Tony Futura is a graphic designer based in Berlin, Germany. He is an art director of the creative agency DOJOFUCKINGYEAH and while not working on the visual content for various advertising projects, Futura creates intriguing, meme-like artworks with pop culture as the subject.
Futura’s designs are colourful critiques of various social topics. Taking aim at modern consumerism, social media behaviour and the superficial fixation with personal image, Futura turns well-known icons into visual jokes. Part of his craft is the marriage between notable examples of fine art with an entirely 21st-century twist, for example, the Farnese Atlas sculpture (in which the Greek god Atlas famously carries a heavy celestial sphere on his shoulders) is embellished with the logo of popular search engine, Google Chrome.
The artist takes a cultural signifier of the Information Age and gives it new meaning – or in some cases, his artworks poke fun at the attitudes and relationships we form with the gadgets we run our lives with. Futura’s pop culture illustrations are close to the nature of internet memes, in that they convey a simple idea in an often ridiculous and colourful way – but give it another moment’s thought and absorbing questions come to the fore.
How much control do we hand over to smart devices? How much is that number of followers worth? How do we measure ourselves against the images of the advertising world? If that brand was a person, what would she look like?