Brief Biography
Just to get this out of the way, here is a little background about me.
It’s the same blurb from my main website, so if you already glanced at it there and deemed it boring, don’t bother starting over again.
Here goes…
Brief Biography
Ian D. Marsden
Born: August 24, 1967 New York, NY, USA
Father: originally from Blackburn,Lancashire, England
Mother: originally from St. Gallen, Switzerland
Ian’s family moved from New York to Zurich, Switzerland when he was quite young. Formative and school years were spent in Switzerland. Ian always knew he wanted to be an artist in later life, as he was always doodling and drawing on every surface he encountered, which sometimes got him into trouble. He also wrote and self-published a string of humorous and satirical school newsletters throughout the grades, which got him into even more trouble.
Ian graduated from the Formen + Farben Art School, Zurich and decided to start an apprenticeship as a graphic artist with a local advertising agency (Leo Burnett). While studying graphic design, Ian sold and published his first cartoons at age 16 to Swiss satirical magazine Nebelspalter, for which he became the youngest-ever cartoonist. That same year he started publishing in a variety of Swiss and European magazines and newspapers. In 1986 he opened his own studio in the old town of Zurich. A self-written and drawn segment with characters of his own creation followed on the children’s TV show Playschool, on Swiss television. Ian was also consulted to illustrate advertising campaigns for the likes of VISA and drew recycling comic strips which were printed on millions of Coca Cola cans. His first book was published in 1988 entitled: “Zurich, my little town”.
Shortly thereafter Ian relocated to his town of birth, New York City, where he attended illustration-related classes at Pratt Manhattan and made first experiences with Mac computers and digital computer graphics.
Ian subsequently worked for a variety of clients and publications and has sold cartoons to MAD Magazine, The New Yorker and many others internationally. For the past 10 years Ian lived in Los Angeles, CA (Santa Monica and later Culver City) where in addition to working as an illustrator he also became very involved in web design and Macromedia flash animation. An original co-founder of Sham Records Multimedia, based in Santa Monica, he worked on a wide variety of cutting-edge Shockwave and Flash interactive websites and animations from the dawn of these technologies.
In 1999 Ian became the first artist to draw the so-called ‘Google Doodles’ for the then merely emerging Google.com. He has also created web graphics, flash animation, posters, album covers for such clients as infospace.com, birthdayalarm.com, Fox Sports Best Damn Sports Show Period, La Toya Jackson and many others. In 2001 Ian was one of the winners of the Klasky Csupo Global Tantrum animated joke competition and in 2002 Ian was nominated for the National Cartoonist Society’s New Media award.
In 2002 Ian graduated from the Academy of Entertainment Technology (AET), Santa Monica College as a computer animation major. He was the recipient of the Mary Pickford scholarship.
In addition to the above Ian has also created character designs and official mascots for major events such as for the Ski World Championship 2003 in St.Moritz and the first versions of the main mascot and characters for Expo.02 the Swiss national exposition (these were finally never used).
In 2006 Ian moved from Los Angeles to Europe. He lives with his wife and 2 daughters and their maddening assortment of pets, near the lovely city of Montpellier, in the South of France, where he works as a freelance cartoonist, illustrator and designer and is also completing a graphic novel and several character-driven illustrated children’s books.
Memberships (present and previous)
- Full Member / National Cartoonist Society
- Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators
- Maison des Artistes
