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!

Reading between the foul lines

This illustration of mine for Grantland.com went up on the site last week, but I haven't gotten a chance to post about it until now:

The story is about the multitude of baseball books out. No matter your team, or the decade, there seems to be a book out there for you. Whether it's the 1948 Cleveland Indians, or the history of the Expos, you're bound to find something. That Dodger pennant looks a lot like the one I had on my wall as a kid. I wonder if I could find a book on my favorite players growing up: Orel Hershiser and Fernando Valenzuela. Here's the link for the story. Thank you to my AD, Juliet!