Two Brooklyn lovebirds dreamed up the iconic mockingjay symbol featured on "The Hunger Games" book covers and movie posters, adding a New York "Golribute" to the megahit series.
The sight of the golden creature — craning its head to the right, holding an arrow in its beak — can be seen worldwide as ads for the film pop up on billboards, buses and building facades across the planet.
The emblem idea was formed in a Ditmas Park home. That's where Scholastic Inc.'s creative director, Elizabeth Parisi — whose bosses publish "The Hunger Games" prose — lives with her illustrator husband, Tim O'Brien, 47, a design professor at Pratt Institute.
"It was a collaboration," Parisi told the Daily News Wednesday. "I don't think about it like I was the boss."
Scholastic asked Parisi in 2008 to come up with a design for children's author Suzanne Collins' new sci-fi thriller.
Parisi asked her hubby for advice — her trusted source on commercial art ever since she met him during another book cover project two decades ago.
O'Brien's work has graced the front of Time, Rolling Stone and other hot-shot publications.
" 'Hunger Games' will probably be what people note with my career," said O'Brien, whose proudest achievement was seeing his portrait of then-presidential candidate Barack Obama on the cover of Rolling Stone during the campaign.
"You don't have control over what becomes your most popular work. The world decides. That's the lesson," O'Brien said.
Still, their 12-year-old son, Cassius, said he is impressed by his mom and dad's role.
"My parents helped start 'The Hunger Games.' And now it's a movie. It's pretty cool," the boy gushed. "Everybody in school reads them."
The series follows teen heroine Katniss, forced to brawl her way through a televised death match in a sport called the Hunger Games.
A neighborhood girl gives Katniss a mockingjay pin for protection before the competition.
The bird can mock the human voice, and they help Katniss communicate with an ally as she fights for survival.
O'Brien said his logo represents his admiration of Katniss' complexity.
"It is not just a picture of a bird," he said. "It is something vulnerable. It is a symbol of the main character, Katniss, who is tough and beautiful at the same time
.""There is always a myth that if you pursue art that you will be a starving artist," O'Brien said. "If you have solitary focus, you can achieve anything."
simonew@nydailynews.com
No comments:
Post a Comment