Euro-kartoenale Kruishoutem · Belgium · Editorial Cartoons · Visual Satire
Five Cartoons for the Euro-kartoenale — “The Hat / Hats Off”
For the 25th Euro-kartoenale Kruishoutem in Belgium, I developed five original cartoons around the 2025 theme “The Hat — Hats Off.” One theme, five completely different visual ideas.
What can you do with one hat?
The interesting part of a thematic cartoon brief is not simply finding an image that contains the object in question. It is finding several different ideas hiding behind it.
A hat can represent status, authority, identity, conformity, rebellion, history, fashion or absurdity. Once the theme starts opening in those directions, the drawing can go almost anywhere.
For my five entries, I deliberately avoided repeating the same joke or visual mechanism. Each cartoon approaches the theme from a different angle.
Crown Wars
Two monarchs compete through increasingly extravagant crowns.
The hat becomes a wonderfully impractical measure of status: if one crown signals authority, then surely an even larger one must signal even more authority.
The joke is really about rivalry, hierarchy and ego — the human tendency to turn symbols of importance into competitions of their own.
Buried Alien Statues
This one begins with the mythology of ancient civilisations and speculative archaeology.
Partially excavated alien figures emerge from the sand wearing monumental pyramid-shaped headgear — suggesting, with complete archaeological irresponsibility, that perhaps the pyramids were hats all along.
It is less a political cartoon than a piece of visual absurdity built around the way one shape can suddenly acquire an entirely different meaning.
Evolution of Hats
Here the concept becomes sequential.
A visual timeline follows headwear through an increasingly elaborate progression, turning fashion history into a miniature evolutionary chart.
The structure lets the viewer understand the joke cumulatively: each stage is plausible enough on its own, but the sequence gradually pushes the premise beyond reason.
The Rebel Jester
A line of identical figures moves in one direction. One colourful jester chooses another.
Here the hat functions primarily as an identity marker. The jester’s cap immediately separates one character from the surrounding uniformity before anything else needs to be explained.
The cartoon is about individuality, nonconformity and the willingness to leave the line — with the traditional fool becoming the only person behaving independently.
Animals in Hats
Not every cartoon needs an argument with civilisation.
This piece is simply about the remarkable ability of a hat to create a character almost instantly. Change the headwear and the same animal can suddenly become an aristocrat, a chef, an adventurer or something considerably harder to classify.
It is character design reduced to one accessory — and a reminder that visual humour can also exist purely because something is enjoyable to look at.
Five images, five different cartoon mechanisms
What interests me most about the group is that the five drawings do not simply repeat a single interpretation of the theme.
- Crown Wars uses escalation and status.
- Buried Alien Statues uses visual reinterpretation.
- Evolution of Hats uses sequence and progression.
- The Rebel Jester uses contrast and symbolism.
- Animals in Hats uses character and visual play.
That variety is part of editorial cartooning. The drawing style matters, but the more fundamental question is always: what is the visual idea?
Working from an imposed theme
Theme-based cartoon projects are a useful exercise because the subject is fixed but the interpretation is completely open.
The process is similar to working from an editorial or publishing brief: first exhaust the obvious solutions, then look for the less predictable relationships surrounding the subject.
That may lead toward satire, metaphor, character, narrative or simply a visual transformation that makes the familiar object look strange again.
Euro-kartoenale Kruishoutem
The Euro-kartoenale Kruishoutem is organised by the European Cartoon Center in Belgium. The biennial event invites cartoonists from around the world to respond to a common theme through visual humour and satire.
For the 25th edition, the theme was “The Hat — Hats Off.” These are the five drawings I submitted for consideration.
Editorial cartoons & visual satire
This series belongs to the same broader area of my work as editorial cartoons, magazine illustration and visual commentary.
I have worked internationally in editorial illustration and cartooning across magazines, newspapers, books and publishing projects, including work appearing in publications such as MAD Magazine, The New Yorker and other editorial titles in Europe and the United States.
Whether the starting point is an imposed theme, a current event or a commissioned article, the underlying process is similar: identify the idea first, then find the drawing that makes it work.
Current editorial cartoons
For more current political and cultural cartoons, my Cartoon Movement profile collects recent editorial work and visual commentary.
More cartoon & editorial work
Editorial & Educational Illustration →
Comics & Sequential Illustration →
Need a cartoon built around an idea?
For publishers, magazines, agencies and organisations, I create original editorial cartoons, visual satire, caricatures and character-led illustrations around specific subjects and themes.
