Robert Andrew Parker on Life and Illustration
We see deeply disturbing images in dark, murky colors: guns pointing at heads, children strung up by their feet, abandoned eyeglasses lying twisted in a void. Eventually, we come to a factory billowing...
View ArticleWords – and Images – on Ed Fella
Ed Fella’s AIGA Medalist profile sums him up succinctly: He’s “one of the most influential designers of the last quarter century.” And now he’s retiring. But having been friends since I first...
View ArticlePeter Kuper: Drawn to an International Comic Art Career
Peter Kuper’s seen it all. And he wants us to see it, too. So he draws it for us. His visits to Latin America, the Middle East, and beyond have been providing him with perspective and inspiration for...
View ArticleHoward Chaykin on his lewd, depraved, banned graphic novels
The trouble started with Diamond, America’s largest comic book distributor. Back in August, they wouldn’t ship Howard Chaykin’s six issues of Black Kiss II to retailers in Canada and the UK due to...
View ArticleTaking Comics Seriously: for Insight, Inspiration, and Creative Transformation
Next week’s San Diego Comic-Con started touting its movie and TV show programming: AMC’s Breaking Bad! BBC/PBS’s Sherlock! Woot! Also as usual, there’ll be plenty of activities for designers who are...
View ArticleComing Soon: Movie Posters for Those Films Inside Our Heads
Attention dedicated film buffs: have you seen Saul Bass’s other sci-fi feature, Rendezvous with Rama? How about Luis Bunuel’s supernatural Las Fotografias? Or that low-budget thriller by Alfred...
View ArticleStarbucks Design: Starbung Wars and Consumer Whores
Starbucks is at it again. Last week it filed an intellectual property rights lawsuit against the owner of a Thai street vendor and called for his arrest. This is one year after Damrong Maslae ignored...
View ArticleTed Rall’s “Censored” Obama Cartoon and Other Controversies
Are editorial decisions really censorship? When I discussed the issue with Ted Rall, America’s most widely read alternative editorial cartoonist, he was unequivocal: “To edit is to censor. It’s true....
View ArticleThe Enduring Power of Posters to Promote and Provoke
As Carol A. Wells sees it, “The best posters are powerful and influential. The worst are quickly forgotten.” Wells is an art historian and curator who also oversees the largest collection of socially...
View ArticleHooray for Twisted, Filthy, Disgusting Comic Books!
When Imprint began back in 2010, my first contribution was an interview with the entrepreneurial Craig Yoe, in which he wondered whether cartoonists these days ever get laid. Yoe is a cartoonist...
View ArticleThe Winter Brothers v. DC Comics: Parody and Monsters
Censorship of printed material just keeps on coming. Even as “Sex and Design,” Print’s February issue that included my 12-page feature about banning comic books, was at the printer Apple Inc. was...
View ArticleCollage Artist Justin Lieberman Cuts to the Chase
For designers who find imaginative, experimental publications sexy, Printed Matter’s second L.A. Art Book Fair was an orgy of visual delights. An international array of over 250 exhibitors displayed...
View ArticleFamous Graphic Novelists Discuss Inspiration, Education, and Digitization
When a panel of four esteemed graphic novelists have only an hour to address an auditorium packed with eager fans, it’s unlikely they can cover very much in very great depth. And thus it was when Ben...
View ArticleArt for Comics and Storyboards: What’s the Difference?
Aaron Sowd and Trevor Goring have a lot to say about the art of narrative storytelling. Aaron’s worked on movie storyboarding and concepting for Steven Soderbergh and Michael Bay, comics for Marvel and...
View ArticleRoasting Robbie Conal: Eerie, Irascible Poster “Poseur”
Robbie Conal, infamous street graphics rabble-rouser, was recently broadsided on his home turf by a sneak-attack art exhibition. It was meant to honor—and ridicule—him. And so it did, quite cleverly...
View ArticleLACMA’s New Graphic Design Collection Plans
The West Coast became the center of America’s graphic design universe in the mid-1980s. Naturally, it began with April Greiman and Emigre and their California Apples. And it expanded with Katherine...
View ArticleArabic and Iranian Typography Show Unites Middle East
A woman who grew up in Syria and a man with Persian roots walk into CalArts. Jump ahead six years: They’re now passionately united in their goal to inspire a widespread design movement. Maece Seirafi...
View ArticleA Designers’ Guide to Comic-Con’s Hidden Pleasures
We’re now at the peak of comic book convention season. San Diego’s wrapped last month, Chicago’s just ended, and New York’s is currently gearing up. And these are just the biggies. This onslaught can...
View ArticleTwo New Cartoon Histories on 100 Old Comics Innovators
Art Spiegelman and other comics artists have illustrated biographies of cartoonists, but always as short one-shot strips. Now, not one but two entire books of this kind have just been released....
View ArticleTrue Tales of Banned Comics: Guns, V-Games, and the N-Word
You can read a full feature story with more true tales in “An Uncensored Look at Banned Comics” in the February “Sex and Graphic Design” issue of Print.Happy Banned Books Week! This year’s focus is on...
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