Ross MacDonald is perhaps best known as an illustrator, yet all the while he has led a secret double life designing and fabricating props for over 40 movies and television series. Type Directors Club is currently presenting the exhibition Hidden in Plain Sight, giving a behind-the-scenes glimpse of how movie, TV, and theater props are created. Info

Q: Originally from [where?] what are some of your favorite things about living and working in [your current locale]?

A: I’m originally from Canada, born in southwestern Ontario. My family moved around a lot, so we lived all over. When I left home I lived mostly in Toronto, but also Winnipeg and Bear River, Nova Scotia. Then I lived in New York for ten years. In 1996 my wife and I moved to Newtown Connecticut, so I’ve lived here longer than anywhere else. I love having a large studio—it’s a 2-story barn, with a letterpress print shop on the ground floor, and the studio upstairs. The summers here are magical—I work outside in the garden a lot in my “summer office.”

Q: Do you keep a sketchbook? What is the balance between art and objects you create on paper [or other analog medium] versus in the computer?

A:  haven’t ever kept an actual sketchbook. I’m not that precious about my sketches. I sketch on 9x12 bond pads. I have a few scattered around my studio, a couple by my couch, and I keep one or two in my shoulder bag. Sketching is almost always for a job or project, so for me it’s all about what’s most practical. I usually start with small thumbnail sketches in non-repro blue pencil. I might fill up a page with those, but if none work, I’ll erase them and start over on the same sheet. When I see something I like, I’ll draw over the pencil with a fine Pigma pen, adding more detail, then blow that up to three or four inches big, and trace over it on the same bond paper—first in light blue pencil, then in pen. I usually blow that up again, make final adjustments, and trace the final art off of it. I save sketches that I like as loose sheets held with a bulldog clip and hung on the wall. When one clip gets stuffed, I start another. If a sketch is for an illustration job, I usually throw it away when the art is done. If the sketches are for some personal or long-term project, I put them in a file jacket with related papers and file it so I can easily find it when I need to. 

I sketch on paper, and for illustration work, I usually do the final art on paper—mostly with color pencils and watercolor dyes—after which I’ll scan it and adjust the levels, and sometimes make minor tweaks in Photoshop. Sometimes I’ll do line art and color it in Photoshop. Sometimes I’ll do linocuts and print them on the press. For my design work, I often do handset wood and metal type, printed letterpress and then scanned or photographed. But I also design a fair amount of stuff on the computer. I also use Photoshop for that, weirdly.

Q: What is the most important item in your studio?

A: Well, I like to think that I am—the rest is just window dressing! The second most important thing is whatever tool I happen to be using at the time—pencil, brush, computer, printing press. 

Q: How do you know when the art or object is finished—or when to stop working on it?

A: A panicked email from the art director is often a good sign that I need to be finished pronto. Other than that, just a general sense that I can’t ruin it any more than I already have... 

Q: What was your favorite book as a child?What is the best book you’ve recently read?

A: As a kid I read anything I could get my filthy hands on. One of my favorites when I was little was the My Book House, a 12-volume series. I always liked making stuff, so books about how to make and do things were a big fave. I loved Indian Crafts and Lore by W. Ben Hunt. Also Paddle-To-The-Sea and A Tree In The Trail by Holling C. Holling. His books are non-fiction wrapped in a story, with beautiful illustrations. More recently, I loved City of Thieves by David Benioff, The North Water by Ian McGuire and Golden Hill  by Francis Spufford.  I guess I’ve been on a historical fiction kick.

Q: If you had to choose one medium to work in for an entire year, eliminating all others, what medium would you choose?

A: Black Prismacolor

Q: What elements of daily life exert the most influence on your work practice?

A: I guess if you count emails as an element of daily life, then that would be it. It used to be the phone, now it’s email. In other words, if an email about a job comes in, I can go from sitting around leafing through old books to Panic stations! Scramble the jets! All hands on deck! It’s hard to think of anything else that has more influence on my daily work practice.

Q: What was the [Thunderbolt] painting or drawing or film or otherwise that most affected your approach to art?

A: I feel like I soaked (and still soak) up so many influences that it’s hard to nail down one in particular. And work-wise I’m all over the map, so I might be drawing on one major influence and then an hour later on something totally different. I loved old Superman, Tintin and Classics Illustrated comics when I was a kid, and they made me want to draw, but so did Dick and Jane and Beatrix Potter books. And when I draw humorous stuff, I feel like I’m channeling all the Tex Avery, Popeye and Bugs Bunny cartoons I obsessively watched.
 

Q: What was the strangest/most interesting assignment you've taken that has an important impact on your practice, and what changed through the process?

A: I guess that would have to be working on the John Hughes movie Baby's Day Out in 1993. Working on set in Chicago for 6 months took me from being a full-time magazine illustrator to having this second career in movies. Now movie work—illustrating, designing, printing, binding and fabricating graphic props—makes up a sizable portion of my assignments. Before that, my interest in weird old ephemera and junk, and the history of type, design and printing processes, was just a hobby. Once I started working on period props, all that of that became something I was able to use for my work. Now when I buy an old 1930s office supply catalog, or a type specimen book, I can convince myself that I actually have a good reason.      

Q: What would be your last supper?

A: A six-pack of Lord Hobo Boom Sauce, a big bag of Utz salt and vinegar chips, a liverwurst on pumpernickel sandwich, some brie, and a pear.
website: ross-macdonald.com
instagram: @brightworkpress
twitter: @brightworkillo
For many years Ross MacDonald has been a contributor to periodicals like Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Newsweek, Time, and Rolling Stone, creating illustrations and writing humor pieces. 

He also authored and illustrated 4 children’s books, as well as the adult humor books In and Out with Dick and Jane, (with co-author James Victore) and What Would Jesus Craft?. 

Yet all the while he has led a secret double life designing and fabricating props for over 40 movies and television series. He has made everything from the book Bradley Cooper’s character throws out the window in Silver Linings Playbook, to the titular Book of Secrets for the second National Treasure movie; Jennifer Lawrence’s mop patents for Joy; baby’s favorite book in Baby’s Day Out; Nucky Thompson’s passport and Arnold Rothstein’s calling card for Boardwalk Empire; the morgue toe-tags in The Knick; the Pawnee town charter for Parks and Recreation; the Red Apple Tobacco tin in Tarantino’s Hateful Eight; Versace’s book in the latest season of American Crime Story and thousands of other props.