Cassius….

Late in 2009, I was asked to provide some drawings for Cassius Eyewear. These drawings were to be published in the summer issue of Pilot Magazine. The brief was to create a loose narrative that would incorporate my characters and also the eyewear, but without the eyewear dominating the drawings. I made seven drawings….

I devised a loose narrative that would depict an epic battle between the various characters, but without ever giving away who is on the side of good or evil. They objects that they want to attain are the glasses, the range of eyewear that was available. The jester’s outfit was a nod to the design of Cassius eyewear’s packaging; the olive green, bright red, orange, navy and beige squares and diamonds present on the boxes that the eyewear comes in. The choice in colours, as well as the reference to the packaging, was intended to be both playful, but also a visual link to the dresses of the mannequins and the colours of the eyewear frames.

When it came time to publishing the drawings, we revised which ones should get printed, as well as what kind of narrative would go along with them. Here are photos of the drawings as they were published:

The Little Boys & The Sun Cheateers

Founder and Creative Director of Cassius Eyewear, Jason Ng, commissioned artist-illustrator Aleksandra Petrovic to create a series of narratives to commemorate the brand’s one-year anniversary. “I wanted to mark the occasion with a project by Aleksandra that was completely outside the realm of fashion and eyewear. I asked her to create something contemporary, tactile and illustrative – with a quality akin to a Grimm’s fairy tale.”

The captions underneath the drawings read:

1. Once upon a time in a place of make-believe a tribe of little boys lost searched for a new way to see

2. In the desolate land, ruled by the sleeping jester, the little boys search for their missing sun cheaters

3. Their ordeal is epic. Aided with ropes and ladders and tools, the villagers overcome the owls.

4. As the sleeping ruler wakes, the little boys and the mannequins must join forces as villagers, and work together to free the boat and continue their journey home.

And, finally, for legal purposes, here is the cover of the Summer 2009/2010 issue of Pilot Magazine.

All images Copyright 2020, Aleksandra Petrovic