Coffee-cup cartoons captivate customers

Associated Press

COLUMBUS

Judged by his creations, the Bexley artist behind the wry Sharpie doodles on Starbucks cups is a canine-smitten, celebrity-riffing humorist with a soft spot for junk food and an insatiable lust for caffeine.

“Dogs don’t drink coffee — which is why they rarely get anything done,” reads one with a pensive pooch and a thought bubble: “I am so under water right now.”

“Greet everyone as if they’re carrying a box of donuts,” another urges.

A third depicts a peppy barista catching a stream of java in a cup balanced atop his rear end — a spoof on the Paper magazine cover with Kim Kardashian that set the same scene with champagne.

“This ‘coffee culture’ is a worldwide phenomenon,” said Josh Hara, a 42-year-old who starts each day with a venti-sized black Pike Place Roast from a Starbucks on East Main Street.

Hara owes a debt of gratitude to that culture, which inspired him in February to begin drawing comics on Starbucks cups, with a goal of completing 100 “panels” by year’s end.

He completed the effort December 31, posting a photo of his 100th comic on Instagram.

The self-deprecating sketch shows Hara toasting the milestone from an armchair (“Honey! Kids! I did it!”) to an otherwise-empty room (“Honey? Kids?”)

Yet the project, connected online via the hashtag #100CoffeeCups, has drawn widespread attention and renewed his hope of a career in professional cartooning.

Part of the appeal of the drawings, he suspects, lies in his atypical canvas.

“It’s this thing they have held in their hand and thrown in the garbage that has now been transformed into this funny thought,” Hara said recently at the Starbucks — where else? — next to Resource/Ammirati, the Arena District marketing company where he works as a creative director.

“It differentiates just enough to really step outside of what people are used to seeing a cartoon on.”

His profile is rising: His Instagram feed, where photos of the cups are shared, has rocketed to 63,800 followers — up from 8,000 at the start of the project.

His work has been described as “brew-tiful,” with “extra-strong shots of joy,” by the viral gatekeepers of BuzzFeed.

Stories about the artist have run in outlets ranging from Playboy magazine to The Telegraph of London.

And he has signed with a literary agent to shop a proposal for a book based on the creations.

The attention seems unusual for a soft-spoken guy who, until last year, had set aside aspirations of professional cartooning to focus on his family and day job.

“I’ve always made more practical choices with my career,” said Hara, who earned an illustration degree from the Columbus College of Art & Design and spent years as a corporate graphic artist — and, since 2012, has filled the role of a wordsmith handling social-media campaigns for big brands.

“I was really trying to get to a world where I was drawing cartoons again.”

The concept of #100CoffeeCups jelled early last year during a family trip to Florida.

The designs kept brewing at a pace of two to three a week.

Each one, he said, takes about two hours from start to finish.

Although his Instagram portfolio has picked up tens of thousands of “likes,” the digital acclaim didn’t happen overnight.

Hara had developed a Twitter fan base at a steady drip for several years, attracting 68,000 people — including A-list comedians Andy Richter and Sarah Silverman — to his acerbic musings on pop culture (“The Walking Dead is like one very long infomercial for CrossFit”) and parenthood (“My kids are really into magic right now, which should delay the sex talk by at least a few decades”).

In March 2013, Time magazine named his account (@yoyoha) as one of the 140 best Twitter feeds — a list that also featured those of Chelsea Clinton, Bill Gates and the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

He deserves the attention, said Halle Hara, who has known her husband of 11 years since childhood — a time when Josh kept his sketchbooks (and an insect character, Mr. Bug) close at hand.

“It’s something he’s worked at his entire life,” said the 41-year-old judicial law clerk and the mother of their two sons, 7 and 9.

“For him to have this audience, that’s the main thing that brings me joy.”

Humor served as a cornerstone of his upbringing, said brother Jesse Hara, a 39-year-old Los Angeles producer whose comedy pilot Wrecked was bought in the fall by TBS.

“If you could make someone laugh in our house,” the younger Hara said, “that was one of the highest achievements.”

Mark Hillman — a Resource/Ammirati executive creative director who, based on impressions of Hara’s personal Twitter feed, hired him two years ago — isn’t surprised by the reach of his influence.

“He’s constantly got this very funny, somewhat-slanted look on life that’s also very endearing and sweet and menschy,” Hillman said. “Those tend to be the best types of advertising writers ... and the best cartoonists.”

Hara draws a parallel between work and play.

Whether he is illustrating cups or writing tweets for a brand, he said, “If ... [users] are going to invite you into their timeline, you have to give them something they don’t have.”

As such, he plans to continue beyond the 100th cup.