Compliments of PRINT

I just received my copy of the Fall issue of PRINT, where I have an illustration for the Rick Poyner article. It's about how internet culture has affected our language, how we read and write, and design in general. People have grown accustomed to having information broken into tiny little pieces for them by the internet. It's much quicker and easier to click a thumb or text an LOL than articulate an actual thought. Sound bites and catchphrases reign supreme, while more lengthy, nuanced views are deemed too long and time-consuming. This has implications far beyond design, but it affects our industry in particular when designers don't read about design. Poyner argues that this prevents deeper understanding of, and critical thinking about design.

I wanted to show how content is reduced down to trivial little bits. How something detailed and weighty, like an opinion or review of something, can be turned into an almost meaningless shorthand like a thumbs up, or ; ) . This web tab shredding what looks to be a (design?) magazine, and translating it into the common digital glyphs that stand in for what sometimes ought to be a much more complex expression, worked out well. And yep, that's first grader Justin Renteria's Yale Elementary yearbook picture in that article (I modified an existing magazine spread for this fictional one- from the article headline to the images- so as not to infringe on anything).

Here's a crappy pic of my issue that came in the mail the other day:

Thanks very much to my AD, Adam!