Ho ho ho. Nick Schon’s underdressed Santa is at least wearing something down below. In this year of remote top halves, there have been plenty of incidences of the sartorially risqué exposed by technological incompetence, and worse.
It’s a pleasure to bring you our latest Christmas card, but sad that for the first time FirstWord is delivering it only digitally. We take great pleasure in physically posting far and wide our specially-commissioned cartoons each year. But with no one in the office, and with no will to ask intrusively of a few hundred people what their home addresses are, and the risk that some people are treating anything arriving through the door as attempted murder-by-plague, digital delivery it is.
Click to enlarge images above: ‘I’ve got no ideas for Twitter’ (2014) | Say cheese! (2015)
The subject matter is at least fitting for such a non-analogue card at the end of 2020. And so it joins a nicely growing line of cards that have captured brief moments in our recent history, some briefer than others. Kathryn Lamb’s wonderful kings would still be showing off their GIFs but Banx’s Flake pun may well be indecipherable before long; and as for Schon’s brilliant Uber driver, I’m surprised his employer has still got a licence to operate in Bethlehem.
Click to enlarge: Uber (2016) | Flake news (2017)
I think what I love most about these cards is that we couldn’t have said at the start of each year what was likely to capture our imaginations by the end. And so to 2021 – please write to info@firstword.co.uk if you’ve got a prediction, and we’ll send a bottle your way if you’re close.
Click to enlarge: ‘We come bearing Gifs’ (2018) | e-sleigh (2019)
A merry Christmas to everyone, and wishing you all a happy, healthy and relatively sane new year.
Adrian Michaels
