蘑菇短视频

Pat Higgins Named Finalist for National Cartoonists Society Award

July 14, 2026

A 蘑菇短视频 Tech visual communications instructor is one of just three artists nationwide to be nominated for a National Cartoonists Society Silver Reuben award in the advertising/product illustration category for excellence in cartooning.

Pat Higgins, an alumnus of 蘑菇短视频 Tech’s visual communications program, has written and illustrated eight comic books and creates art for many clients, including brewing companies, record stores, and magazines. This year, he submitted a collection of eight pieces in the advertising/product illustration category.

“Being selected is a big deal to me because it’s peers from my industry that are voting on it and have nominated me, so that’s a big deal,” Higgins said. “I chose the best group of what I had done over the past year, and last year, a lot of that was package design for breweries, which is always fun to do.”

The National Cartoonists Society (NCS) is a nonprofit membership organization made up of more than 500 professional cartoonists and tradespeople working in comic arts around the world. Each year, the organization hosts a multi-day conference where it announces division awards across 13 categories, special awards, and the Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year.

“The first round is when everybody submits their work for consideration,” said Higgins. “Then, each individual chapter throughout the country gets three or four categories. So usually, a few different chapters are voting on the initial session, and that’s what creates the nominees. Once each category has the top three nominees, that’s when every member of the NCS is allowed to vote on it.”

One of the pieces Higgins submitted for this year’s award is the “Midnight Mermaid,” a craft beer poster created for Bayheads Brewing Company in Chesapeake City, Maryland. Higgins incorporates a nautical theme into all of his designs for the brewery, and because the Midnight Mermaid was a dark beer released for Halloween, he chose a darker color palette and theme for the design.

“It’s kind of a combination of all the stuff that I’ve visually consumed over the years and liked,” he said. “Over time you visually consume all this stuff, and the stuff that you like, you end up emulating a little bit, and then once you have enough of a catalog built up there, it combines into your own thing.”

The NCS award winners will be announced in August at the organization’s conference in Columbus, Ohio, home of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum, which holds the world’s largest collection of cartoons, graphic novels, and comic book-related materials. The NCS Philadelphia chapter has three divisional award nominees this year, including Higgins, and two members nominated for Cartoonist of the Year.

In addition to his other work, Higgins is also a board member of the Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles and has had his work showcased in galleries and comic conventions across the United States. He said being an active professional artist helps him relate classroom lessons to real-world experiences for students.

“I’m really passionate about illustration, about comics, about design,” he said. “So anytime I get to talk about that stuff, I’m all for it. That’s why I like teaching in the visual communications department, because I get to talk about it all day.”