Doug Johnson was born and raised in Toronto where he had done some fashion illustration as well as editorial work, before pulling stakes and moving to New York in 1968. He explained to us that he was coming from the drawing-based expressive illustration look of Bernie Fuchs and Jimmy Hill.
Doug quickly found work, but eventually tired of his style and wanted to experiment with a new look for which he later became famous. In 1970 he took the summer off and developed his painterly approach with two assignments: A Society of illustrators Call For Entries poster and a series of pictures about football for Sports Illustrated.
Doug, and Charles White III, with whom he a shared a studio (complete with astro turf, deck furniture and an umbrella) in the early 1970s, were instrumental (following after Push Pin) in shifting illustration from being about literal or expressive representation into something more free form and improvisational
But if Pushpin was design-centric and, to a degree, polite, Doug's work, like Charlie's, was image-based, intent on roasting your eyes with vivid, colors and forms, pushing the medium so it could compete with other pop media of the time. He seemed to have cracked a way of taking the work of earlier graphic drawers such as Hohlwein.
Doug's trademark was to blast hard highlights on top of a more traditional and considered image, so it kind of fucked with your head
Usually illustrators that possessed a strong graphic style weren't always the best draftsmen, but Doug obviously could draw and paint. Yet he still felt compelled to stomp on the accelerator and keep layering all this STUFF onto a perfectly fine picture until he wound up with these odd hybrid images. Upon initial glance the paintings seem quite traditional, but the longer you study an image, it's as if you're in the early stages of a Hollywood dream sequence, where everything starts to wiggle and blur a little bit. This beautiful painting of a tennis player is a perfect example of his peculiar vision
It's very difficult to ascertain what order it's been painted in. I was always impressed by what appeared as a very laissez-faire attitude towards plopping a lot of casual brushwork onto a beautifully painted and considered and - basically completed illustration. This marriage of the planned with the improvised was unique to Doug.
Illustration is a fickle beast, and Doug stayed busy into the early 1980s, but as the industry changed it became a hell of a lot less fun. Art directors were less and less inclined to allow him to cook up his own solutions, and became increasingly prescriptive. But Doug had a sideline going that would prove to be his parachute out of illustration. In 1974 he was hired to create an image for a a theatrical production of Leonard Bernstein's Candide in Brooklyn.
He continued working with this production company throughout the decade, eventually becoming a partner, and then forming Dodger Theatricals, which produced Broadway and Off-Broadway shows, for which Doug designed posters, print advertising, and sets, including Ain't Misbehavin', The Big Boat and Tommy.
A funny aside: Early on Doug needed to have some typesetting done for a newspaper ad, and realized he didn't possess the know-how to mark up the type for the typesetter, so he called on his friend Herb Lubalin for advice. Herb looked at his typewritten text, mumbled a few words and spec'd the type for him. Needless to say Doug's theatrical phase has been hugely successful and has long since allowed him to ease out of the illustration work that had become to be a bore. Some of his last "straight" illustration jobs were a remarkable series of album covers for Judas Priest in the 1980s.
© 2025. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by Doug Johnson or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only
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| Cosmic Candy 1970 promotional poster |
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| Put a Lion in Your Rumble Seat, 1970 illustration |
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| Walt Frazier, 1970's Time Magazine |
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| Brooklyn Yellow Pages, 1972 illustration |
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| Ike and Tina Turner, 1973 poster |
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| Paul Warfield, Miami Dolphins Wide Receiver, 1973 |
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| 1977, movie poster |
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| Poster |
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| Bo Diddley |
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| Einstein’s 100th Anniversary |
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| Poster |
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| Poster |
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| Poster |
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| Judas Priest, Tombolare record album |
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| Judas Priest album cover |
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| Judas Priest album cover |
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| Judas Priest, Point of entry, record album |
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| Judas Priest, Fire power album cover |
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| Judsa Priest, British Steel record album |
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| Fashion Illustration |
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| Sanannah Band record album |
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| Personal work |
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| Personal work |
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| Personal work |
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| Personal work |
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| Personal work |
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