Stefan G. Bucher

Who is Stefan G. Bucher?

Stefan G. Bucher is an American writer, graphic designer and illustrator. He is the man behind the California design studio 344 Design.

He is the creator of the popular online animation series Daily Monster, For 100 days he filmed himself drawing a new monster every night, based on random ink blots. Visitors then posted stories about each monster on the blog. The clips have been downloaded over a million times and are collected, along with selected stories, in the book 100 Days of Monsters with a foreword by Ze Frank. The series has been included in the prestigious Communication Arts Illustration and American Illustration annuals, and was the subject of the annual Fresh Dialogue event held by the New York chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts in May 2007. Variations of the Daily Monster clips appear on the relaunched TV show The Electric Company.

The last monster comes to life in the wee hours of the morning. Stefan Bucher squirts a dab of black ink onto paper. He hits it with a blast of compressed air. Twists the paper here and there. Soon, he sees it. A jawbone. He starts to draw. The splotch of ink grows wings, a ruffly tail. A beak like a toucan’s protrudes — yellow, gargantuan, perverse. Then a reptile eye. Within seconds, all the monster trademarks are in place. [...] People wrote in stories about the monsters and constructed interconnected narratives around them. The monsters are Rorschach blots for Bucher, but they also become Rorschach blots for his viewers. People see what they are predisposed to see.