Independent creative agency Zambezi has brought Gavin Lester on board as its first chief creative officer. He also has been named an equity partner in the agency. His career has spanned 20 years and two continents, having worked in London, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, for agencies such as 180LA, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, BBH London and NYC. Over the years he has had a hand in high-profile campaigns for Sprint, Levi’s, Lexus, Sony, Netflix and Google, among others. He has won assorted awards including Cannes Gold Lions, Andys, Addys, D&AD and Clios.
Lester comes to Zambezi following a long spell of freelance work at 72andSunny and previously was EVP, executive creative director at Deutsch L.A. where he led creative for Sprint.
Lester’s hire is a reflection of Zambezi’s rapid expansion following a streak of new business wins over the past two years, including Cox Communications, Hubert’s, Stance and Las Vegas Sands Corp. Recently, Lester worked with the Zambezi team in a freelance capacity on the agency’s “Come As You Are” campaign for Las Vegas Sands Corp’s Venetian Resort. He will take charge of a growing creative department that counts two other recent hires, creative director Dan Maxwell and associate creative director Annie Johnston, as well as key internal promotions–Ben George and Nick Rodgers to creative directors and Chris Rutkowski to associate creative director.
Jules Feiffer, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Cartoonist and Writer, Dies At 95
Jules Feiffer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and writer whose prolific output ranged from a long-running comic strip to plays, screenplays and children's books, died Friday. He was 95 and, true to his seemingly tireless form, published his last book just four months ago.
Feiffer's wife, writer JZ Holden, said Tuesday that he died of congestive heart failure at their home in Richfield Springs, New York, and was surrounded by friends, the couple's two cats and his recent artwork.
Holden said her husband had been ill for a couple of years, "but he was sharp and strong up until the very end. And funny."
Artistically limber, Feiffer hopscotched among numerous forms of expression, chronicling the curiosity of childhood, urban angst and other societal currents. To each he brought a sharp wit and acute observations of the personal and political relations that defined his readers' lives.
As Feiffer explained to the Chicago Tribune in 2002, his work dealt with "communication and the breakdown thereof, between men and women, parents and children, a government and its citizens, and the individual not dealing so well with authority."
Feiffer won the United States' most prominent awards in journalism and filmmaking, taking home a 1986 Pulitzer Prize for his cartoons and "Munro," an animated short film he wrote, won a 1961 Academy Award. The Library of Congress held a retrospective of his work in 1996.
"My goal is to make people think, to make them feel and, along the way, to make them smile if not laugh," Feiffer told the South Florida Sun Sentinel in 1998. "Humor seems to me one of the best ways of espousing ideas. It gets people to listen with their guard down."
Feiffer was born on Jan. 26, 1929, in the Bronx. From... Read More