06 February 09
Looking to sound smart in front of clients or at cocktail parties? No problem. The books that can help you are easy to spot at your local bookstore. The serif typefaces give them the a scholarly look. The no-nonsense white canvas says “I mean business” and makes the buzz-word titles easy to spot. The sound bite on the cover gives you the immediate satisfaction of feeling smarter before you’ve even opened the book.
We laugh and we cringe when someone quotes from one of the white books. Yet we can’t stop buying them.
02 February 09
One of my regular podcasts today turned me on to the beautiful art of Taiyō Matsumoto. His surrealist style is apparently pretty unconventional for manga. You can definitely see the Moebius influence. The loose line work also has a bit of a reportage feel to it.
I’m not a big reader of manga, but Matsumoto’s No. 5 is something that I will definitely be picking up.
11 January 09
At the tender age of ten, my first career aspirations were to become a comic book illustrator. It seemed like every comic I was attracted to and every character that I tried to copy was drawn by Jack Kirby.
Kirby’s influence on the medium is undeniable. He created the visual language that transformed the one-dimensional, drab, square panel style of comic strips into electric, action-charged pages where characters exploded from the frames. When Kirby’s characters punched, you could feel it in your jaw.
I recently treated myself to a beautiful hardcover book that celebrates his life in comics. The book contains many pieces of his work in raw form, and is the next best thing to seeing his art in person.
If you haven’t been lucky enough to catch one of the rare exhibits of his work, merchants of original art abound at your local comic convention.