This week’s guest is movie poster illustrator and designer Akiko Stehrenberger. Akiko was born in South Lake Tahoe, California in 1978. A first generation American, she is the second youngest of four children with one sister and two brothers. Akiko’s father, designer Mark Stehrenberger is Swiss German and her mother Aichu Yeh from Taiwan—which, until she was eight years old was under Japanese rule— and they met when they emigrated to Los Angeles in the 60’s. Akiko’s mother spoke both Japanese and Mandarin but fostered more of a Japanese culture. Although she was not a professional artist, she encouraged Akiko to take up drawing and apply for art school; that being the preferred option to her enlisting for the army, which came close to being a reality. And so, in 1997 Akiko began studying illustration and design at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. She also worked a variety of jobs to get through college and after she graduated in order to pursue her career and pay off student loans. New York beckoned and she moved from Southern California to learn the trade of becoming a designer and illustrator. When her mother became ill, Akiko moved back to LA. It was also coincidentally at the time when magazines were moving online that she fell into the movie poster industry, which changed the course of her life. In 2004, she officially began her career as a movie poster artist. It would be the film Funny Games, for which her poster was chosen, that put creative directors and the film industry on notice that here was an artist making her mark. Akiko is now a 23-time CLIO Award winner who was deemed the “Poster Girl” by Interview Magazine. Vanity Fair included her Funny Games and Kiss of the Damned posters in their “Best Movie Posters of All Time” list. Her "Da 5 Bloods" is on view at the Academy Motion Pictures Museum. Akiko’s portfolio includes Portrait of a Lady on Fire, TÁR, Dune, Beef and Everything, Everywhere All at Once, to name just a few. Akiko combines traditional illustration techniques and modern graphic design to create textural elements with fearless experimentation showcasing her crafty intuition and versatility by capturing the essence of a film in a single image. New Life director John Rosman said: “Akiko is simply one of the best poster artists of all time.” Her first book, Akikomatic: The Work of Akiko Stehrenberger, published in 2020 will be updated with more recent posters later this year for its second edition. Akiko lives in Los Angeles with her son Barrington.

Akiko on Instagram: @doyrivative
https://akikomatic.com/

Host: Chris Stafford
Produced by Hollowell Studios
@theaartpodcast on Instagram

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