Business Cartoons


A good friend of mine is a freelance cartoonist and illustrator. He's done all sorts of projects including children's books, political cartoons, illustrations for novels, advertising, and graphic design. The other day, I asked him what his favorite thing to do was and he really surprised me. He told me that business cartoons took the cake for him.

When I asked him why, I found out a lot about his past that I didn't know before. Apparently, he actually got his start working in a large graphic design firm. He did not start off as a freelancer like a lot of people did, but rather as sort of a bean counter. As a matter of fact, the only cartooning he was doing was in his free time back then. He would do business cartoons to dramatize and mock certain office situations. He would satirize office politics, cutbacks, memos, and all the rest of it.

One day, he lost a business cartoon he wrote in the office. He was terrified that his boss would find it. He thought he was going to get fired because it was extremely critical of management. He was surprised when the boss came over and patted him on the back. Apparently, even some really strict and tyrannical bosses find humorous cartoons about politics to be really funny. This particular business cartoon actually satirized that boss, but nonetheless it made my good buddy a new friend.

He actually got his start as a freelancer with business cartoons. He started to show some of his cartoons off around the office and got a pretty consistently positive evaluation. He figured he should try self-publishing them, so he did just that. When he sold them to a few local magazines, he actually started to make some real money. He was not making a lot, but it was enough to give him a little spending money. More importantly, he got other people to pay attention to his freelance skills.

When he put together a portfolio and started doing his first few freelancing assignment, it was actually an outgrowth of the work he did with those business cartoons. That was most of the work in his portfolio – simple, satirical drawings about office politics. People loved it so much that he got several gigs right off the bat. You see, everyone has to work in a large office at some point in their life. His cartoon were something that all of them could relate to.