Ginger Ngo: July Buzzer illustrator interview
Ginger Ngo: July Buzzer illustrator interview
Our wonderful Buzzer newsletter illustrator this month is Ginger Ngo. She helped out with the Transit Pet Peeves Battle last November, and we liked working with her so much we asked her to illustrate this month’s Buzzer. As previously mentioned, this illustration was unique as far as Buzzer covers go. We think she did a great job! We asked Ginger a few questions about her work and herself. Here’s what she told us:
Tell us about yourself and your art.
I’m from the Philippines, and some people think I’m pretty awesome. I don’t particularly trust these people, but it’s nice to be considered anyhow. I’m currently working as a web developer and freelance graphic designer, here, in Vancouver. I don’t really “do” art, and I don’t really get it most of the time, but my job lends itself to working with different people and learning different things, which I think is way more interesting.
How did you come up with your illustration? Have you ever drawn something that is to be coloured by others?
The idea came when I was thinking about the concept of sharing different modes of transportation and how quickly you can get from one place to the other; just think about how people used to take weeks to get anywhere and used the word “fortnight” so casually. These days, tell someone it’ll take you two weeks to get anything done, they’ll immediately assume something is wrong. It makes the different municipalities and cities seem more like neighbourhoods, especially if you know it only takes fifteen minutes to get there. Except when you go to Ikea. That always seems to take up a whole day.
I’ve never drawn anything specifically to be coloured by others, but I hope the kids with the fancy crayons share. Nobody likes the selfish kid with a 72-pack of Crayola. Trust me, I was that kid. And I had no friends.
Do you take transit? If so, what’s your favourite mode of public transportation?
I really like transit. My favourites are the Skytrain and the Canada Line because they get me to places really quickly, and they hit all the major stops. It’s so convenient. And they feel like really slow roller coaster rides.
What can we expect from Ginger in the future?
Hopefully a newspaper headline, something along the lines of: “Crazy Woman Who Talks to Her Cat Wins Jackpot Lottery.”
Thanks for these most entertaining answers, Ginger!
Great interview!
I remain consistently impressed by the artists TransLink chooses month after month.
Are there other ways that TransLink engages artists such as these for future artwork projects?
The July Buzzer issue is a broken link (on my computer anyway) . . actually, seems like all the Buzzer links are broken. All I get is a message “Server not found.” Can you check into it and fix it? Thanks :)
The links to the Buzzer PDFs are ok with me at present; guessing it may be isolated to your computer?
http://www.translink.ca/en/Rider-Info/Print-Buzzer.aspx
Kevin, jmv: they were broken actually, but we fixed it!
Cliff: We don’t tend to engage artists for future artwork projects as we don’t have any artwork projects on the horizon right now, but we know we have this talented roster to draw upon should we need them :)