mfd | michael forbis design

Tavis Coburn

Tavis Coburn is an illus­tra­tor who’s work is inspired by vin­tage prints, comic books and Russ­ian avant-garde. His port­fo­lio has sev­eral strik­ing por­trait illus­tra­tions as well as nar­ra­tive and con­cep­tual pieces. His por­trai­ture is what really stands out to me. He uses a min­i­mal color palette and half-tone pat­ters to cre­ate a sim­ple, clear piece, as you see in the por­trait of Rupert Mur­doch to the left.

Upon view­ing this piece in his port­fo­lio, I had a strong feel­ing that I had seen it before. Then I real­ized where. Grain Edit had this post a while back about an Ital­ian mag­a­zine called Intel­li­gence in Lifestyle. Coburn’s illus­tra­tion looks amaz­ing as a cover and works well with the vin­tage mod­ern style of the mixed serif and sans serif typog­ra­phy. This is hands down one of the best uses of illus­tra­tion for a mag­a­zine as well as one of the best mag­a­zine designs I have ever seen.