National Cartoonists Society New Media Award Nomination — Reuben Awards 2002

In 2002, I was nominated by the National Cartoonists Society for a Reuben Award in the New Media category. It was a particular moment in cartooning history: newspaper strips, editorial cartoons and magazine illustration were still central to the profession, but cartoonists were also beginning to move into websites, interactive storytelling, online animation and emerging digital platforms.

For me, the nomination was both an honor and a professional marker. It recognized work that sat between cartooning, editorial illustration, interactive media, character design and what would later become a natural part of my work in hand-drawn explainer videos and animated visual storytelling.

Looking back, it also helps explain a consistent thread in my career: using drawing, humor, character and clear visual thinking to make new communication formats feel human.

Cartooning at the start of the digital shift

The early 2000s were a strange and interesting period for cartoonists. The web was still young, digital publishing was experimental, and many of the platforms that now define online visual culture did not yet exist. Social media, streaming video and app-based content were still ahead. But illustrators, cartoonists and animators were already testing what drawing could do online.

The New Media category acknowledged that cartooning was no longer limited to the printed page. It could become interactive, animated, serialized, clickable, game-like, editorial, narrative and immediate. That territory became important to me very early, and it still informs how I approach business illustration, cartoons and comics, editorial illustration and animated explainer videos today.

Sham Multimedia and the early online entertainment frontier

A major part of that work came through my role as Creative Director at Sham Records Multimedia in Santa Monica. Between 1999 and 2001, we were developing an ambitious online entertainment world built around fictional bands, album covers, characters, animations, interactive spaces and visual storytelling.

This was before the visual language of online identity had become standardized. We were exploring fictional worlds, user pages, music culture, animation, satire, interface graphics and character-led content inside a single digital environment. The project was eventually shelved before release, but it remains one of the most ambitious early digital media projects I worked on.

It was also an important bridge between my background in cartooning and the production logic I later applied to client work: build a coherent world, create characters that can carry tone, use illustration to make abstract systems readable, and keep the visual language consistent across many touchpoints.

The first Google Doodles

During that same period, I also began an unexpected collaboration with Google. In April 2000, I illustrated the company’s first Google Doodle for the April Fool’s Day project MentalPlex. I later became the first Google Doodle artist and created the early homepage Doodles that followed, including the serialized Alien Abduction sequence and the Olympic kangaroo character for the Sydney Summer Games.

Those drawings were small, fast and playful, but they helped define something new: editorial cartooning adapted to the front page of a search engine. They had to be readable at a glance, funny without explanation, and connected to a global audience. It was a formative experience in digital cartooning, and it showed how much personality a single drawn image could bring to a technology brand.

In distinguished company

One reason this nomination remains meaningful to me is the company it placed me in. In the New Media category, I was listed alongside cartoonists including Mark Fiore and Bill Hinds. The wider awards program that year also included extraordinary creators across animation, comics, editorial cartooning and illustration.

The names around that weekend included Hayao Miyazaki, Chris Sanders, Matt Groening, Mike Mignola, Drew Friedman and Stephen Hillenburg. For someone who had grown up admiring cartoonists, animators and comic artists, it was a rare and memorable professional moment.

Jerry King was also there, and his connection to this story is personal. Jerry was the cartoonist who first recommended me to Google — a generous gesture that changed the direction of my career and led directly to my early Google Doodle work.

There were also quieter moments outside the formal awards program. Sitting at the hotel bar with Jack Davis, one of my childhood artist heroes from Mad Magazine, remains one of the unforgettable highlights of that weekend. He was exactly as gracious, funny and generous as one would hope.

A family memory from Santa Rosa

One of my daughter Joanna’s favorite memories from that awards weekend was visiting the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa. She was four at the time and was thrilled by the recreated studio where Schulz drew Peanuts, the Snoopy’s Home Ice rink, and the chance to meet animators and directors connected to some of the films she loved (notably from Pixar).

Those details are unforgettable moments to me because cartooning is not only a profession. It is also a culture: studios, drawing boards, jokes, families, shared influences, old heroes, professional friendships and a long chain of people helping one another forward.

Why this still is relevant to my work today

More than two decades later, the tools and platforms have changed completely. But the underlying problem is familiar: how do you use drawing to make a message more immediate, more memorable and more human?

That question still sits at the center of my work. Whether I am creating an explainer video, an editorial illustration, a mascot or character design, a business illustration campaign or a cartoon or comic project, the principle remains the same. The drawing has to carry meaning, tone and personality.

The NCS nomination recognized an early digital chapter in that work. It connected traditional cartooning to a new media environment, and that bridge has become a defining part of my practice: experienced, hand-drawn, concept-driven illustration adapted to contemporary communication.

Related work

This post connects closely with my work as a professional cartoonist and comic artist, my early history as the first Google Doodle artist, my editorial and educational illustration, and my current work in hand-drawn explainer videos and whiteboard animation.

For a broader overview of selected projects, see my case studies or download a concise illustration portfolio PDF.

Ian David Marsden is an illustrator, creative director, cartoonist and visual storyteller based near Montpellier, France, working internationally in English, French and German.