Toby Morris needs little introduction. As an award-winning cartoonist, writer, and art director, his work has left an indelible mark on global audiences. From his popular non-fiction cartoons like 'The Side Eye' on The Spinoff to 'Pencilsword' on RNZ, Toby has tackled an array of topics including politics, culture, social-issues, fatherhood, and science.
At Daylight, Toby holds a special place in our hearts. He was instrumental in our early days, creating 'Flatten The Curve' alongside Siouxsie Wiles, a Covid-19 explainer series for our foundational client, The World Health Organization. Welcome to another edition of Decoded!
Q: How did you get into the world of illustration? When did you know you wanted to be a cartoonist?
I was always into drawing as far back as I can remember. I moved around a lot as a kid, so it was something constant and safe. I grew up loving comics, and I looked up to editorial cartoonists, but for a long time, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to make a living doing it.
Q: What did your path into this career look like?
It took a while! For a long time, I didn’t think it seemed possible to make a living from comics in New Zealand—there were a few examples out there, but not many. I just figured I’d be drawing on the side and juggling it with some kind of day job.
My day jobs started off really mundane—selling furniture or washing dishes—but gradually, they started to get more creative and interesting. I started designing magazines, and then I worked in advertising for a while. Still, all along the way, I was working on my drawing, getting experience, meeting people, and figuring out what I could do and what I wanted to say.
So it was a long and windy path, but that’s how paths are sometimes—where they lead might not be obvious, but the main thing is moving forward—trying things, gaining experiences, slowly figuring things out.
Q: Your style is so distinct. How did you develop it? What influences it? Have you ever had copycats?
Style comes with time and lots of practice. It’s like handwriting: you’ve sort of got what you’ve got, so I don’t think you need to force it — it comes out through doing the work.
The biggest influence on me was Hergé. Growing up, I was a big Tintin fan. Later, I loved alternative comics like Joost Swarte, Jamie Hernandez, and Julie Doucet. Local artists like Dylan Horrocks and Tim Bollinger made me feel like I could have a New Zealand voice.
I sometimes see things come out where I’m fairly sure my work has probably been on the mood board for whoever drew it. But I take that as a compliment.
Q: You illustrate (and write about) such a wide range of topics — from dad life to politics and culture. How do you get the knowledge that informs your work?
You just have to be curious and engaged. I’ve always been interested in politics and what’s going on around us. I don’t feel like I have to be an expert on a topic before I start looking into it – it’s often just things that I’m thinking about, or I feel like I ‘kind of’ understand and would like to understand better. From there, it’s just like any journalist’s method – doing lots of reading, figuring out the key people to talk to, and finding interesting characters to bring the story to life.
Q: You often have to interpret very complex issues and topics. For example, communicating the spread of COVID-19 to local and global audiences alongside Siouxsie Wiles. How did that collaboration come about, and how do you tackle fact-based visual storytelling?
It was a real honor and a huge learning experience to work with Siouxsie over that time, and mostly, I just feel lucky that I was able to use the skills I have to help in some way. The Spinoff’s editor at the time, Toby Manhire, paired us together early on. Working together clicked really nicely right from the start, so it very naturally flowed into doing a lot of work together.
Siouxsie is a great communicator already, she has a very natural ability to hone in on the key point you’re trying to explain, which is often one of the hardest parts of this kind of work. She’d usually have a very clear impression of what the exact information we wanted to communicate should be, so from there, we’d talk about the best way to understand and explain it.
In a way, it was probably valuable to have her as the expert and me as the total outsider because my knowledge was probably similar to the audience’s. She’d explain something, I’d try to understand it, and we’d go back and forth until I got it. Once I understood the concept, I would take whatever image or metaphor helped me understand and use that visually.
I’ve always been a visual thinker – I’ve always understood something better with a diagram or a map or a flow chart, and I think more people work that way than we realise. With visuals, you can communicate a lot in so many different ways – things that are really hard to explain, but also tone and emotion. To connect with people, you have to remember you’re not just communicating the facts but the feelings too.
Q: What are some of your favourite projects you’ve worked on and why?
Oh, there’s so many! A few years ago, I did a special edition of the School Journal explaining the history of Te Tiriti in comic form. It has been used in schools all around the country and has had a big impact. I feel really lucky I got to work on that; it was a very special one.
I’m also really proud of the Side Eye. I did more than 50 intensely researched comics for it, which feels exhausting to look back on. I don’t think I’ll ever have the energy or drive to sustain a project that big for that long again.
There are others, though, that are just fun to look back on — I drew the art on the boxes of Edmonds Baking Powder and Custard Powder. It’s cool to be able to point that out at the supermarket or in a friend’s pantry. And I’ve just finished a cool job for MOTAT — a whole long wall of portraits of great NZ inventors, scientists and, innovators that I hope will stay there for a while.
Q: What is your proudest career moment?
I’m really proud of the work that Siouxsie and I did together. It feels like we’re in a bit of a weird stage now of rewriting history or trying to forget because it was a crappy time. But I think we did something useful in a really important moment. If I had to pick one that sums up that time, it was probably seeing the (former) Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern holding up a printout of our ‘Flatten the Curve’ graphic in one of the early press conferences. That was quite surreal.
Q: Are you excited about any young up-and-coming talent here in Aotearoa or elsewhere?
Oh yeah, illustration and comics are booming at the moment in Aotearoa. I see so many smart, cool, original, exciting young people coming through. It’s amazing. There’s a lot about social media that has made our lives worse, for sure, but one of the pros is that if you’ve got something real and honest and new and cool to share, then it’s a tool that can help you get your work in front of interested people quickly and effectively.
Again, the way we consume information now has gotten pretty screwed up, and it’s quite concerning, but in this trashy wasteland, illustration and comics are well-suited to shine through all the crap. They can be quick and interesting and original and human.
Q: With AI in mind, what’s your perspective on the future of cartooning and illustrating?
This is a huge question. I’m pretty wary but curious about AI. I’ve kind of got one eye on a few people doing interesting stuff with it and the other eye assuming the worst — that industry will always look for cheaper, quicker shortcuts even if the work is average, which means people being paid fairly for doing the work is only going to get harder.
But while I’m feeling a bit cynical, I don’t actually feel all that threatened yet – so far, it’s mostly just a firehose spurting out endless streams of averageness – and I feel hopeful that in that flood, good original human work might actually increase in value.
I’ve always liked work that is really human and idiosyncratic. I enjoy work that is totally unique, that only one person could make, more than I enjoy work that’s about technical brilliance. I always found ‘wow, look how realistic this painting is’ far less interesting than someone who has something to say that I haven’t heard before.
A common mistake that people who don’t make creative work seem to make is conflating ‘conceiving’ the work with ‘executing’ the work. They’re two very different things – the first is having something to say, and the second is saying it in an effective or interesting way. People sometimes get a bit dazzled by the second bit at the moment – like, ‘Wow, this guitar solo is so fast’ or ‘Wow, this guy is so good at realistic shading,’ but the work that truly endures, the work we really take to heart is stuff that does the first bit well.
AI can do the second bit, but without anything to say, it’s all just decoration. So, I think human perspectives and ideas will always be valuable.
