Giographix Studios | The Art Behind The Viral Success Of Team COCO

The Art Behind The Viral Success Of Team COCO

01.22.10

by: Giovanni

Alex Pardee, Facebook, I'm With Coco, Mike Mitchell, Shepard Fairey, Team Conan, Viral

With Conan O’ Brien’s last show as the host of The Tonight Show looming, we thought we’d take a closer look at the art behind the latest illustrated portrait to take the internet and viral world by storm since Shepard Fairey’s “Obama” series.

L.A.-based freelance artist Mike Mitchell (@sirmitchell) now finds himself with newfound fame with the “I’m With Coco” image he created. In an interview with People.com, Mitchell describes the poster as “a cross between a presidential campaign poster and WWII propaganda art”– with Conan’s trademark bright orange-red hair of course. Though reluctant to sell the image at first, Mitchell eventually caved in after enormous demand from supporters of Team Coco– many of whom have joined Mitchell’s “Im With Coco” Facebook Fan Page which has continued to rise in numbers (nearly 600,00 members at this time) in a matter of a couple of weeks. Those supporters have also taken to replacing their Facebook and Twitter avatars with the image in a show of solidarity and support for the man who brought Triumph, Pimpbot 5000, and The Masturbating Bear to late-night airwaves.

Mitchell is donating a portion of the profits from the “Im With Coco” to benefit Haiti relief efforts. You can purchase “Im With Coco” merchandise at the official website at imwithcoco.com

Another notable illustrator who has taken to the canvas to throw his support for Team Coco is artist Alex Pardee (@alexpardee). Though Pardee admits in his blog that he hasn’t been able to catch Conan as much as he had wanted to recently, he still cites “Conando” as an inspiration, stating, “His Late Night show, I’m sure in more ways than one, influenced my love for nonsensical humor in the 90′s. There wasn’t much on network television that was so blatantly DUMB, while being simultaneously INTELLIGENT somehow. So yes, I am officially on TEAM CONAN”.