By Jeff Kollath

One of the recurring themes throughout the Poster Tube series is the artistic collaboration, and the boys at Animal Canon in Madison are no different. If you are a Project Runway fan, you know how poorly a collaboration can go – sniping, bickering, passive aggression, and in the end, throwing the weak link under the bus to save face. So, it was incredibly refreshing to sit down with John Soat, one-third of Animal Canon’s design team and learn not only about the firm’s design process, but also how a true artistic collaboration can succeed and thrive.

Soat, Matt Riley, and Mike Williams, all three Wisconsin natives, met while earning their MFAs from UW-Madison. Even creating their name was a shared experience, with Animal Canon a combination of (and improvement upon) Animal Pi and Mammal Cannon. About their name, all agreed that dropping the second “n” from “cannon” made all the difference, changing the name from mechanical to organic and open-ended. Despite having a strong desire to create art with a purpose and meaning, the printmaking classes at the UW were always full, so they invested all the equipment and taught themselves the finer points of creation. Soat noted that the beginning was a comedy of errors, wasting materials because they did not how to use everything, but they eventually figured it out and first produced a collective print last fall. Their Megafaun print for 2009′s Forward Music Festival (a Muzzle of Bees Showcase, no less) was featured here and has become one of Animal Canon’s most indelible works. A free-flowing, brightly colored print highlights design elements from all three artists. Soat noted that on this very first poster the group discovered that by combining their styles – both illustrative and typographic – they could create something better than they could individually. “It’s almost like we’re in a band. They are no limits when we work together,” Soat noted, “we provide inspiration and help each other break through.”

If Soat had to choose just one work to represent Animal Canon, it would be their poster for the Antlers. A simple, but elegant piece inspired by an old medical illustration, the Antlers poster is the perfect mix of understated artwork and proper, if not spot-on typography. Soat said the juxtaposition between the stark bones and the beautiful flowers was intentional, a perfect balance of death and warmth, sadness and sweetness. For many artists, typography is an afterthought – the image is what draws people to the poster, after all – but Animal Canon puts equal weight and time into both the imagery and typography. The craftsmanship on this poster, Megafaun, and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros are clear examples to the precise nature of the firm’s work, and a forebear of what’s to come in the future.

The last six weeks have seen Animal Canon host a very well-received show of their work at Project Lodge in Madison, but also Riley and Williams’ departure from Madison, having moved to South Korea to teach English for a year. Riley noted, “Animal Canon is not over with, we just won’t be producing nearly as fast as the last year. We are hoping to design what we can from Asia and to also get into some freelance work and different mediums to show some of our breadth.” Soat has moved the studio to an old helicopter hangar on a farm near Janesville that, interestingly enough, housed the helicopter in which Stevie Ray Vaughan lost his life in back in 1990, and hopes to establish something for when Riley and Williams return. Here’s hoping they keep it going as we still haven’t seen the best that Animal Canon has to offer.

Giveaway: Animal Canon is about to launch their brand new website and to celebrate they are going to offer up a copy of the ANTLERS poster shown above. Just leave a comment answering the following question (in honor of that dropped “n”):  “What would you like to shoot out of a cannon and why?” After you enter the contest, check out their site, buy something nice for someone nice, and check out another special contest.