The internet would be a gloomy place without animators and illustrators like Daniel Savage, a graphic artist and self-taught animation director based in Los Angeles. Across brand identities, editorial, animation and illustration, whenever Dan’s involved it means a smile is on the horizon. Often illustrating lengthy editorial pieces or adding his cartoonish charm to help scary tech companies appear more user-friendly, he has the power to bring excellently executed brightness to whatever brief is presented to him. His wonderful monochrome 2016 animation Look-See brought him a lot of attention and allowed him to push himself to a level he had not yet achieved. “Creating my short film Look-See was a project that lead me to looking deeper and putting more of myself into the work,” he explains. “This also led to my first New Yorker commission which was a pretty cool moment and definitely makes the title 'illustrator' feel official.”

Since then, a lot of Dan’s work has been inspired by or directly relates to his other passion: music. After studying drums and percussion throughout high school and into his freshman year of university, he then switched majors to focus on graphic design. Dan attributes "the primitive look" of his work to his love of the drums and the geometry of it to his background in graphic design. Because of this strong creative foundation, his work is continually and delightfully underpinned by a clear sense of visual rhythm.

MTV, Adult Swim, LACMA, The New Yorker, Al Jazeera, New York Times, Spotify, Outdoor Voices, MIT Technology Review, Vanity Fair, Dropbox, Google, Wired, Apple, Volvo, Samsung.

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