The Interview: Soccer Illustrator Dan Leydon
The Ireland-Based Artist Has Done Work for Liverpool FC, The Ringer, Nike, Coca-Cola and Other Platforms, Including Fútbol with Grant Wahl
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Grant Wahl:
Our guest now is an extremely talented illustrator and designer whose work you can see in several places, including in my Fútbol with Grant Wahl newsletter. Dan Leydon is based in Ireland and you can find him on Twitter and Instagram at @DanLeydon. Dan, it's great to see you. Thanks for coming on the show.
Dan Leydon:
Thanks very much for having me on, Grant.
Grant Wahl:
You've seen a lot of me lately, or at least we've been messaging a lot lately. It's been a lot of fun starting my newsletter recently. One of the best parts has been hearing the positive response to your work on it, including illustrations of Ricardo Pepi, Tyler Adams, Jesse Marsch and Gregg Berhalter. Could you explain a little bit to our listeners about how you do that work, including that work in particular?
Dan Leydon:
Those pieces have a quite tight turnaround time. I live in Ireland, so you're generally on the East Coast time of the States, so I'd be like five hours ahead of you, I think. That's how it works. Those days I'll hop out of bed at half 5-6, and you'll send me an email on maybe the main talking point of the game. We've got about six hours, I think, until the work has to be finished, but generally I'll try and have it to you within three, three and a half, and then you can have changes.
Then I start thinking. Now the match ones where it's a match reaction piece, they generally have less time so they won't be as conceptual as the larger pieces. But I will start by finding a reference photo. I'll chat to you through email on what you want for the piece. The main thing with these is the tone, because let's say the match didn't go well, the match went amazing, things didn't pan out. I've got to address the main tone of the game.
That's the main thing with these illustrations. It can look good, but you have to match colors, mood and the way the subject is moving, how close you crop, the facial expression, all these things. I'm swirling that around in my head for the first half an hour. That's the scariest bit, too, because you're trying to come up with what you're going to do. I'll find a good reference photo, send it to you. You usually give me the yea or nay and then I can start getting the line work together.
I'll send that over maybe a half an hour later. If you say yes, then I can go to color. The main thing there is, if you think of the line work as the scaffolding for the piece, what I do after that, I could make nine versions of that image using the same line work, and the color and the lighting changes the mood on every piece.
Once the face is pretty accurate, that's the hardest bit. That's the stress out of the way. Then it is just, what would you call it, it's basically cosmetic. It's that side of things. I just have to match the colors to the tone of the piece then. Hopefully that takes three and a half hours. I send to you. You might have feedback. I'll go in and tweak. Then I send you over the final image, and you publish, I think 9 am [Eastern], which might be 2 in the afternoon for me.
Grant Wahl:
It's incredible. I've had so much fun just experiencing this and seeing it come together because you're able to produce really good stuff on a really tight deadline. I do appreciate the time difference as well, because the other night in Honduras, it's after midnight where I am local and we're communicating, you're sort of just getting up and going.
There was a very different tone as you talk about between the second U.S. qualifier, which was a very disappointing tie at home against Canada and a win away in the third qualifier at Honduras with Ricardo Pepi scoring on his debut as an 18-year-old. It is really interesting to me. I remember we were talking after the second game and the three words that come to mind now for me are “worried Greg Berhalter.”
Dan Leydon:
That was a pretty tough one because I think we were talking about ... There might've been, you were aiming at doing a slightly different subject before the game, but the game didn't go the way we wanted. I have to scrounge around for these perfect reference images with that expression. Thankfully the players that we'll be covering, there are a lot of photos on them. What's nice nowadays is a lot of players have a lot of social media presence so they're putting selfies up. I am going through their Instagram profiles and taking them and seeing what'll work. But the one for the second game, I kind of had to capture that staring into the kind of void effort, just this staring past what's their thinking three matches down the line.
That's hard. That is hard. I just try to turn my mind off to what if this goes wrong for Grant, because if I'm coming to you at half 11, going, "Oh, it just doesn't look like him."
I've been renovating a house for the last year so I've been living at home. My mom will generally be up out of bed at half 9 and I'm holding my iPad with a photo of Tyler Adams. I think that's his name. And then my drawing going, "I hope this looks like him." She says that the pressure she feels on her shoulders when I turn around with the iPad for her to go, "Yeah, you've got it." That's scary. Thankfully we're three for three.
Grant Wahl:
We are three for three. Tyler Adams looked like Tyler Adams, just really, really good stuff. The same for Gregg Berhalter and Ricardo Pepi. Now for Pepi, it was really interesting, totally different tone. The U.S. has just won this game, and crisis averted. How you used color, I thought was really interesting in that. It ended up being connected to how the new U.S. Nike jerseys looked, the coloring on there. How did that come together?
Dan Leydon:
I suppose, I think I'm correct in saying that the week before he had only chosen to sign for the States. It was up between him playing for Mexico. For him to choose the week before, play the game, scored a winner, the campaign's back on track, it is like a type of explosion, maybe. I saw the jersey and I thought the best way I can describe it, as you know when you see, this is a weird analogy, but you know when you see a moose head and it's stuck on a wall and you only see the neck, I was thinking, "Hmm, I'll put him on a wall of that pattern for the States."
But then the technical side of it was I drew the purple or blue pattern and I flipped it and I changed the way that that appeared on the layer under it so that I think amplified the colors. That gives it, it's kind of hard to explain, but when you do these things, it can step the image back so you are aware that there's a foreground and midground and the actual background. That type of stuff can give them a bit of depth.
I think the colors are not, the trick to doing these things is the one with Berhalter was somber. I feel I drew that into his eyes because he has a nervous, not maybe not nervous, but he's very focused. I tried to draw the image into that. But with this one, I tried to explode it from that.
The way I actually did that was high saturated colors. They kind of bring everything to the foreground so it's more in your face. Whereas with the Berhalter one, you nearly have to go looking for it because it's a bit kind of step back. Maybe I'm the only one that picks that stuff up, but that's kind of floating around in my head when I'm doing this.
Grant Wahl:
No, that's fascinating to me. I'm wondering how much does it help to follow soccer closely and have a knowledge of the sport to do your illustrations?
Dan Leydon:
That was something that I was aware of. I've been working for 10 years. I came out of college in 2009. I studied product design. I did freelance work. I had a side job for three years, two, no, for two years. The night I gave up was I think the last time a massive storm hit New York. That was 2012, I think maybe. I remember what it was, Hurricane Sandy. Was that the name of it?
Grant Wahl:
Yes.
Dan Leydon:
That was the night that I stopped my side job and I thought, "Oh God. I hope work comes in." Then the next morning I had an email from Nike to do a global social media campaign. What drew them to me was that I had a knowledge of the game, but also liked creating artwork.
You have to think that was 10 years ago so football art now is massive, but there maybe at the time there was about 10 people doing it. That was something I was aware of very early on, that I had a knowledge of the game, but I could also create artwork. That led to some consultancy work, freelance basis with Nike ahead of one of their yearly campaigns to see what they were going to do with everything.
I did a bit of work for them. I made a few reports. I have to say, I saw some of the things I put in filtering down through to things I saw on TV and kind of clothes and stuff. That was basically the value of having that knowledge of following the game, having played the game, knowing the game. I think it does translate to the final work.
“The aim at the moment and I'm 19,000 words into it, is to create a book that I write, and then I put the book down and then I look at it and then I make artwork for the book. I'm concentrating on the 2005 Champions League final because that happened on the cusp of me leaving school, going to college and it's still such a crazy match.” — Dan Leydon
Grant Wahl:
What's your personal story? How did you get into being an illustrator in the soccer space? What is this New York connection? Can you explain that and how you ended up n Ireland?
Dan Leydon:
I was born in Ireland in 1987. My mom was born in New York in '63. My dad was born in Ireland in '63. They had me in '87 and they went back to New York for two years to work. I think that's obviously what a lot of people do. They go over there to work and they're able to buy a house when they come home. We came back in '89. My mom's American, but I've got relations all over the place. I go over now and again.
I think I was eligible for the passport a while ago, but I think it went or something. I don't know. There is a big enough connection there.
I was born in '87, stayed in Ireland from 1990, went to college 2005. My life is punctuated by football. The last day of secondary school, which would be high school, the last day was the day that Liverpool won the Champions League in 2005. Now they never won anything of note while I was in school for the whole thing, and on the last day in the evening they won the Champions League. I just went to school the next day to just make fun of people that supported the other teams, because I never had that.
“When I came on Twitter first, I used to basically pester Graham [Hunter] all day, sending him my work. Graham, please retweet this … I used to do that to all the journalists and he took note and he let me illustrate his first book, which was the book on Barcelona. That was my first job.” — Dan Leydon
That was the summer after I did product design for four years. I never pursued a job in it, but I think that gave me a very solid grounding in how to organize projects, how to work with concepts, that side of things. Because I don't know, I suppose if you're an illustrator, you might be really creative or something, but I don't think I am really creative. I think I'm just organized. You learn to organize your head and coming up in a fancy idea is just a process of elimination, kind of researching something and trying to put things together over and over, and then you'll have an idea. Two interesting things might end up working.
That's where the college thing came in. I played football my whole life. From about '93 until 2003 when I tore my ACL and I tried to come back and I just kept doing it. I've ended up having four knee operations and I just, I knocked it on the head in 2012. Since I've been a football illustrator, I haven't been able to play football.
Grant Wahl:
Wow. Wow. Would you say that there was a single big career break for you or anything like that?
Dan Leydon:
Yeah, definitely. Graham Hunter, he's a pretty well known journalist, works in, I think he's based in Barcelona still. Graham's massive. When I came on Twitter first, I used to basically pester Graham all day, sending him my work. Graham, please retweet this. Graham, please retweet this, all day. I used to do that to all the journalists and he took note and he let me illustrate his first book, which was the book on Barcelona.
That was my first job. I did it at the end of 2011. That book went on to win Sports Book of the Year award. I think it was very big and it coincided with the biggest time in Barça’s history. That was my first job.
I don't know, I think that gave me a seal of approval for many football fans. They'd seen me in that and they'd know he did those. That was a really good job. I got to do, I think, 12 illustrations for the book. And each one was that I had to read the chapter and then just sum it up, which is, that's fun. It's just like, "Oh yeah, I get to do anything."
That was the first big job. Then I got the Nike one maybe a month later. It was pretty good. The Nike one led to me making a bit of money and I was able to buy an apartment. From there I've just been living this lucky existence of drawing football.
Grant Wahl:
Graham Hunter's the best. I have hit him up when I've visited Barcelona over the years for stories. He's been extremely helpful. Obviously terrific writer. He's on television as well. That's really cool. I hadn't realized that you had gotten your kind of your big break with him.
I mean, you've also, you've done work for a lot of different publications, including The Ringer, The Guardian, Sports Illustrated. You've had corporate clients that have included, as you mentioned, Nike, Facebook, Coca-Cola, Twitter, Liverpool FC. What kind of work have you done for those places? Is it generally similar or is it more varying?
Dan Leydon:
Well, I'll say, I'd class the way I operate as my main aim is to be able to produce a wide range of things and work across a few different areas. I do illustration, I do motion design as well. I've tried to branch into that. The motion design has, I bought a new computer in 2018 to learn it. I got my first job in it working for Gatorade. I had to do a project with Gatorade. I didn't even know how to use the program. I basically used the job to learn the program. I'm like, "Okay." That was brilliant though, because it's fairly basic stuff. It's not like I'm doing full color animation, big scenes. It's little animations for WhatsApp and things like that.
The job with Facebook was a 24-illustration sticker pack for WhatsApp to coincide with the beginning of the fantasy football season. That was released I think maybe a month ago. I suppose that job was the coolest for saying to people that I’d done it and I could go, "Oh yeah, it's just in your phone. It's on WhatsApp." They could look and it has my name. It was the first sticker pack and it's like, "Whoa."
I try and work hard, but I try and really appreciate that I'm lucky in having a job where I can do stuff that I like like that, because it's a rare thing on that. I try and appreciate it, not take it for granted and just keep working hard. I'm never going to say, "Oh, well, I'm kind of doing okay now," or whatever. I don't want that. I just want to keep learning new things and moving into new areas, trying different stuff just to keep rolling.
I think the main thing I like is when I started football illustration and I was pestering all the journalists, sending them things, I liked that type of zest for the new thing. I want to keep chasing things like that. I want to start doing a new thing where I'm really bad so I get to learn and get good at it and have that thrill just over and over.
Grant Wahl:
No, that makes sense. I mean, in terms of the technology that you use, what is it?
Dan Leydon:
I'll give you just a quick rundown of what I do. I'll do the artwork, and that might be just for a social media artwork thing, which doesn't have to move. Then I'll have to make artwork that does move. I used to use Photoshop for all my stuff. I had a drawing tablet, which was fairly the same size as an iMac screen. I used to draw on that. But I got an iPad in 2018 at the end of the year. Procreate is a drawing app on that. It's 20 euros once. If you want to get Photoshop and all that package, it's 58 a month. I used that for drawing.
Now, I still use all those programs because they're the animation ones too, but I use Procreate to do all the artwork for, let's say, the ones I've made for you. The nice thing is any artwork you make in the program, it records every stroke you make and it can make a 30 second video of the artwork. It shows it from zero to 100. It's fun to watch. It is.
That's generally what I do. The iPad has changed everything. I went on holidays about two years ago, traveling around Japan and I just brought the iPad, just wandering around and just drawing on the iPad. It's amazing. It really is amazing. I can just do my thing on the road. It's crazy.
Grant Wahl:
Wow. That's really neat. What kind of work do you do outside of soccer? Because I know you don't do only soccer.
Dan Leydon:
The last year, since I've moved into making the motion work, I've been working on some apps in the States and I've had to do baseball, football, basketball, and also cricket. Then I've been doing a bit of e-sports as well, which I still know nothing about that. Obviously that area is so big. I don't even know about it and I know it's big.
I've been covering all these players in the States that I don't even know who they are and I don't think they're even that big yet. There's a guy called Jalen Suggs. I don't know. He's a basketball player. I'm just thinking maybe I'll be able to talk to someone about basketball and they'll be like, "Oh, you know Jalen Suggs?" I don't know if he's big or not. I'm slowly branching out.
Grant Wahl:
Very cool. Has your style changed over time?
Dan Leydon:
Oh yeah. I think generally if you're a football illustrator, people know you for a thing you do, maybe a series of work you do, somewhere you draw. I think the one thing that people keep saying to me is that it's like, I've got 100 styles. Now, I'm not saying they're all good.
I made a sketchbook and released it last year. I put the court in from Winston Wolf in Pulp Fiction where he's like, "Just because you are a character, doesn't mean you have character." I've changed it to be, "Just because you have a style doesn't mean that that has style." My aim is to come up with a style that is completely signature and people know it, and it also is good because people could know it and it might be, "Oh." That's the aim really.
Grant Wahl:
Very cool. Where do you want to go with this career-wise in the coming years?
Dan Leydon:
That's a good one. The first TV thing I ever did where someone was chatting to me, doing an interview for chatting about the work, I just said it as a joke at the end because I just think you might as well set your goals high. I said, "The next time they send a rocket to Mars, I want my artwork on it as an example." I'm just going to go with that. (laughs)
But in a serious way, the last few years I released three books. My number one aim from when I was a kid was that I wanted to be a writer, always. That was my main thing. I've released three books, but all of them books are basically kind of compilation books where I've just put all my artwork from that year in. I might've put a bit of new artwork in, but the aim at the moment and I'm 19,000 words into it, is to create a book that I write, and then I put the book down and then I look at it and then I make artwork for the book.
I'm concentrating on the 2005 Champions League final because that happened on the cusp of me leaving school, going to college and it's still such a crazy match.
I do think it is interesting. It's the last time that some unfancy team went and won it. That's my thing now. Maybe it's bad to say it because you know when you say your goals, you lose a bit of oomph or whatever, but I've been chipping away at it. I'm just going to keep going.
Grant Wahl:
That's exciting to hear. I can't wait to hear more about that in the future.
Dan Leydon:
Thanks Grant.
Grant Wahl:
Obviously, Liverpool, it sounds like had a big impact on you and winning the Champions League in 2005. You got to work with Liverpool eventually. What was that like for you?
Dan Leydon:
I really liked that. That's why I've got them. I always put them high on the client list because it's just a big thing for me. They had asked me to work twice and I wasn't able. They asked me the night I was going to Japan and I was like, "Oh." I had to turn it down. The other time I was going to the States. I was doing that train journey from Chicago to San Francisco. I was like, "Oh, I can't. I can't do it again." But the third time, yes. I think I've done maybe 13 or 14 bits for them, which is, oh man, it's just cool. It's cool to be just emailing them. I got an email from Liverpool. I love that. It's brilliant. It is brilliant. I love it.
Grant Wahl:
Next time we talk, we might have to talk about your train journey from Chicago to San Francisco, because I don't think even many Americans have done that one.
Dan Leydon:
I think it was the last year of having the kind of diner carriage where you have to sit down with just random people. Oh my god. The people you meet. It was really cool, though, and it's so cheap as well. I think it's $140. It's lovely. It's really good.
Grant Wahl:
Maybe someday I'll have to do it. There's a whole episode of Sex and the City where they have a train trip that goes from New York, I think, to San Francisco. It has come up in pop culture a little bit. Now all of our listeners know that I have seen every single episode of Sex and the City. It's a long story.
Dan Leydon:
It's a good show. It's a good show.
Grant Wahl:
I got the box set for my wife for Christmas once so that's why I've seen every episode three times. You weren't expecting to go in this direction, Dan. My apologies. But we're going to wrap up here. You have a website where people can purchase your work, including your work for my newsletter. Where can people go for that?
Dan Leydon:
Just go to danleydon.shop. That's the thing and everything is there. I've got books, t-shirts, posters. I'm always adding things to it.
Grant Wahl:
People should definitely check it out. There's a lot of great stuff on there, and I'm just so happy that Dan has been able to work with me on my newsletter. There's going to be more stuff moving forward. Dan Leydon can be found on Twitter and Instagram at @DanLeydon. Dan, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Dan Leydon:
Thank you so much.