the movie poster. I had J.R. and his team re-envisioned as Avengers.
J.R. Smith was “The Incredible Hope”, it was a lot of fun making all his tattoos fit on a hulk version of him.
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