Under the banner Matter Projects, Griffith and partner Debra Johnson’s mission for the past 25 years has been to enable thinking designers to have the tools to grow. “What began as a design studio,” he writes, “has garnered national and international awards and recognition.” They have “assembled a collection of letterpress printing presses, tools and style for the continued collective liberation of our community, and words as our raw materials.”

Griffith is living my version of the design entrepreneur’s dream. He has the Matter store, press, studio. He is an activist when it comes to raising the level of intellectual rigor among his designer peers in Denver. Griffith lives and works by the mantra “Make things. Be. Relevant, Matter.”

He and Debra have organized a number of engaging seminars including “Liberalism-NeoLiberalism: Identity and the Path Forward,” “Beyond Left-Right Binaries” and one that I’ve been thinking about lately, “What is Human.”

Matter certainly matters to the audience it’s serving, and it is proving that reading and discussion definitely matter. “In a slightly more obvious way, we are happy to remind [people] that we are graphic designers, typographers, letterpress printers, writers, activists, creators, change-making-system-aware intellectuals,” he details. And currently, we need all that and more.

The post The Daily Heller: The Design Community and the Bookstore appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

The sketches and printed works hang as if they are family members in the home of the thousands of subscribers who anxiously await each weekly issue. Although the gallery space is tight, it is so well-designed that the visitor never feels cramped; there is a lot to see and much to read. After spending a very satisfying Saturday afternoon at L’Alliance New York, I asked Mouly to tell us about the scope and highlights of the show.

Header photograph from the Jan. 21 opening (back row, left to right): Jenny Kroik, Barry Blitt, Ricardo Siri (Liniers), Ed Steed, Mark Ulriksen, Art Spiegelman, Kadir Nelson, Ed Sorel, Peter de Sève, Gracie Lynne Haynes, Victoria Tentler-Krylov, John Cuneo. Front row: Jorge Colombo, Françoise Mouly, Tatyana Franck, Rodolphe Lachat, Gayle Kabaker. Photo credit: Rebecca Greenfield. Installation photos: Leila Abazine, courtesy L’Alliance: New York.

How did the exhibition come to be held at the L’Alliance New York?
The idea emerged through conversations with Rodolph Lachat, editor of my book Blown Covers at Abrams. I had visited L’Alliance New York recently for their Sempé exhibit and was struck by Tatyana’s extraordinary energy in animating the space. I had also attended their animation festival featuring Lorenzo Mattotti, a frequent New Yorker cover artist. With the magazine’s centennial approaching, L’Alliance proved the perfect venue—they were eager to explore The New Yorker‘s history and to highlight my career as the Franco-American art editor over the past 32 years.

With the exception of early New Yorker artists Rea Irvin and Peter Arno’s sketch-to-finish works, all the covers shown were assigned by you. So, what criteria did you use to select the covers in the show?
Since we had this unique opportunity to show the artistic process, we first reached out to artists who still create physical originals—an increasingly rare practice as more artists work digitally. Once we assembled these pieces, natural sections and an order emerged that allowed us to tell the story of The New Yorker cover across its 100-year history, with particular focus on my tenure.

The Rea Irvin and Peter Arno pieces come from my personal collection. My husband, Art Spiegelman, discovered the Irvin at an auction for just $50, while the Arno sketch was a gift from his granddaughter. Most other artists featured in the show represent the new generation I brought to the magazine, who have since become part of its canonical roster.

It was lovely to see Ed Sorel’s covers paired with the late Bruce McCall’s.
The exhibition offers multiple points of entry. A digital wall, Malika Favre’s poster-sized images on the staircase, Christoph Niemann’s work that bridges wall and floor, a vitrine displaying original printing plates, and four variations on Eustace Tilley—all of which help ease visitors into the show. Then, the core of the show begins: the pairing of Bruce McCall’s paintings with Ed Sorel’s drawings allows viewers to focus on each artist’s distinct voice. Having Ed Sorel, now 95, at the opening was particularly meaningful. His 30-year-old drawing of New York as the Tower of Babel even includes L’Alliance New York in the image—a serendipitous connection that made the venue feel predestined.

It was fun to watch the attendees and listen to their comments. Most were familiar with what they saw. Others were unpacking the meaning of the art. What is your hope for the exhibition?
I am proud of having given so many different artists in that room their first break—almost everyone in the show—and opening up those august gates. But what I’m truly proud of is the range of their approaches. My mission as art editor has been to assemble a diverse roster of artists, each working at the height of their powers, rather than establishing a predictable “New Yorker style.” I think that has been my greatest accomplishment. 

When I was assigning covers for The New York Times Book Review, I’d limit the size of the original art. I was surprised to see how large Kadir Nelson paints, and just as breathtaking is Chris Ware’s blue pencil sketch art. How did you feel about seeing the entire show of originals and printed covers before your very eyes?
I’ll put it in the words of New Yorker artist Mark Ulriksen, who said it well: “I was blown away by how small McCall worked with all his glorious lettering and different fonts he painted. I loved seeing how large Kadir works, how Maira [Kalman] has loose borders, how Ana Juan uses acrylic and colored pencil and that [Ian] Falconer used charcoal. It was also cool to see the line drawings for the digital artists and it was only when we went again the next day that I saw the videos of Christoph [Neimann] and Hockney.”

The post The Daily Heller: ‘New Yorker’ Covers, Illuminated appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

This book is a testament to the micro details of art and science, function and aesthetics melding together. Pastoureau’s text is spirited and filled with ideas. “The history of pink,” he writes, “is an uncertain and tumultuous one, difficult to trace because for so long this color seemed elusive, fragile, ephemeral, and as resistant to analysis as to synthesis.” Being the latest volume in his investigations into the colors blue, green, black, yellow and white, his “plan” is to go chronological. He looks at color not only in artistic terms but from scientific, social and religious values.

Pink was not always called “pink.” From the 16th through the 18th centuries, many names were ascribed to the hue. For instance, “the adjective roseus sometimes describes beautiful female skin,” he writes, “pleasing to look at or touch, but its value is more affective than chromatic.”

Pink ribbons also had a special meaning during this time. A pink ribbon is the most prized possession of an unrequited lover who dies by suicide and leaves a note to be buried with it on his person. Likewise, Jean-Jacques Rousseau writes how pink, because of its paleness, is a truer symbol of love than “excessive artificial red.”

Pink provided a “newfound joie de vivre” in clothing after the dark years of the Plague. However, as Pastoureau explains, the color actually preceded that pandemic, so “it is not clear that this color was considered particularly cheerful or comforting at the time.” Yet whatever its ultimate symbolism, pink was admired and remained so.

And yet, pink also signified femininity as well as identity. The infamous inverted pink triangle used by the Nazis to brand those in concentration camps gave a dark significance to the faded rose color.

Pastoureau concludes his study with a view toward popular culture and fashion. He reproduces the famous photograph of a smiling President John F. Kennedy beside Jackie Kennedy at the Dallas airport only moments before his assassination. Jackie was wearing the pink Chanel suit that became iconic as blood-splattered evidence of the death of Camelot.

I was unaware of Pastoureau’s books and his passion for mixing color history, anthropology and sociology. What makes color is not only eye-brain mechanisms—”It is society,” he concludes, “with its definitions, classifications, laws and practices, often different from those of science.” After reading Pink: The History of a Color, I will never look at swatches the same way.

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Since I failed my chemistry and physical science courses in school, I asked Franco to give me a detailed remedial accounting of his fascinating work in short bits that I could understand. Thank you, Kobi, for your patience.

Please explain your experiments—and tell me how you would define Molecular Typography.
I first encountered the [term] “molecular typography” while randomly surfing the internet. The search led me to a short video titled “Understanding Molecular Typography,” which documented a lecture by the American designer and artist Woody Leslie. Leslie presents a book by the philologist and scholar H.F. Henderson, which argues that the letters of the Latin alphabet are based on a molecular structure, meaning each letter is composed of a combination of several atoms. Henderson suggests that future research in other languages would yield additional atoms or new insights, potentially catalyzing a revolution in this field. “Understanding Molecular Typography” was later revealed to be an artistic project, a figment of Leslie’s imagination. Nevertheless, I became enchanted by the speculative process of thinking about a Hebrew alphabet composed of similar yet different “atoms.” I embarked on a journey—an experimental, pseudo-scientific study based on the assumption that the Hebrew letters indeed had a molecular structure. I sought to explore how this assumption could be applied to the Hebrew alphabet, Hebrew words, and the Hebrew language.

The molecular principles are straightforward: a limited number of atoms, or basic shapes, connect to one another through electromagnetic attraction, forming all the letters of the alphabet. Leslie based his study on the Futura typeface (1927), designed by Paul Renner, and broke it down into seven atoms. In my laboratory, I chose to work with the Va’ad typeface (2005), which I developed based on letters designed by Ze’ev Raban (1890–1970), one of the pioneers of Israeli art in the mid-20th century. The Va’ad typeface was deconstructed into six variously sized atoms, designed on the basis of a square grid and tagged with the Latin letters: square=D, horizontal rectangle=E, short vertical rectangle=J, long vertical rectangle=I, parallelogram tilted to the right=K, and parallelogram tilted to the left=V. Each letter in the Latin and Hebrew alphabets is composed of combinations of two to 11 atoms. The combinations of atoms that make up the letters are arranged as though composing a chemical formula. In this way, the first Hebrew letter, Aleph—composed of four squares, a short vertical rectangle, a parallelogram tilted to the right, and a parallelogram tilted to the left—is represented by the formula D4JKV. Each atom is surrounded by a fixed electric charge that causes an electromagnetic interaction. The combination of atoms into letters parallels the combination of letters into words. The atoms are 3D units, and their combination forms letters or 3D signs.

The work that comes from your experiments addresses the legibility, accessibility and emotional qualities of type. Would you say this is an accurate description?
Yes, that is indeed an accurate description. The Molecular Typography Laboratory is a speculative research project that explores experimental typography along the axes of function versus aesthetics and content versus form. It includes a series of tests—a system of “games” for which I determine the rules, set the game board, and decide on the players. The tests present the results of each game. Using a method that combines several basic shapes, the Hebrew and Latin alphabets were constructed, resulting in the design of a typeface. The project presents visual, conceptual and potential structural applications for this typeface.

In his essay “Word-Covenant,” Ori Drumer, cultural critic and psychotherapist, says: “In Franco’s laboratory, letters function as an extension of the researcher’s body. The artist’s book and the accompanying research project provoke further thought, curiosity and imagination, and their exploration is accompanied by a desire to decipher and name the letter images functioning as body parts. Franco presents a unique visual language, a spectacle of complex relations with the letters, which he puts to various uses. Removed from their familiar context, in which they function as signs, the letters are subjected to unusual typographic processes, so that they become images charged with meaning. For Franco, the letters are not only morphological signs, while the laboratory under­mines the arbitrary character of the sign. Franco plays with the conventional linguistic mechanism that arbitrarily ties together sign, signifier and signified, undoing the connection between letter and representation to create a personal interpretation and a new structural logic that is highly personal. The result is a private, symbolic typography, which nevertheless has meaning and content in the actual world.”

Your work, as I understand it, is at the nexus of type and poetry. How would you describe your process?
It can definitely be said that poetry, or the use of poetry, appears quite frequently in the project. My research has been deeply influenced by the creative activity and self-imposed writing constraints formulated by the members of the OuLiPo group—a circle of mostly French writers, poets and mathematicians founded in 1960. The group’s purpose was to create new literary structures and models by imposing various constraints or algorithms. “Necessity is the mother of invention,” or, in the words of group member Georges Perec, it functions as “a machine for stories.” Existing literary forms, such as the lipogram and palindrome, as well as new forms invented by the group, were largely based on mathematical equations. This reliance on constraint initially appeared to be a spectacular tool, but in fact, it stemmed from the belief that linguistic constraints liberate consciousness and give rise to new and original ideas.

The use of linguistic templates such as the anagram, palindrome and pangram accelerates a form’s capacity to add to verbal content, camouflage it, and act as crude visual matter. My own tests have examined the formal, aesthetic and symmetrical appearance of letters and words, in the spirit of post-structuralist interpretation, which views the text as a weave of interrelated signs in an expanding network of meanings. Derrida himself noted the etymological connection between “text” and “texture,” conceiving of a text whose materiality resembles that of a cloth. Another source of inspiration was the Symbolist poets of the 19th century, including Arthur Rimbaud, who sought to apply rules to madness and ascribe colors to letters, and Stéphane Mallarmé, whose poem A Throw of Dice Will Never Abolish Chance (1897) promoted the use of unique typography and a visual approach to writing, followed by poets and artists such as Guillaume Apollinaire.

In her essay “The Nexus between Typography and Poetics,” Dr. Batsheva Goldman-Ida, a curator and scholar, says: “A playful spirit is felt throughout Franco’s project, in which the stringent rules provide a framework for artistic expression … [it] also enables the reader to view the typography as an artform in the sense of Gaston Bachelard, who speaks of the ‘wholly unexpected nature of the new image’ at the cusp of the moment, ‘in a state of emergence, in which life becomes manifest through its vivacity.’ Bachelard adds: ‘The poetic image is an emergence from language, it is always a little above the language of signification.’ In this respect, Franco’s project is a work of poetry.”

This is heady stuff. Tell me, what boundaries are you attempting to cross?
I have been teaching graphic and typographic design for over two decades. Over the years, I have increasingly focused on typographic research, specifically developing courses that examine the boundaries of the discipline—from its commercial and practical aspects to its experimental and research-oriented side. In my course Experimental Typography, I ask students to invent a method for various tests of the alphabet system. In subsequent stages, students are required to refine this method for different media and disciplines, essentially creating an imaginary world in which their system of rules has foundation and justification.

I developed this same methodology in my laboratory. As mentioned, when I began working on the project, I started from very basic foundations. Each letter received a formula based on the atoms that constitute it. However, this principle can be creatively refined in countless directions. As I continued to invent tests, the molecular world grew. Very quickly, I realized that I was creating a world that is truly boundless. I didn’t know that I would suddenly realize that if the atoms are based on a square grid, it would be possible to quantify and measure the number of squares in each letter. And if the grid is 3D, I could “weigh” each letter and essentially develop a system of molecular gematria, a traditional Jewish system of assigning numerical values to letters (numerology), where there is a “weight” for each letter, word or paragraph. I was then able to develop a gematria calculator capable of producing a list of synonyms with the same formula and weight. If I had not continued to let my imagination soar and realized that I could create anything I could think of, I would not have reached the understanding that, although atoms attract each other with electro-magnetic force, in the molecular world, I could cancel this force and create a situation in which, contrary to the laws of nature, minus could connect with minus and plus with plus. At this stage, I identified two Hebrew alphabet systems: binary and nonbinary, and essentially concluded that every word in the Hebrew language exists on a gender spectrum between binary and nonbinary.

The rhizomatic character of the study, which branched out as it expanded from one test to the next, enabled me to leap from one theme to another, employing a strategy that could continue operating as long as I was interested in pursuing it.

Code plays a large role in your work. How so?
Code and programming are indeed prominently reflected in the research. As noted, every letter in the Hebrew and Latin alphabets is composed of combinations of two to 11 atoms, which are arranged like a chemical formula. A digital catalyst developed in the laboratory creates different 3D variations for the formula pertaining to each letter of the alphabet. The result is a generative system of letters characterized by the identical features of a visual DNA. The catalyst also enables a perspectival, 3D view of each letter and of different combinations derived from the formula.

The 2D tests led to a system that independently rotates the atoms composing each letter. The rotations were examined according to three parameters: the angle of rotation, its centering, and the number of repetitions (the replications of the rotated atom). As a result, the visual form of each letter is deconstructed into fragments. The larger the angle of rotation, the more it impacts the letter’s legibility and our ability to identify it. Additional tests isolated the atoms in the formula, enlarging each according to different proportions. Later, I examined the transformation of a given atom’s size during use. With the typing of each character, certain atoms grew by 5%, a generative change that led to the chipping of the letter and impacted its legibility. The website I created for the project allows, unlike the book, the inclusion of videos and generative tests. In the future, I plan to add interactive interfaces to the website.

In his essay “From Word to Code,” Prof. Arch. Eran Neuman, dean of the Faculty of the Arts, Tel Aviv University, says: “… the moment a letter is encoded, it can be given various visual expressions. In this sense, the letters are no different than animal species or humans, who share a similar genetic code despite their diverse appearances. The letters in Franco’s typeface all share basic building blocks, yet each possesses a different form, and diverse visual expressions of the same letter are similarly based on the same code. … Franco’s move from visual typefaces to code-based typefaces thus also reflects the current post-humanist age, in which the perception of ideas exceeds the limits of the gaze, of hearing or of touch, whose sensory input is required in making contact with the world. His typography, which goes beyond the design of typefaces, partakes of a digital universe in which texts are not written only by means of let­ters, and in which the meaning of different concepts is elucidated by deciphering a code.”

How will the typefaces that have been designed under the umbrella of Molecular Typography be used in a pragmatic manner?
The project is indeed based on the design of an alphabetic system, initially in Hebrew and later in Latin. However, as noted, the design of the letters emerged from formal constraints. The typefaces were not designed as reading typefaces or even as display typefaces. While aesthetic decisions were, of course, made, they were confined to the use of the six “atoms” alone, resulting in a highly raw and elemental letterform system. The Hebrew typeface, which was designed first, follows horizontal proportions. When I decided to create a Latin version, I was compelled to rotate the letterforms into a vertical orientation. As a result, the two languages are designed with distinct proportions and do not conform to the conventional definition of a bilingual typeface. Additionally, I have not yet attempted to design a lowercase version of the Latin alphabet. In the project, I use the typefaces in various ways, primarily leveraging the architectural potential of each letter to deconstruct and reconstruct them into an infinite number of appearances based on the same atomic formula. However, I do not foresee any pragmatic use for these typefaces beyond this project.

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Manifest Destiny is rad.

In the epilogue of Elijah Wald’s book Dylan Goes Electric—an excellent chronicle of the pivotal moment when the folk music ethos transformed into the rock epoch, as portrayed in the film A Complete Unknown—the author notes inn 1965 there was “a clash of two dreams … the democratic communitarian ideal of a society of equals working together for the common good, and the romantic libertarian ideal of the free individual unburdened by the constraints of rules and custom.” I bought into that interpretation and was hoping it would be the norm for some time to come. Well, it came and went.

Last week I saw the aged leader of the United States sitting behind a grand table in a large D.C. sports arena. The WWE couldn’t have accomplished the stagecraft any better. Before a ceremonial dais, bathed in divine light, Trump tagged dozens of executive orders and decrees instantly expunging many critical progressive-era programs with the broad fever-line strokes of his branded fat-head Sharpie. I was gobsmacked by the obvious truth that progress doesn’t last forever.

Aquarians are on the verge of aging out, and we are being led into the new era of disenlightenment by a false prophet (and fake Village Person), whose forever-young narcissistic personality disorder has been normalized as a merry MAGA band of post-Boomer disciples spreads his mantra that “America First” is über cool. Meanwhile, the all-too-overt self-interested support of Gen X and Millennial tech oligarchs are standing in line enabling Trump to make whatever it is he really wants to make great again.

So, I wondered what the pioneer hippie diehards of m-m-my-my generation have evolved into, and I asked Midjourney—the current AI iteration—to visualize “what’s become of an Aged Age of Aquarius in 2025”. Thanks to Todd Carroll, this is what the computer keyboard prompt spit out. Wavy Gravy would be proud.

The post The Daily Heller: The Twilight of the Aged of Aquarius appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

If in 1965 I had two million freshly minted, crisp green-backs, I would have had the honor of presenting this epochal artist with the dough to fund his film. But when Fred Mogubgub (1928–1989) was making revolutionary quick-cut, limited animation commercials and films (hard to find and all but forgotten today), I was a tyke with $10 in the bank. I was only 15 when I saw this painted sign for the first time and wondered “what is a Mogubgub?” I met him years after he created this billboard. He was then producing quirky opening and closing sequences for TV shows like Tom Chapin’s “Make A Wish”.

When I met Fred in 1970, making his own brand of psychedelic-surrealist comics at The East Village Other, the name Mogubgub sounded to me like a melodic nonsense word or a rare insect rather than an avant garde artist. So what was he doing during the 1960s? Fred Mogubgub was a filmmaker, animator, painter and cartoonist who partnered with Pablo Ferro in two animation studios—Ferro Mogubgub Lew, then Ferro Mogubgub Schwartz— before starting his own studio. As noted on Cartoon Brew: Mogubgub “was an important part of New York’s indie animation scene in the 1960s and 1970s.” His films are exemplary examples of pop art in motion. He was also creator of The Pop Show from the late 1960s, a quick-cut parade of pop icons, featuring “a pre-Playboy, pre-N. O. W. Gloria Steinem” slugging down odd-ball hi-balls.

Mogubgub’s TV work was known for its staccato jump-cuts—an assemblage of cartoons and photographs that instantly flashed across the screen. He made work for Ford, Coca-Cola and Life Savers. He admitted that his subject matter derived from “American objects which stick out from the clichés you get drilled into you in school.” He was given the slogan, “Have you ever heard anyone say ‘no’ to a Life Saver?” by the Beech-Nut people and made a pop commercial. A marketing survey reported that the public recalled this commercial with its raw graphic effects more often than conventional ads.

However, he wanted out of the commercial business. He had film and painting in his sights. Mogubgub’s best known film, Enter Hamlet, was commissioned by The School of Visual Arts: It was Maurice Evans’ elegaic reading of Hamlet’s soliloquy poised against pop graphics. Each word is represented by a drawing, each scene cut to the word.

He was naturally drawn to and most welcome at the East Village Other, in a loft above the Fillmore East on Second Avenue and 6th Street. Routinely, he would arrive late on paste-up night usually stoned, proceed to a lamp-lit corner where he’d draw his stream-of-consciousness work. Like the cover below, he liked to print in two split fountain inks often using hard-to-read yellow; he’d finish a few minutes before the art was sent off to Druss printers in Long Island. There were no proofs. Serendipity was the goal.

One night at a paste-up session, he invited the staff to help him throw all his expensive camera equipment into the Hudson River early the next morning. He said he was forever finished with making film (although in 1979 he worked on an incredible sequence in R.O. Blechman’s epic animate feature “A Soldier’s Tale”). I oversleep and never knew for certain whether he did it or not. I do know that he was working on a two-story high painting for which he had to cut a hole in the ceiling of his loft. Whether the painting (created in square sections) was ever completed, I do not know.

What I do know, is that he deserves a museum retrospective if his artwork did not meet the same reputed fate as did his cameras. Mogubgub died in 1989 at 61.

If you prefer a slightly higher-quality version, go here.

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Twain’s folksy persona and witty writings had broad populist appeal, and he is now seen as an American classic with a long-lasting influence. If the frigid weather is getting your goat, bask in the warmth of a little Twain—starting with some of the items from the show, which was curated by Susan Jaffe Tane (who loaned 90% of the material), Gabriel Mckee and Julie Carlsen.

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Feiffer’s art (and writing) was what made me want to become a cartoonist—a goal I never attained, even though as a student I was enrolled in Harvey Kurtzman’s SVA comics class. Nonetheless, I briefly drew panel-less cartoons because Feiffer did. I delved into my neuroses for content because Feiffer did. But I never mastered his acerbic genius of mixing drawing and world-weary angst. I did, however, get to know Feiffer, and edited his abundant work with him for the book. As a perk I got to meet some luminaries, including Shelley Duvall and Robin Williams, after Feiffer’s screenplay for Popeye was released. I also had the good fortune of spending time at his Martha’s Vineyard home, an epicenter for some of his extraordinary circle of friends from art, theater, film, journalism and politics.

Feiffer had a rich, creative and amazing personal life, with the usual ups and downs that make a humorist, playwright, novelist and screenplay author so good at capturing the inner and outer depths of troubled yet symbolically autobiographical characters.

Before he passed, Jules was working on an autobiographical graphic memoir, which he described in our interview this past fall. As a bookend, I’m republishing the 2010 review I did of his first autobiography.

Backing Into Forward: A Memoir
By Jules Feiffer (Nan Talese / Doubleday)

I have known Jules Feiffer, the cartoonist, playwright, screenwriter and novelist, for 25 years. Even before that, starting when I was a 10-year-old wanna-be cartoonist, I dreamed of doing work like him (and did so for a few years). So it came as quite a big surprise—in fact, a shock—when I read in his splendid 400-plus-page memoir that his cousin was Roy Cohn, the legal counsel and chief inquisitor for the notorious red-baiter, Senator Joseph McCarthy.

How could that fact not have come up in conversations, especially since Feiffer knew I was fascinated with McCarthyism, and I co-authored a book called Red Scared? What’s more, for lefties and liberals there was no more nefarious person from the ’50s, when he wielded the power to ruin lives, through the ’80s, when he was a denizen of Studio 54. Roy Cohn was the devil.

That revelation is one of the things that makes this hefty book a real page-turner. This one small tidbit, combined with many other candid tidbits, insights and confessions gives those of us who know him and those who just know his work—and those who never sampled his brilliance before (which is unlikely since his work has touched so many lives)—an inspiring portrait of one of the most important satirists of the second half of the 20th century.

Memoirs can sometimes be an overgrown jungle, forcing a reader to plod and meander through heavy underbrush of chronological recollections, both meaningful and trivial. Feiffer’s book, sprinkled throughout with cartoons and photos, moves swiftly through his childhood formative career years and current life at 80 (believe me, he’s no 80-year-old that you or I can imagine). Though logically and rhythmically arranged, this book is not doggedly tied to a timeline.

Along the way, we learn that much of his insightful humor and intense social consciousness was formed by complicated relationships with his domineering Jewish mother, Rhoda (a failed aspiring dress designer, who made exquisite drawings, and also emasculated his father, Dave); a Stalinist sister, Mimi (as dogmatic about politics as they came); and ultimately friendships with the likes of director Mike Nichols (who directed, among other things, Feiffer’s paradigm-shifting coming-of-age film Carnal Knowledge), actor/director Alan Arkin (who directed his first politically charged play “Little Murders”) and a slew of other New York intellectuals, entertainers and artists—some of the best fly-on-the-wall-ism in the book. 

The memoir works on four levels. The first is the requisite spewing of pent-up interfamily resentments. But rather than voyeuristically listening in on Feiffer at one of his psychotherapy sessions, his anger is cut with humor and pathos in a voice that accentuates the pain while accepting the inevitability of where it all led. The second is a professional biography (expressed with wit and humanity) that examines the evolution of the Feiffer style and methodology—his passion for comics (he worked for Will Eisner for three early years). He also makes clear the risk he took in the development of his brand of psychoanalytic, self-deprecating humor that was unique in the ’50s. It was championed by Feiffer, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Philip Roth and Lenny Bruce, and gave way to Woody Allen. The third level is how politics became an over-arching concern given the tenor of the anti-Communist fear (which makes having Roy Cohen even more tragically absurd, owing to Feiffer’s left-wing and early anti-Vietnam stances). Then the fourth, the part I found the most moving given the tenor of his ’60s-era cartoons (which professed a kind of fear and hatred of women), was the utter love and warmth he has for his wife and children. Indeed, at her own request, Feiffer’s second wife, writer-comedienne Jenny Allen [he later married Joan Holden] is barely mentioned in the book, except by way of loving explanation for why he respected her wishes.

What a great memoir does is reveal those shared personal or professional traits that contribute to a better understanding of why the reader cares about the author in the first place. I used to think that Feiffer’s cartoons—and later his plays—echoed my own life, or at least the neurotic parts of it. This book is often a mirror—not in a narcissistic way, but in a “yes, this is indeed why I have admired Feiffer’s work for much of my life—and continue to do so” way.

The post The Daily Heller: Jules Feiffer Dies—But His Wit, Satire and Wisdom Will Long Be Remembered appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Who came up with the concept, and how did this unique exhibition come to be at The Church?
The concept came from Eric Fischl, artist and co-founder of The Church. He was inspired by the film California Typewriter, in which Hanks is featured among a community of typewriter enthusiasts in and around LA, then reached out through a mutual friend to Tom Hanks. We felt it was the perfect next iteration of our annual exhibitions that focus on material culture through the lens of whimsy and innovation. Simon as the designer of the show also came through Eric, as the two do tai chi together in Shelter Island. The companion exhibition, Some Odes: Sam Messer with Paul Auster, Eleanor Gaver, Denis Johnson and Sharon Olds, was organized by me.

Did Hanks and Doonan curate the 35 typewriters together?
Only Tom curated that selection of works on view. We’re not entirely sure how and why he selected these particular objects from his 300+. There is a strong sense of chronology, and as well we shared with him our typical approach to material culture, which is to focus on form, innovation and whimsy (rather than historicity or scholarship, by contrast … though each work in the show was meticulously researched by our team).

Where does Hanks keep his treasures?
They are kept in California. We shipped the 35 of them in custom boxes that were designed by an LA–based typewriter specialist that Tom’s office introduced us to, the Typewriter Connection.

Where are the vintage typewriter posters from?
There are two types of vintage posters shown. First, there are four actual vintage Olivetti posters, dated from 1968 through the early 1990s, that were lent by the great designer Mirko Ilic. As well, there are reproductions at large scale from the history of 20th-century typewriter advertising; these images were selected by Simon and then sourced in-house for reproduction permission and then printed using commercial vinyl printing companies.  

Are there any plans for expanding or doing some more venues after the show ends at The Church?
We hope so! Nothing to announce yet, but we are attempting to get this show out there.

The post The Daily Heller: Who Knew Tom Hanks Rescued Typewriters appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

I am having a very difficult time writing this tribute to my friend and colleague Véronique Vienne, who died of stomach cancer last week at the age of 82. There was only one Véronique and it is utterly impossible for me to unpack and repackage her into a neat obituary. A professional biography does not do her justice. Suffice to say she was an art director, teacher, essayist, biographer and critic—an intensely knowledgeable and thoughtful one, whose intelligence engulfed her like a fine silk cape everywhere she’d go. When she taught in the SVA MFA Design program, she’d bring students into her intellectual universe as if through a hypnotic force. She had Mary Astor beauty, an accent that could melt butter, and wit that cut through any resistance. She spoke assuredly about counter cultures and movements—especially the Situationists, who were among her faves—and their impact on our mainstream, not as pedantic historical chronologies, but in a conversational manner that opened her students to a profound dose of enlightenment.

I cannot recall how or where we met. I just remember asking her to teach after being put into one of those VV trances. It was not an out-of-body experience but more like a wave of fresh wisdom had washed over me as we spoke. She proposed to teach a class of old and new swirling ideas that would result in tangible outcomes. It wasn’t theory, per se, but rather a kind of cultural philosophy and design history that wove strands of social engagement with entrepreneurial activity to bring students up to speed on how their own design acts and objects had consequences that could alter behavior.

I always happily anticipated the night that VV came to teach, and she was always at least 30 minutes early so we could simply talk about different kinds of personal and general things. She was easy to confide in, critical but not judgmental. It was during one of those moments before class that I asked her to collaborate with me on the first book of five that we did together. These were completely joyful experiences. VV brought a weary-of-cliche attitude to everything we did. I’d create an initial concept and outline of what a book like Citizen Designer or 100 Ideas That Changed Graphic Design should contain, and she would choose where her contributions—essays, interviews, assignments—would fit in. They were usually unexpected. She’d go abstract where I’d go formal; she’d go to the edge where I’d slide into the center. Soon I began to think in Vienne-eze, leaning toward directions of design history and practice that I had thought too arcane. She had injected her intellect like grout into the empty spaces of my brain.

VV was always amused by how I recruited collaborators, a process to which she was subjected. She wrote in a profile of me (titled “Steven Heller Needs You” in Graphis 378), “For each title he would propose to a publisher, he had a co-author in mind—a colleague, a former student, a friend in the business, or a designer whose work he particularly admired. He’d call beforehand and pitch his ideas to him or her. At first the person would refuse, but Heller would be insistent.”

I was deeply appreciative and moved that she wrote it, as she had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s a few years earlier. To recently see that it is the only example of her writing on her own website is an indescribable sensation.

As for Parkinson’s. I was diagnosed with it, too. While we shared many ideas about things that mattered to each of us, now we shared a disease. Prior to her diagnosis, VV and I frequently would interview each other via email, both planned and impromptu, published as intros to our books or speculative for some reason or another. We would throw out questions in a round robin fashion and we gave ourselves a few hours to a day for a reply—and then we’d ask the other a follow-up query. When I learned about her PD, I suggested we do one of these email conversations. She agreed. I started the volley but she led the way. Her depth of self-insight was so much deeper than mine; I felt invigorated just keeping up. After we concluded, I said it was too good not to share with a few confidants, and sent a copy to Tom Bodkin at The New York Times. He said it should be published, and sent it to an editor of the “Well” section. With a few edits, it was printed on the same day I had my regular PD exam at the hospital. I was so proud it worked out, but happier all the more because VV was content with our penultimate collaboration.

A few months later I started a new book with my SVA colleague Molly Heintz, The Education of a Design Writer, which comes out this spring. I hadn’t heard from VV during that time and hoped that nothing was amiss. Eventually, she emailed and we scheduled a Zoom call. She looked great and sounded good, despite complaints of certain Parkinsonian symptoms. I hesitated to ask her my No. 1 question: Would she write something for the new book? I expected the answer would be no. I got neither yes or no, and let it be. Two months later I received a beautifully composed essay titled “Good Design at Its Worst,” a gem—perfect Vienne. Not a single edit was needed. In light of her later illness, it is a treasured gift.

On Nov. 14, I received this email (excerpted):

In the last three months, I have had my share of worries, health wise.

I was exhausted and assaulted with various miseries, thinking that it was due to Parkinson’s (the end of the PD honeymoon as they call it). But it turned out to be peritoneal cancer. … I am starting an aggressive treatment of chemo next week, and hopeful it will stop this particular train wreck on its tracks.

I am supposed to be a fighter, right? That’s what everyone reminds me of. I am cast by my entourage of friends and loved ones as a role model—easier said than done! But I’ll try to oblige.

Nothing would cheer me more than getting news from your side of PD—and your side of the Atlantic. How are you recovering from the shock of the elections? How is your health? Are you writing? Any new exciting projects? Will the book for which I contributed the … piece be published soon? What sort of involvement are you keeping with SVA? Etc, etc.

Give my love to Louise.
Your little French friend,
Véronique

I don’t think she’d mind that I shared some of that email. It shows her resilience and sense of humor in the face of, well, shit!

The mission of her entire class at SVA, put simply, came down to an essential discipline: Literacy. I’m taking the following excerpt out of context, but the meaning is not altered. She wrote in the Graphis article:

“Today, literacy is considered the most reliable indicator of a person’s chances of survival. Over the 12 years of follow-up, readers experience a 20% reduction in risk of mortality compared to non-readers. In other words, today, those who own a library card will live longer than those who don’t. … Your level of literacy is your destiny.”

Given the veracity of that statement, VV should have lived until 100. With all she’s left behind, I have no doubt that she will.

The post The Daily Heller: Véronique Vienne Was One of a Kind appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

The last time I interviewed you and Ivan, I believe, was during your 50th anniversary as a partnership. How does it feel to be working so many decades—now almost seven, if my math serves me well?
It has been 67 years since Robert Brownjohn, Ivan Chermayeff and I first formed our initial “design office.” We purposely wanted our little firm to be seen more as an architect’s “office” than as an individual designer’s “studio.” (This was a time when “graphic design” was a little understood term.)

From the beginning we viewed design as a “problem-solving” endeavor, believing that once we could define “the problem,” we could then employ whatever elements were most appropriate to “solving the problem” in a creative and memorable way.

At 93 you are one of the last great Midcentury Modern American designers. It’s a good time to take stock of what’s happened in design over these years. How do you think shifts in technology have impacted the creative practice?
I know that to most people, it seems crazy to still be “working” at 93. But it does strike me that many of my contemporaries in creative fields, those that have been healthy enough to make it this far, also continue to design, draw, paint or whatever it is that they have been doing for a lifetime.

Being part of a “design office” of 15 people, developing graphic identities for major organizations throughout the world, is of course different from continuing to be creative in your own personal studio. In my case, while I am continually frustrated by some of the digital world, especially Adobe Illustrator, significant shifts in technology have made continuing to work much more doable. We do have a physical office, but since the pandemic it is only occupied two days a week. Otherwise, everyone is working on a shared server, we continually converse and analyze design concepts on Zoom, and I almost always work from my studio at home. We even have some full-time design staff members who live and work (on New York time) as far away as Beijing, and fully participate in all aspects of our design projects. Additionally, new technologies and the internet have made it possible for people anywhere in the world to contact us, and at least 50% of our projects are for clients outside the U.S.

Looking back at your own work, are you pleased?
Certainly today the world and the times have changed, the technology is radically different, the options available to designers have greatly expanded, but I still believe in [our] original concept, though it does seem harder to pull off in these times of visual overload.

When you began, and throughout your career, you’ve done many of the creative and strategic tasks now ascribed to branding. What do you call your practice?
Twenty years ago, recognizing the realities of age (and New York real estate), Ivan and I decided to considerably limit the kinds of projects we wanted to undertake in the future, and consequently greatly reduce the size of our office. A number of our partners and associates then separately formed a new firm to concentrate on exhibition design and architectural graphics. Ivan and I chose to concentrate on developing graphic identities. We rented a small new office and brought with us a young design intern recently graduated from Cooper Union named Sagi Haviv. Over the ensuing years Sagi proved to be an exceptional talent, both as a designer and as a leader. Ten years later we made him an equal partner. Upon Ivan’s death in 2017, Sagi took on an even greater role and today he really leads our entire practice.

You were deeply involved in conceiving the identity for the U.S. Bicentennial. Tell me what you did?
For many years Ivan Chermayeff and I and our team were the designers or co-designers of a number of significant projects to represent the United States. Among these were the official United States pavilions at Expo ’67 in Montreal and Expo ’70 in Osaka, Japan. Other exhibition designs focused on specific historic issues such as the original Kennedy Presidential Library, a new museum on the history of the Statue of Liberty, and all the original exhibits for the new Immigration Museum at Ellis Island.

One such project that was widely seen was the design of the logo for the U.S. Bicentennial in 1976. That mark was used to identify events, celebrations and commemorations throughout the country. It appeared on promotions for local, regional and national projects, and on merchandise and objects ranging from a postage stamp to a large NASA structure on Mars.

What will be designed differently than the 200th?
50 years later, we were asked to design the graphic identity for the United States Semiquincentennial (!), the 250th anniversary celebration of the nation in 2026. Since the actual name is impossible to remember or pronounce, we decided to focus on the number 250, and to do so in a way that conveyed not only the national colors but also a spirit of celebration. The design was inspired by the idea of ribbons, since ribbons are commonly used to signify a wide variety of events, causes and celebrations. This will all become more evident in the next year or so, presuming we still have a recognizable country!

The post The Daily Heller: Tom Geismar on 67 Years and the Number 250 appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

I had forgotten about having contributed to the book, but was happy I had the good sense to agree to do it a few years back. MXWX is an exciting collection by this key figure from LA’s rock epoch. For those who don’t know, in 1980 he directed many of the first music videos; his editorial illustration appeared in most national magazines; he was a founding partner of various design groups, including Art Attack (1975), Neo Plastics (1980) and Brains (1994); he served as art director at Virgin Records (1992) and Warner Music (2001).

To celebrate his forthcoming publication, below is the text that I wrote for MXWX, alongside an interview with Haggerty.

It was the late 1960s. I had the good fortune to be mixed up with some bad fortune but in the good sense of the word. I was the art director of a few underground newspapers. I had the good sense to take advantage of the times while it was good to be bad. One of the good things about working on the bad underground porn weekly called SCREW, was that I could ask good, indeed great, artists and designers to work with me. By employing good illustration I could have these wonderful artists make me look good. But enough about me. Let’s get to Mick Haggerty.

I badly wanted him to work on SCREW. So, as was my habit, whenever I saw some printed or unprinted work that struck my fancy, I’d write a letter on SCREW letterhead, suggesting (actually begging in a nuanced grovel) that the recipient do a cover or two. Do enough covers in a year and an artist could put a down payment on a inflatable sex doll. Do only one or two and an artist could tell their friends (or not, as the case may be) that they’d done one or two SCREW covers (status?), and take them out for a moderately priced dinner on the fee they received.

At that time in the late 1960s/early 1970s, we had no immediate forms of communication, especially from New York to London, other than Telex (which SCREW could not afford) or Special Delivery (which SCREW could not afford). So regular airmail was the best. A letter to Mick took two weeks to arrive, and depending on how keen he was on answering, it could take a minimum of two weeks for the return post. It was always a gamble. I’d usually give up hope if I didn’t hear anything back for three or four months—sometimes a year. I don’t recall how long it took for Mick to respond. But respond he did. And not just in a letter saying “are you kidding me?” or “I have more self-respect than to work for your rag” or “may you stew in the hell of your own making.” He agreed to do a cover and sent along a sketch, too. I didn’t even look at the sketch before sending back my airmail response: “Do it.” The result is in this very volume.

That is pretty much my memory of our interaction. I feel we met at some point, but no records exist. But I know without doubt that I continued to follow his work. And the piece of his I still adore (which my filmmaker son, now 30, fell in love with too) is Mondrian Mickey. This image of a lopsided DeStjil grid painting pouring primary color paint onto the floor in the form (and color) of a Mickey Mouse melt is the most hilariously genius commentary on the marriage of fine and popular art ever produced in the 20th century. Take that, Mr. Warhol.

When Mick asked me to write this essay, in addition to my own story, I took the opportunity to ask him about his (well, it is his book!). And the first question I had to ask was about Mondrian Mickey.

Seems to me that your most familiar work is the Mondrian melting into Mickey Mouse. What do you believe is your most iconic work? 
Yes, Mickey Mondrian is it. I’ve spent my whole life on that wall between those two.

Is there an origin story?
It was done for Takenobu Igarashi at Idea Magazine … at the time I was fascinated by the plasticity of objects, and was making lots of drawings that showed extreme movement and transformation. (Pablo and George get a lot of well-deserved credit for deconstructing form in space, but the comic strip was invented a decade before Cubism, and those artists never get a look in). I of course considered Piet Mondrian the High Priest, the king of black outline and flat color, but the cultural appropriation of his work allowed me to also see him in a more kitschy, style king context. Looking through sketchbooks of that time I made many drawings of his paintings, some with lots of handles on transforming them into furniture, and even as melting swiss cheese. Once you melt and tilt the work, what else would it become?

Perhaps the work resonates with other graphic artists because it gets to the heart of the simple alchemy and reinvention that’s possible in our daily trade manipulating the same old well-worn images. For me it defines the exact spot I spent my life.

Since, I’m now in interview mode, when did you begin to publish?  
When I dropped out of college in 1972 I made a cold call on Island Records Office in London, hoping to be given a Bob Marley or even a ska cover. It was a few floors in a converted row house where all the employees sat together around a large white table covered in telephones, and after being invited in, and they had all looked though my portfolio, someone just said, “Give him Rosie?” I was of course happy to get my first job but too embarrassed to tell anyone I knew that I was doing a Fairport Convention “folkie” cover! Many years later I worked with Richard Thompson and he got good laugh out of it.

I recall, and my recollection is proven in this book, a lot of music design. Was music your initial focus?
Music was everything that mattered to me then. When I saw Bob Seidemann’s cover for Blind Faith, the earth shifted on its axis. That art somehow married to the power of music meant perhaps we could change the world. I always felt the best work had its own soundtrack. The Stenberg Brothers, arguably the first and the best [Soviet Russian Constructivist] graphic designers, made work that just screams. I was always drawn to images like that.

What was the illustration scene, world or milieu like when you started out?
I was trained in England as a graphic designer by purists in the Swiss mode like Anthony Froshaug. (He once cried in front of our class after confessing to having mixed Baskerville with Gill Sans on the same page.) I never picked up a pencil without a ruler, and drawing was viewed as a highly suspect activity. I had to travel 6,00 miles to L.A. and lock my door to even dare to attempt it. My impulse was to highly refine my drawings to remove any trace of the fact that I couldn’t draw. When I arrived on the West Coast, the favored style was airbrushed images that made everything look like shiny inflated balloons just begging to be burst.

You draw so damn well. Still, you have many styles. Why? And which approach is your preferred or favorite?
I am always driven by whatever the job at hand seems to require in order to be successful, and I try to confound people’s expectations. I always turned down any job where the client started by saying, “we want something like that drawing you did for …” My first love of course is flat colors inside black lines, reductive, impactful … perfect.

Many of these images were created prior to the computer. Was intricacy a fetish for you?
Most of them are way before digital vector tools, just ink on board, and yes, I broke into a cold sweat after making the perfect line. 

The Donald Trump image seems so out of stylistic place. Why?
It seems the perfect style to me. Gilbert Stuart’s famous painting of George Washington, the man who claimed “I couldn’t tell a lie.”

Speaking of guys with orange hair, how did the association with David Bowie come about?
United Artists Records called me in to work on Derek Boshier’s photograph for the cover of Let’s Dance, and it just grew from there. David and I were the same age and grew up just miles from each other. From the start it just felt comfortable; we had a good laugh whenever we got together.

There is everything from cartoon realism to abstract “adventurism” (my quotes) in your work. What triggers which approach?
I love “abstract adventurism” … not sure exactly what it means but sounds like me and I can’t wait to use it!

As my final question, given all you’ve done, is there another aesthetic transformation in the works?
There is only aesthetic transformation, isn’t there?

The post The Daily Heller: Mick Haggerty’s Multiple Personality Illustration appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Usually, a book has a two- to four-year life expectancy. The official pub date provides time for promotion and lobbying for premium space in bookstore windows and other signing and display opportunities. After a few months, the sales are tallied to determine whether the book will remain on view or tucked away.

That tally also determines whether or not an author gets the fateful letter that, owing to low sales, “we have decided to put your [title] into remainder”—at which point large discounts are offered to booksellers and the author(s).

I’ve had many OP letters in my life. Even the envelope projects a vibe of finality. Often the reasoning is that the book has run its course and is no longer relevant. Most of the time, the book is one of the hundreds—or thousands—that annually are ignored for one of the following reasons:

1. The size of the audience was misjudged
2. It was poorly promoted
3. It received little to no critical recognition
4. It stinks.

If lucky, an OP book could achieve cult status and become available through used book dealers. In New York, the Strand is ground zero for OP books—and hard-to-get books that fell through the publishing industry cracks.

Today, I am listing a few of my OP titles that can be obtained through online services …

Click on caption or browse Google for availability and discounts.

The post The Daily Heller: What it Means to Be OP! appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

I’ve been an avid collector of the magazine Physical Culture, which was founded in 1899 by Bernarr Macfadden. His life story is the stuff of legends and rabbit holes. Macfadden was the founder of a large publishing company that bore his name, and his flagship was Physical Culture (which was renamed Beauty and Health in 1941 after he sold the rights to it, and renamed as Physical Culture in 1943 after Macfadden regained control). It ceased publication after Macfadden’s death in 1955. His life story (which I urge you to read) is entertaining—but Macfadden is only the entrance to the rabbit hole.

I’ve collected a batch of covers from the 20s, mostly of women in gym or swim suits, showing off their physical prowess and always wondered who was the illustrator. He worked in the prevailing realistic style and seemed to disappear into the miasma of once-fashionable illustration.

Recently, I was gifted the pencil sketches and black-and-white photos of oil paintings below. Each has a rubber-stamped name on the back that initially looked to me like it read “Clay Weaver,” a signature that also appears on Physical Culture covers. Never having heard that name, I contacted illustration historians to determine who this was but no one had a clue. (Google provided two citations for “Clay”, both showing realist paintings circa 1930s that were auctioned.)

One of my expert correspondents, David Apatoff, said that he had no idea and maybe I had misread the name. A correct assumption, which he confirmed through another expert, Fred Taraba, who gave the artist’s name as Jay W. Weaver. Thus began a weekend dig with little to show for it, save one biographical citation read, “Weaver [deceased circa 1960] was a member of the Society of Independent Artists in 1939. He spent time working in Oklahoma and is known for figurative works.” Another added he showed at the Salmagundi Club in New York and yet others indicated that he sold his “fine” (example below bottom) art at auction. Such was a entire life in a few Google words. Sad.

Tracking Weaver to this point has been inconclusive … and frustrating to consider how many unknown 20th-century illustrators’ work is stored in musty and moldy attics, just waiting to be discovered. There’s just not enough room in archives, libraries, storage centers and museum vaults for all that’s been produced … and forgotten.

The post The Daily Heller: Following a Forgotten Illustrator Down the Rabbit Hole appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Frank Viva is a frequent New Yorker contributor whose work wittily captures the zeitgeist, but he is not acerbic. During President Trump’s first term, he tried pitching some political illustrations without success. Now with Trump 2.0 suggesting the annexation of Canada, Viva, a Canadian, is reconsidering how he can satirically comment on Trump once again.

He is candid about his struggles, and our chat below—featuring covers he has pitched to The New Yorker—sheds some light on how he goes about attempting to sell his graphic commentary.

In your many published New Yorker covers, you do not present yourself as a political artist. Do you have a secret (or not-so-secret) desire to be one?
It’s a secret because I haven’t had much success.

Have you been encouraged to actually take to finish any of the covers you’re showing here?
Sometimes a call for ideas goes out by email that is sent to a group of artists requesting a sketch about a newsworthy story that is unfolding in real time. It can be a story that just happened, or a story that is brewing but may or may not happen, or a story that is happening but might go one way or another. Sometimes the cover has to be turned around in a day or two. They always try to respond to a sketch if they can but you get the sense that it’s pretty hectic when that happens. The typographic “U” cover and the Schulz cover are responses to emails requesting a sketch. The rejection of the Schulz cover came with an encouraging note. I was happy with the typographic idea, if not the execution. Artists are also encouraged to send sketches throughout the year if an idea occurs to them that they think is worth consideration.

You told me that you have an acute case of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). We’re showing your unpublished work now because he’s back. How are you coping?
I’m coping better this time. Although I did suffer from TDS during his first term, I seem to have built up some immunity over the last four years.

You also said, “I have inadvertently documented my descent into TDS madness,” and you’re considering re-pitching your earlier political ideas. What happened to your pitches last term?
The political cover ideas I have pitched since the beginning of Trump’s first term are a motley collection—some are rough pencils and others are close to publishable (technically), while the rest are somewhere in between. A few of them deal with Trump-adjacent topics like Ukraine and Roe v. Wade. Many were a reaction to one of the countless outrageous things that Trump said or did, soon forgotten because of the next wave of craziness. Several are more recent and were sent during the current election cycle.

Do you have limits or proscriptions as to how far you will go with your satire?
The toilet image [below] was from the first term, and I can’t see sending anything along those lines now. The Eustace Tilley sketches would never work because Eustace is a beloved mascot. I should have known that before sending them. I’m trying to narrow and refine my focus as I stumble along. Almost all of these suffer from not having had an engagement with [cover director] Françoise Mouly. I always hope that she will see something worth sharpening or exploring further.

You are not a satirist per se, right?
My published covers to date have all been sort of genteel, so I had no reason to expect that I could switch lanes once Trump was first elected. I was obsessed. I can see looking back that most were not good enough. It has been a journey of stubbornness and stupidity. Stupidity because I was risking annoyance at the receiving end.

How do you feel—and what is your strategy, if any—for dealing with Jan. 20 and beyond?
Like most journeys, it was not a complete waste of time. In the last few months I have submitted political cover ideas that were better-received and even considered (if only briefly) for publication. By submitting ideas and then seeing what was chosen week after week, I gained a better understanding of what could work for me. A unique voice is important. In my case this includes the use of typography, or an unexpected approach that the best of The New Yorker’s great political cartoonists would be unlikely to propose.

And what do you think that is?
Perhaps the best typographic sketch is the one with the central ‘U’ in “TRUMP” used to represent a chasm dividing the nation. The most promising reaction I received was the Charlie Brown and Lucy football cover, pitched shortly after Kamala entered the race and was seemingly doing better in the polls than Trump.

Cartoons are not great weapons when your audience, including me, is in an echo chamber. Half the nation loves Trump or MAGA. Another percentage is just settling in for the time being. What is the goal of your satiric politics?
In his first term, I had no goal in mind. Each sketch was just an expression of my exasperation. It’s true that the audience for political cartoons is, as you say, an echo chamber. These days, that’s probably true of most forms of political discourse. I’d like to be among the less-engaged percentage you mentioned and just settle in for a while. That would be the smart way to go. During his first term, I did have an acute case of TDS. Not so much now. The Trump enterprise seems more surreal than menacing this time around. Like a bad sitcom rerun with the same tired jokes and a similar cast of characters chewing up the scenery. I think the recent sketches that I submitted during the 2024 campaign are more measured than the ones from his first term. I feel more capable of providing a detached perspective—and with any luck, a bit of humor. So I do have a goal now: to try to use what I’ve learned. We’ll see how that goes.

Do you feel “good” about these ideas?
I find it difficult to come up with a good idea that also works well as a composition. And I’m up against some of the most talented artists around. A New Yorker cover is one of the most coveted gigs around and everybody wants to have a go. Some days I feel inspired to keep going. Some days I feel tired and inadequate to the task.

The post The Daily Heller: New Yorker Cover Artist Frank Viva Rethinks His Political Content appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

The loathsome act known as witch-hunting continues in today’s vernacular as a shorthand for immoral and extra-legal hounding of persons suspected of some broken social more. It Happened in Salem (Creative Editions), with its cinematic noir-sounding title, is a book about the past for the present, smartly written by Jonah Winter for middle-grade students, with elegant illustrations by Brad Holland.

The subject of witchcraft is perfect for Holland’s blend of emotional intensity and human sensitivity brought out in gesture and color—and he tells us more about the process below.

Creative Editions is known as a children’s book publisher that has released books on difficult subjects, including the Holocaust, and now the Salem witch-hunts. It is difficult to think of the trials as being easily explained to children. How did you feel about the tone of the manuscript when you first read it?
Well, the first thing to dispel is the assumption most people make that witchcraft trials were common in colonial times. They weren’t. Of course, there were incidents where people were tried and hanged as witches—it was a holdover from the country’s Old World heritage. But the events that made witch-hunting so infamous actually occurred only during a period of about 18 months, and mostly in and around Salem. So, I think the author presents that accurately. It was a local epidemic of mass hysteria that ran its course and then, when it threatened to harm some prominent people, was suddenly shut down.

The manuscript and your illustrations do not hide the injustice and corruption of the period but vividly reference the continuing comparisons to the present.
Well, yes; in fact, my first thought was that the country had gone through something similar during the children’s daycare scandals of the 1980s. All that hysteria that started on the afternoon talk shows about how children’s preschool centers were hotbeds of satanic abuse—with crazy charges that people were slaughtering kittens and summoning the devil or flying through the air like witches. Innocent people lost their jobs and reputations; a bunch of them went to prison. And then suddenly, just like the Salem hysteria, the craziness ran its course and, with a few exceptions, the media dropped the whole thing as if it had never happened. I thought at the time that it was just like the Salem witch hunts, except that it went on for nearly a decade and was far more widespread—and it wasn’t happening in some colonial dark age, either.

Your images are so perfectly suited to the original Salem, with a decidedly timeless quality. Did you know what you wanted to paint from the outset?
Well, yeah, sort of. To begin with, I was determined not to give the story any kind of spooky glamor, the way movies often did. There were never any real witches, after all, so this was a cautionary tale, not a Halloween story. Back in high school, I had read all of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories, so I had a definite background of that era to draw on. And I did start by researching the subject. I found photos online of Salem’s so-called witch houses, and paintings and reconstructions of colonial interiors. I even found articles about the spot in the woods where archaeologists think the hangings took place. But with the exception of historical dress, I thought too many period details might make the story seem like something that happened a long time ago and couldn’t happen again. That’s why in several paintings I just showed the figures against neutral backgrounds. I thought it might make it easier for readers to identify with.

Did you create the images with kids in mind or were you directed in that direction?
No, the pictures were all my ideas and the publishers didn’t ask me to change a thing. The only issue they ever did raise was whether we should show the hangings. They were obviously concerned that that might be too upsetting for kids—and in the beginning, I had wondered about that myself. But ultimately, I concluded that kids these days probably see images in movies and video games that are a lot more violent—more grotesque even—than the matter-of-fact way I was showing what had actually happened. So, I decided to just trust my instincts and do what I thought would tell the story honestly. The publishers were totally supportive, and I was very grateful. I worked throughout with the art director Rita Marshall, and she was terrific.   

The images have an age-neutral quality, in the sense that very young kids might not get it, but mid-range kids who can read on their own or have parents who will read to them, are they your target audience?
Well, my own thinking is based on my background. When I was a little kid, I used to go with my dad on Friday nights to the local soda fountain where we’d get the latest issues of Life, Look and Collier’s magazines. Then we’d go home and he’d read the articles to me and encourage me to follow along. My mother would come by and say, “Walt, you can’t read things like that to a kid,” and dad would just say, “hell, you can read anything to a kid.” So while there are a lot of things that I wouldn’t normally bring up to a child—you have to have some common sense—in general, I tend not to talk down to them. I know that a lot of what you tell a kid will go in one ear and out the other. But if something they don’t understand really makes an impression on them, I trust that it’ll stick in their heads until something in their experience causes a light bulb to go off. In the end, I think it’s okay to let kids wonder what some things mean. It’s like buying clothes for them to grow into.

The hanging of a condemned witch is the most indelible painting of all …
Well, it’s certainly the one that gave me the most trouble. I’ve lost track of how many pencil sketches I did for it. And there were two painted versions that I worked on for days and threw out. But then I started over and finally hit on this one. The text on the facing page was about how many people had been hanged. So at one point, I had an image of several people dangling from a tree. And even in this version, I once had five. But then, suddenly on impulse, I just painted them all out but one. Then I redesigned the tree into a kind of an X on the page, with the figure of the woman at the intersection of the X. It was a sort of design solution to keep the image simple. And it seems to make the picture more moving. I don’t think I could have thought that out in the beginning though. It’s just that as I worked on it, it kind of worked itself out.

Also, I cannot get the slave girl — both text and image — out of my head. It is, well, so surprisingly serene.
Yes, I think that’s really my favorite painting from the book. And it’s based on a real person, too, except that nobody knows what the woman actually looked like. According to legend, her name was Tituba and she was the first person to be accused of witchcraft. Originally from Barbados, she had been brought to Salem as a household slave by the town minister, Samuel Parris. It was his young daughter and niece who first accused her. In the beginning, she denied the charge, but finally confessed—allegedly after being beaten—and to save herself, began telling preposterous stories that implicated two other women as witches. That’s how the mass hysteria began. It lasted for about a year and a half. Tituba was imprisoned for the whole time but was never tried, and when they finally released her, she disappears from history.

What other images do you feel have the most impact amid all the powerful ones herein?
I think the strongest picture is the last one, the little girl cherishing the voodoo doll. It began when I was doing research for the way kids dressed in those days. I kept finding old daguerreotypes of little girls holding a beloved doll. Apparently, that was a cliche of early photography. So that immediately gave me the idea for the painting. I researched voodoo dolls and used bits and pieces from several of them. And then I decided to make the girl so young and innocent-looking that her expression wouldn’t be much different from what you’d expect from a dog or a cat. The idea of poisoning and weaponizing a little kid’s mind is so obviously evil that, to me, that was the real story behind the story of the Salem witch hunts.

Do you think that an audience that has never known about the Salem trials will accept this knowledge?
Well, I suspect that like most things in life, different people will get different things out of it.

I have to admit, although I have knowledge of the trials since elementary school, and grew up hearing about modern witch hunts for Reds and fellow travelers, your book has reinforced my trepidation of these things happening again. Did it have a similar effect on you?
Well, imagine how much more damage they could have done in Salem if they had had the internet, social media and artificial intelligence to work with. They could have turned what was essentially a local scandal into a global one. Which brings us up to today. Unfortunately, the one thing you can learn from history is that most people never learn from it. Human nature is pretty intractable, so things that happened once upon a time are always likely to happen again. I suppose that’s why we need cautionary tales.

The post The Daily Heller: Witch Hunts in Olde Salem, MA appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Jianping He, also known as Jumping He, is a 51-year-old German-Chinese graphic designer, teacher and publisher. He was born in Hangzhou, China. In 2002 he opened hesign in Berlin, where he lives most of the year, and in 2008 another office in his home province, Hangzhou. I have written before about his penchant for shredded books and his incomparably tactile Daydream, which you must experience in your hands. But I have not yet focused on the independently funded art/design school that He calls Design Summer academy.

For 15 years, the DS academy in Hangzhou has drawn from the rich pedagogical traditions of both China and the West. The school is inspired by the ideas of two key figures: 20th-century Chinese educator Cai Yuanpei, who promotes the concept of aesthetic education in society, and John Dewey, who considered education to be “life itself.”

DS academy builds its coursework on “exploration and innovation” in order to cultivate artists and designers who possess refined tastes, demonstrate creative passion, and fluently utilize modern technology. This is accelerated through inventive classes taught by a skilled, illustrious international faculty that weds contemporary practice and technology with a history of Eastern and Western accomplishments, thus bridging the gap between design as pragmatics and art. He’s recipe of in-person learning, hands-on training and intensive craftsmanship nurtures individual thought. That he does it without official funding is a design thinker’s miracle. Think about that!

The post The Daily Heller: Jumping He’s Summer Design Academy in China appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Case in point: As part of the 1940 Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact, the USSR invaded and occupied Estonia and deported its “anti-Soviet-elements” to remote eastern areas deep inside Russia. When the pact was broken in 1941 with Hitler’s surprise invasion of the USSR, rather than “liberate” Estonia the Germans besieged and occupied it, imposing their own brand of terror. During the deadly match-up of battling armies, Estonian civilians were caught in the middle. In 1944 when the Red Army reconquered the Baltic states, including Estonia, Stalin’s terror ensued. Thousands of civilians fled the advancing troops, some escaped to Sweden, Finland, Germany, Poland, Canada, England and the USA.

Maria Spann is a Brooklyn-based photographer whose maternal grandparents fled to Sweden along with their two young children — Maria’s 5-year-old mother and 7-year-old uncle. In her youth Maria listened to her grandparents’ harrowing accounts and decided to delve deeper into this little known horror of the world war, of the Estonian exodus.

Her concept: To interview as many survivors as possible who were children then from her mother’s generation, photograph them now as older people along with one object that they saved from the journey. Her work has recently been compiled into the limited edition book Children of the 1944 Estonian Mass Flight, which Maria also handsomely designed and skillfully self-published. Each section begins with a compelling personal recollection on the first of two spreads (in English and Estonian) and a portrait on one page and the object on the opposite.

For this interview she talks about the process of tracking down the first 57 survivors, and recording their memories in what promises to be an ongoing discovery.

What triggered this emotional project?
I’m half Estonian. My mother lIme and uncle Jüri were born on a farm in Nautse on the small island of Muhu in Estonia. They were 5 and 7 years old when they were smuggled with their mother Siina onto the boat Juhan, which made nine journeys from Tallinn to Stockholm during the late summer and fall of 1944 (to transport ethnic Swedes from Estonia to their ancient homeland). Their father Georg made his way over a few weeks later in a small rowing boat with three other men.

During my childhood I heard the story of their escape mostly from an adult point of view, but always wondered what it was like for the children. Later on, when my grandparents had passed away and my mother and uncle were the only “real” Estonians left in our family with memories of Estonia and the escape from there, I became fascinated by how different their account of events was from the (very few) stories my grandparents had told us.

So, I decided to start a photographic project—I wanted to try to find more people who fled Estonia as children, just like my mother and uncle, and hear their accounts of the escape.

How often and for how long did you visit Estonia during the course of your research?
Not once! All my subjects still live outside of Estonia, apart from a few who have second homes there. Rather pleasingly though, the book was printed in Tallinn, and I went there to pass it on press this summer. 

How did you find the people in this diaspora? And where did many of them reside now?
I started with my mom and uncle, of course, as they were easily accessible to me in Sweden and it meant I had something of the project to show when reaching out to others. Then I contacted the Estonian Houses (centers of Estonian culture set up in various places across the world, many after the mass flight) in Stockholm, Gothenburg and New York City to explain my project and see if they might have possible candidates in their communities. 

In Sweden, news spread really fast by word of mouth—once I’d seen a couple of people, they recommended other friends and acquaintances and most were keen to take part. In New York, I attended the Estonian Cultural Days in 2018 to hand out flyers and spread news about the project. It took a little longer than in Sweden, but again, most people were eventually keen to take part. I also contacted the VEMU Estonian Museum in Toronto, where there is a huge Estonian community, and they put me in touch with an Estonian retirement home in the city.

The main 10 countries where the Estonian refugees ended up resettling were Sweden, UK, France, Belgium, Australia, USA, Argentina, Venezuela and Brazil. My initial aim was to travel to all these countries to be able to include a chapter on each in the book. However, financial constraints as well as COVID got in my way and so I decided to focus on the countries I could easily get to in order to finish the book by the 80th anniversary of the flight this year. In early 2023, I contacted various Estonian Houses around the UK, and quickly found a group of willing Estonian refugee “children” who I met with during a week-long whirlwind tour of England. 

What was it that you wanted your subjects to provide to you? What is the significance of the objects that are shown?
I wanted to hear the stories of the escape from a child’s point of view. The adult accounts are mostly accurate in a factual sense, but for the children, it was more about strong sensory memories—the smell of the boat, the taste of the white bread or the sinking feeling in their stomach—than the actual events of the journey itself. Often my subjects would say something along the lines of, “Oh, but what do I know—I was just a small child. It’s not the real story!” But I think that’s exactly what it is. The objects were added as a way of making the project more visual and showing what a wide range of belongings different people hold onto from such a momentous life event. 

What were the lasting lessons you learned from talking to all of these people?
I have met with 57 people for the project, and I found it so interesting how what you remember as a 5-year-old differs greatly from what you remember as a 15-year-old. Most of the people who were aged between 3 to 9 years old when they fled remember feeling worried and didn’t really know what was happening, but were also safe in the knowledge that they were with their families. Quite a few 10- to 14-year-olds were excited to finally be traveling somewhere, as they hadn’t been able to do so since before the war. One lady who was 13 at the time of the escape was just extremely relieved that they couldn’t take their piano with them as she hated practicing. But many of the older teens I met were left much more traumatized and often didn’t really want to share too much. 

I also think these stories are hugely relevant today—nothing has really changed in terms of children being forced to flee persecution all over the world. Maybe sharing these now … can contribute to more empathy being shown towards today’s refugee children and their families. 

You produced and published the book yourself. How will you distribute it, and who do you want to have a copy?
Oh yes, the distribution and PR for the book is my least-favorite part! I managed to secure funding for the printing costs of the book from a few generous institutions in the Estonian diaspora, and in exchange I sent them copies of the finished book, which I hope will help spread the word. It is also being sold at the Vabamu Museum of Occupations in Tallinn and through the Estonian National Archives in Tartu. Everyone who contributed their story to the project has received a copy of the book. I’m also selling it through the project website. 

If I’m allowed to dream, I would love this project to eventually end up at the Fotografiska Museum in Tallinn—back home!

The post The Daily Heller: Memories of a Wartime Escape From Estonia appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Last week, editorial page editor David Shipley rejected Telnaes’ cartoon that lampooned media and tech titans for abasing themselves before President-elect Donald Trump, and she summarily quit the newspaper. It was a courageous act.

As she wrote in a Jan. 4 Substack post titled “Why I’m Quitting The Washington Post”: “I’ve worked for The Washington Post since 2008 as an editorial cartoonist. I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations—and some differences—about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now.”

Until now Telnaes had not comically blasted Amazon founder and Post owner Jeff Bezos. The first straw was Bezos’ decision in October to block publication of a planned endorsement of Vice President Harris over Trump in the waning days of the 2024 election. The last straw was post-election visits by top tech CEOs, including Bezos, to Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, as well as the seven-figure contributions several promised to make toward his inauguration. The cartoon also features Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Los Angeles Times publisher Patrick Soon-Shiong, and the Walt Disney Company/ABC News. She submitted a sketch before Christmas.

“I’m very used to being edited,” Telnaes told me in an email. As she added on Substack, “While it isn’t uncommon for editorial page editors to object to visual metaphors within a cartoon if it strikes that editor as unclear or isn’t correctly conveying the message intended by the cartoonist, such editorial criticism was not the case regarding this cartoon. To be clear, there have been instances where sketches have been rejected or revisions requested, but never because of the point of view inherent in the cartoon’s commentary. That’s a game changer … and dangerous for a free press.”

When I was art director of The New York Times Op-Ed page, although our policy was not to give columnist status to any featured editorial cartoonist, some of our freelance illustrations were changed or killed a few times a month, owing to an editor’s interpretation—sometimes it was caprice, yet often for sound rationales, challenging my ego but not my integrity.

Editorial page cartoonists—and especially Herblock at the Post—usually have the freedom to say what they want. “We are visual opinion makers,” Telnaes affirms.

In a statement shared with NPR, Shipley said he respected Telnaes’ contributions to the Post but took issue with her interpretation of events. “Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force,” he said. “My decision was guided by the fact that we had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and had already scheduled another column—this one a satire—for publication. The only bias was against repetition.”

Telnaes counters, “My job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable. For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post. I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist. But I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning, because as they say, ‘Democracy dies in darkness.'”

Herblock would certainly agree.

The post The Daily Heller: Cartoonist Walks After WaPo Kills Bezos Satire appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Lowell Thompson, an executive producer, collaborated with fellow industry veterans Cotton Stevenson and Terry Peigh on the project. Producer Laurel Dobose and master editor Alaric C. Martin sifted through hours of footage to painstakingly create the template in which the historical narrative unfolds.

Below, Thompson details how Chicago became ground zero for this Black creative revolution.

How long was this film in the works?
Ha! On a macro level, you could say about 40 years. I started thinking about chronicling my ad career a few years after I left the full-time business in 1980. On a practical level, two-and-a-half years. I posted the first page of my proposed memoirs, Mad Invisible Man, in January 2022. We premiered the documentary that came out of it on July 1, 2024.

When did the floodgates open, and where were these unseen and unknown admen and adwomen from?
They came from all over. I came from the Chicago Tribune. I’d started as an office boy in its Creative Services Department in January 1968. Some came from the Army. One came from the Urban League. One woman was a med student at Northwestern University.

Why was Chicago particularly flush with Black ad-people?
I think because Chicago was flush with African American–owned media and businesses. The Chicago Defender and Ebony and Jet magazines were the largest publications of their kind at the time. There were also the biggest AfAm-owned businesses in Chicago.

Was it that they had been doing niche ads prior to working on national brands?
Not exactly … most, like me, had never done an ad.

Did the agency entrepreneurs flourish, or did they still face resistance?
There was big resistance until Dr. King was killed and the riots that followed. I say it was the Black Lives Matter movement 50 years before the BLM movement.

Where do you see yourself in the continuum of advertising history?
I see myself as the only person who has told the full story of my era.

Where will this film be shown?
I’m trying to get it in film festivals now and on PBS. I think it’s also a natural for Amazon, Netflix, etc. I think there’ll be a pretty large educational and library market. 

What has been the response so far?
The response has been unbelievable. I put together a “How Many Thumbs Up” questionnaire when we premiered it at the Gene Siskel Center here in downtown Chicago. I later posted on my Facebook page, “Francis Ford Coppola, eat your heart out” (I was referring to his films before Megalopolis).

I’m still pinching myself. I couldn’t have dreamed this up … and folks tell me I’m a big dreamer.

The post The Daily Heller: Transcending Chicago’s Ad Industry Color Barrier appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

By the late 19th century, the look of a package or ad was just as important as the products that were contained or disseminated. Styles expanded the reach of advertising. And ever since the nascent years, practitioners have laid foundations for histories of illustration, typefaces, typography and layout—and chronicling how design succeeded or failed to ignite interest in products, institutions or ideas.

Christopher Long is a prolific design scholar and author whose previous book documented Lucian Bernhard, the inventor of the Object Poster (considered to be the first simplified — indeed modern — approach to advertising and graphic design). His latest is Modern Americanness: The New Graphic Design in the United States 1890–1940, a rigorous and successful effort to unpack a USA Modernist language as a combination of European and domestic art idioms.

Where these American roots and routes come and go is the topic of our conversation below. Long’s research led him down some untraveled roads, and he found some historical cul-de-sacs. His work, so far, has made more than a dent in an old canon of assumptions.

Your earlier book was about Lucian Bernhard, the master of object posters. Why did you select the birth of American modern design for your second? Did it have anything to do with Bernhard coming to America in the 1920s and bringing his objective style with him?
I actually started with the second book, the one on modern American design. At first, my intention was merely to write an essay about the impact of streamlining on American graphic design. The more I researched the topic, however, the more I found there was a larger story that hadn’t been told, at least not fully: the beginnings of the new graphic art in the United States. It was while I was researching American design of the 1930s that I became interested in Bernhard. He had moved to the United States permanently at the end of the ’20s, and his work for companies like Amoco and Rem was cutting-edge in the American context of the early 1930s. I started to read the literature on Bernhard and quickly became aware that the stories he told about his life and work (including the genesis of the famous Priester poster) simply did not add up. I became obsessed with getting at his real story. I put the American design book aside (by then, I had written the first three chapters), and for the next two years I worked on the Bernhard book. After it was published last year, I came back to the American book. 

Bernhard was a modern but not a “Modernist,” which is a rubric reserved for the early 20th-century European avant-garde. How do you define “modern”?
We can understand the term modern in two ways: as a style (and related movement) or as an expression of the new industrial age and all that went with it. In my book, I write about both types of “modern”— the purified form-language (which emerged in Europe and, later, in the United States) we now associate with the avant-garde, and a novel way of communicating on a two-dimensional surface with simple direct forms. The American story before 1940 is more about the latter than the former. It is about how the advertising field was embracing more straightforward forms of visual communication to sell things.

To make that distinction even clearer, I used the term modernness, implying that the book is about everything that went into this new mode of graphic design. It is not only about how things are arranged on the page, but also how messages are being conceived and transmitted. A good example of this is the “soft sell,” the notion of creating in the mind of consumers certain qualities associated with a brand—luxury, for example. One of my favorite examples in the book is the Arrow Collar ad campaign, which is predicated on messages about manliness and upward mobility. These new ways of expressing “value” were inherently modern, but they are not necessarily Modern in a stylistic sense. They are the artifacts of an American society and culture that was rapidly transforming, embracing novel ways of living, working and spending leisure time. The point of the book is to demonstrate that all this was going on in the United States in a way that was different from Europe.

We both agree that Earnest Elmo Calkins was a Midwestern conservative who imported “modernity” to American advertising. Was Calkins, who wrote for the “modernistic” advertising journals, America’s first “Modernist”?
Calkins is a fascinating character. A deaf man who started his career as a printer, Calkins moved to New York when he was in his 20s and found employment with Charles Austin Bates. Bates had one of the first “full-service” advertising agencies, meaning he wasn’t merely a broker but also assisted clients to devise their advertising campaigns. Calkins and another employee, Ralph Holden, left Bates’s employ to start their own agency. Both men had come to believe that print advertising should essentially be visual (up to that time, written “copy” had dominated American advertising). Calkins also thought that advertising should reflect the current state of art. He took what most saw as a radical step: He began hiring artists to create his company’s ads. Calkins did not set out to be a “Modernist”; it just seemed logical to him that images, especially arresting images, could be a potent sales vehicle. And simple images performed that job better than traditional ones. Calkins was a pragmatist: He recognized that the new art trends were visually “affecting,” but also that they reflected American reality. As you note, he was also a prolific writer, and he was especially good at discerning new trends in art and design.

The Art Deco era (known as “moderne”) was a strong wave that hit the USA. Is that what passes for the early advent of modernity in America?
I think for many people it is. At least, it is an obvious transition that seems to signal the shift to a new modernity in design. But I believe that the new graphic design in the United States has its origins some 30 years earlier, in the 1890s, when a handful of designers began to adopt the idea that simplicity was the key to articulating modern life. Edward Penfield’s early posters for Harper’s, for example, show modern people going about their everyday lives in ways that would have been unthinkable just a few years before. It isn’t just the form that is new in his work; it is also the content. Penfield’s often droll depictions are infused with a marked forthrightness, but, even more, they are expressions of an altered way of seeing the world.

Your book rings all the right bells regarding how to define a style that impacted consumables, architecture, fashion, etc. What do you feel you missed in telling this story?
I made a conscious decision at the outset not to write about two important aspects of the story. One is the birth of modern typography. Although I allude to it here and there in my text, I don’t engage it directly. It is not that I don’t deem it important—quite the opposite. It is a tale that needs to be told in another book; it is simply too large to fit into what I wanted to say about the rise of the new advertising art. I also deliberately excluded modern American package design for the same reason. It, too, is deserving of a book of its own.

Whereas European Modernism was never fully embraced in the U.S., streamlining (which was ostensibly industrial and product design) was America’s Modern movement. How was that represented in terms of graphic design?
It is interesting that you ask that question. It is exactly where I started with this book. As I tell in the introduction, I happened to go into Michael Maslan’s poster and ephemera shop in downtown Seattle a few years before the COVID-19 pandemic. While looking through a folder titled “Art Deco,” I saw numerous examples of streamlining. Their quality surprised me. I hadn’t associated that degree of sophistication with American design from those years. I bought about 20 pieces, thinking that I would write an article about how streamlining was American’s great contribution to the new design. Over time, however, I changed my view. For one, there was evidence of streamlined forms in European, especially British, design, though it was not as pronounced as it was in the United States. But what I came to see was that “graphic” streamlining was really about something else: the depiction of motion. And here, the Americans were quite innovative and sophisticated. What was meant to be an article is now a chapter in my book. It is about how motion—and speed—became a shorthand for modernity in the American context.  

What did you learn from your research that alters or challenges existing notions and scholarship about American design?
If you read most surveys of the history of modern graphic design, they give very short shrift to American design before 1936 or so. Modern American design in most of these accounts begins with Lester Beall and Paul Rand. There is also a tacit assumption in almost all these accounts that Modernism was imported—that it came from Europe with the arrival of figures like Herbert Bayer and Ladislav Sutnar. I wanted to demonstrate that there was an indigenous American Modernism, different from what had developed in Europe, but also powerful and, at times, of high quality. I also wanted to discern what was truly American and what was borrowed from Europe. That turned out to be far more challenging than I had assumed when I started the project. But after several years of digging, I found many examples of good design. Anyone flipping through this book will see that the very best of American design in the four-and-a-half decades before Beall made his great breakthrough with the Rural Electrification Administration posters was both inspired and affecting. That is not to say that good design in the United States was universal: The mainstream of American advertising was often lackluster. But the crème of designers (most of them working in New York, Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco or Los Angeles) was both innovative and supremely skilled.

This project had a steep learning curve for me. I had a great deal of help along the way from Mark Resnick, who, with his wife Maura, has what is certainly the largest collection of American posters anywhere. He pointed me in the direction of makers and movements about which I knew little, if anything at all. This was hugely important because I found that the institutional collections—museums, libraries and archives—often didn’t have the sort of material I was interested in, for much of it is ephemera. I turned to another source, one I never thought I would use as a serious researcher: eBay. I began searching the site year by year for the 50 years from 1890–1940. What I found (and purchased) makes up almost a third of the images in the book.

The post The Daily Heller: What is Real American Modern? appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Rinsky’s book is a stylish and crotchety ode to this fascinating group of individuals (which I’ll eventually be a member of—if I’m not already) gathered under an extra-large chuppah. This includes the New York “Schlub”; the “Tough Guy” with James Caan bravado who takes meetings in the shvitz; and the highly irritable “Grumpy Intellectual” on the deli circuit, among others.

In this interview, Rinsky (below, right) explains why he has volunteered as an OJM chronicler-advocate, and the extent of OJM’s individual and collective impact on Greater New York.

OK, the first question is: nu? Why’d you do something that on the surface is the old Jewish stereotype? And what is nu or new about this book that makes Old Jewish Men interesting and funny?
Nu right back atcha. First of all, thanks for taking an interest in my book. As Woody Allen would say: (cough, hack, clears throat) OK, what’s nu about this book that isn’t ONLY playing on the stereotypes? Well, I’m not sure if there’s anything nu exactly in my material. I think it’s the way it’s been presented that is fresh. Not to toot my own sphincter, before Old Jewish Men I don’t think there were these distinct (mostly pointless) categories and archetypes. Not surprisingly, no one ever thought to categorize an already niche category of man. If there is anything nu, and again, I don’t think there is, perhaps it’s the extremely deep specificity of this one joke. But again, this is just doubling down on the minutiae of what makes a certain kind of man. For example, what does a Tough Jew have in his breast pocket that a Soft La OJM does not? Ya know? And then you can kinda just keep going. This material has limbs that can stretch. Where do they shop? Where do they sit? Where do they shit? The more specific it is, the more minute, the funnier and less cheap. If the book wasn’t ultra specific it would be cheap propaganda. But only a real nudnik could get their hands as dirty as the writer of The Old Jewish Men’s Guide to Eating, Sleeping and Futzing Around.

I would think that people of your generation—like mine, and even my first-generation Bronx-born parents—would avoid OJM like some biblical pestilence that hit the Pharaoh. Is this revenge or ironic fondness for the fakakta schlubs in your own life?
Hmmm. To see it as revenge is interesting … revenge against whom? My future self? The Jews? My father? If anything the project is preparatory … it’s gearing up for the inevitable next phase of life. I can’t explain exactly why I’m drawn to old men, but I am. There are levels to it, and my shrink can tell you more than I probably can (FYI, my dad is a shrink), but I don’t feel that it’s revenge. Self-loathing? Who knows. Probably? I think if you find the book hateful or malicious, then you’ve found something in the writing that I don’t necessarily feel. Or at least I’m not conscious of it. The project amuses me, both the videos and the writing. I don’t think it’s deeply meaningful work, but there’s value in being amusing. “Curb Your Enthusiasm” is amusing, wouldn’t you say? In its best moments, HIGHLY amusing is how I would describe the book. Most of the writing is meant to be nothing more than a halfway serious philosophy about a late stage in the game; a fun handbook to navigate a time in life where one should be able to fully relax and pass gas freely, without spousal judgement, guilt, or a deep loss of corpulent sexiness.

This is a book filled with overt schtick, but lots of nuances emerge as well. What are your favorite parts of the book—the lore, the myths, the helpful hints—and, in general, the OJM aesthetic?
It is a lot of schtick, whatever that means. I’m so lost in this OJM universe that I might not even recognize what’s real and what’s schtick anymore. However, when it comes to schtick, good schtick is based in reality—and there’s a LOT of reality in the OJM-a-verse. Luckily, I’ve learned how to stretch and bend it. If it bends it’s funny, if it breaks it’s not funny, right? If you’re asking me what my favorite part of the book is I would say the illustrations and then the short story. I think Dick Carroll is a fantastic cartoonist and a bit of a mind reader. Luckily for me, we barely have to do much back and forth. We’ve been trading pictures of Old Jewish Men for almost 10 years now, long before anyone was offering a book deal. I feel very lucky to work with someone I admire so much. His work, I mean. Not him as a person—hope you’re reading this, Dick.

As I read the book, I recalled the very popular Preppy Handbook from 1980. In fact, there are various books where cultural characterizations are showcased. Do you think, as Baby Boomers and Millennials are getting older (and in my case, decrepit), that it is time to face our fates?
I owe a lot to the Preppy Handbook. It was definitely the biggest influence, visually, for my book. We happen to have the same publisher, but it’s no coincidence. Workman (now owned by Hachette) saw another Preppy Handbook in OJM and pursued. As anti-OJM as this is, I believe that one should face the inevitable with optimism and curiosity. Without those things, you might as well just blow your brains out. I believe in celebrating people, their oddities and specificities. The more peculiar their lives, the more there is to think and write about. I was lucky enough to stumble upon a diverse, practically infinite generation of men as a subject. There’s seemingly no end in sight. To answer your question, yes, I think we should all face our fates, but with grace. Fuck, I sound like a Christian.

How is your OJM message being communicated?
Up until now OJM has only had one podcast, and it sort of petered out and failed. In fact, I think we only had one true fan—your son. But we’re currently working on building a talkshow that will air in a few weeks.

Are you surprised by the success of your OJM brand?
Extremely. I never thought we could get this thing off the ground—not really. I knew there was a select few who would be into this “cause,” and those people found me early. But the mainstream-ness of OJM is confusing. Obviously I love that it’s popular, but only in today’s media landscape could something as narrow take off the way it has. A large reason, and I’m sure you can relate to this, is because Old Jewish Men are more or less proprietary of New York. For whatever reason when you hear Old Jewish Men you don’t think of Jerusalem or Paris or even Boca, but New York. And anything that’s quintessential New York is automatically cool.

I once had an idea (a bad idea, as it turned out) for a book on one of those timely demographic genres. How do you feel about feeding a hunger for ethnic ridicule?
I’ve done some touring for this book—mostly in the tri-state and a few talks in the Midwest, and one thing I’ve found is that Old Jewish Men don’t connect me with the book. They feel that they themselves own it. I don’t even need to show up to do these talks anymore; they’re more than happy to do it without me. So I’m feeding a demographic of hungry men. Good to be of service. Finally, I have a use and I no longer need to travel. I can finally just stay home and pick my belly button.

Can a gentile be an OJM?
I guess the question is, do you need to be Jewish to be Jewish anymore? Or do you need to be Jewish to be an OJM? I’m no rabbi, but my answer is yes: A non-Jew can be an OJM, but it sure helps to be Jewish. Bitching comes naturally to us, but I find that a lot of my non-Jewish friends have this OJM-ness coursing through them, some even more than I do. It’s my damn optimistic spirit. Maybe I’m a Protestant at heart. But in all seriousness I believe that the Jews are an optimistic people. Without it we’d be history.

How long before you become an OJM? Or does this full-time job as advocate for OJM give you a get-out-of-the-ghetto-free card?
I’m certainly a future OJM, but my hairline is going fast. I’m fine with being an advocate, but now that I’m 35 I’ve moved into a more advanced medical category; no longer a young buck in the 22–34 medical class, I’m now perched in the 35–44 bracket. I think a lot more than I used to about my hemoglobin A1C.

The post The Daily Heller: How to Become an Old Jewish Man (Even if You’re Not Jewish) appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

As his contribution to the 1939 New York World’s Fair time capsule, Albert Einstein considered what it would take to ensure peace, equality and dignity in 2039. He wrote a poignant message to posterity—part lamentation, part aspiration, true to the essence of critical thinking and optimism that underscored his life and work.

I recently found an underlined photocopy of that message, which had been given to me over 30 years ago by an SVA MFA Illustration student who wanted to use it as the basis for her proposed thesis. After (re)reading the “Message for Posterity,” I feel it is as deeply relevant and thoughtful as when it was first written for the “World of Tomorrow” expo (the brief reprieve before Europe went to war)—and share it as a testament from one of the greatest thinkers (and PRINT contributors) of the 20th century to those of us here, especially today, Jan. 1, 2025.

The post The Daily Heller: Start 2025 Off With a Few Words From Albert Einstein appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

A stretch? Perhaps! But I ain’t got nothing else for today’s DH.

So … if you are desperate to find that unusual gift for the host of this evening’s New Year’s Eve fete, I suggest a cultural statement with a peel. For just 20 bucks, light up the penultimate night of Hanukkah on the last day of 2024 with Kikkerland‘s Banorah created by E for Effort Design (tested and approved by my colleague Jeff Roth). Guaranteed to kindle the ultimate gasp of holiday spirit.

And here’s some additional banana lore: Rick Cohen’s 2023 book, The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King, details the colorful journey of an immigrant named Sam Zemurray, the founder of Chiquita, who battles with competitive all fruit business leaders who showed disdain for this entrepreneur because of the heavy Yiddish accent.

Zemurray was also a staunch supporter of the future State of Israel, and used his influence to sway the United Nations’ vote on its establishment. Cohen notes that “he was one of the guys who put up the money for the Exodus,” the ship at the center of the 1960 film of the same name.

The post The Daily Heller: Bananas Are My Favorite Because They Have Appeal appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

What follows is one of a dozen or so essays I’ve written over the past two decades about (or adjacent to) my 50-plus years of on-and-off fealty to the music and the musician.

(A version of this story was originally published on Nov. 21, 2023)

Bob Dylan: Mixing Up the Medicine (Callaway Arts & Entertainment) is a must-have for your bookshelf or to bestow as a gift. This richly illustrated book is the first in-depth look at the Bob Dylan Archive in Tulsa, OK, featuring more than 1,100 images by 135 photographers, artists and filmmakers (many never before seen by the public), original essays, and lyrics and notes written in Dylan’s own hand. Publisher Nicholas Callaway acquired rights for a portion of the materials from the Bob Dylan Center, and the book was created in collaboration with the Center, and edited and written by Bob Dylan Archive Curator and Director Mark Davidson and archivist and music historian Parker Fishel.

As the primary public venue for the Bob Dylan Archive collection, the Center curates and exhibits a priceless collection of more than 100,000 items spanning Dylan’s career, including manuscripts, notebooks and correspondence; films, videos, photographs and artwork; memorabilia and ephemera; personal documents and effects; unreleased studio and concert recordings; musical instruments and many other elements. In short, a treasure of riches.

Three weeks after ravenously consuming Mixing Up the Medicine, I solved the problem of what to ask Callaway, Davidson and Fishel.

(Pages and content courtesy Callaway Arts & Entertainment.)

I am sitting at my desk with Dylan‘s iconic face staring back at me on the cover. I know why I want to possess a 608-page book drawing on Dylan’s personal archive, but Nicholas, why did you decide to publish it?
Callaway: The book has been 58 years in the making. In 1966 I first saw Dylan in concert at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia when I was 12, on his way to the U.K. tour that formed the basis for a D.A. Pennebaker’s doc Dont Look Back. He has been my North Star as a musical artist ever since.

And why, Mike and Parker, did you two decide to devote your time, intellect and labor to building this archive?
Fishel: Mark and I are both big Bob Dylan fans, so having the privilege of working with his archive is really a dream job. He’s at the top of the mountain, and his archive reflects and embellishes that impression.

Davidson: But Dylan is just a part of our professional lives. I’m the Senior Director of Archives and Exhibitions at the American Song Archives, which includes the Bob Dylan Center and Woody Guthrie Center. Those institutions house the collections of not just Dylan and Guthrie, but Phil Ochs, Cynthia Gooding and many others. 

Parker is an independent archivist and curator who runs his own company, Americana Music Productions, which works with artists, estates, record labels, museums and other entities interested in sharing the important stories found in archives.

What are your respective backgrounds in terms of Dylan scholarship?
Fishel: I’ve been fortunate to assist with several volumes of the Bootleg Series, but this is both my first book and my first book on Bob Dylan. My other published work is on American music, with participation in projects ranging from the 1969 Ann Arbor Blues Festival to obscure jazz pianist Garnet Clarke.

Davidson: I’m a trained musicologist and I wrote my dissertation on folk music collecting in the Depression-era U.S. I’ve contributed essays and presentations to various Dylan books and conferences since coming aboard, but this is also my first book.

How was the archive established and developed?
Davidson: The body of material that Dylan collected over the years is the core of the archive. As we note in our preface [to the book], it’s one of the most remarkable archives in existence that is dedicated to a single artist. Since the Bob Dylan Archive was acquired by the George Kaiser Family Foundation in 2016, the collection has expanded in important ways. There has been the addition of significant pieces, like Bruce Langhorne’s tambourine, which inspired the song “Mr. Tambourine Man.” The archive has also acquired rare recordings, like “The Bailey Tapes,” which contain the first known version of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.” And finally, two massive fan collections from preeminent and longtime Dylan collectors Mitch Blank and Bill Pagel are also destined for Tulsa. Through strategic acquisitions, including a set of generous donations, the archive has expanded the stories that can be told about Dylan’s remarkable career.

Does anything produced on or about Dylan require your oversight?
Davidson: The Center maintains access to the Bob Dylan Archive, but Dylan’s work is still administered by his management, Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Publishing Group.

What was the process of selection and editing?
Callaway: The Bob Dylan Archive & Bob Dylan Center has a hundred thousand objects in it—manuscripts, lyrics, notebooks, photographs, musical instruments. We worked side-by-side for more than three years with Mark Davidson and Parker Fishel.

What was the input of the designer in such a massive enterprise?
Callaway: I was the creative director, as I had a clear vision of what the book should be, but we assembled a world-class team of designers, editors, researchers, archivists and imaging experts.

My vision was to create a book as a conversation between a vast array of elements, both written and visual, that were in deep conversation with each other, usually in a book, either words or images predominate, and my goal was to have it be a true marriage between the two.

Fishel: I can’t verify whether it’s actually true, but Bob Dylan is often touted as the second-most-written-about American after President Abraham Lincoln, with over 2,000 books dedicated to his life and work. With so many words already written, we thought long and hard about what we could add to that story. Since nearly all of that scholarship and writing on Dylan to date has been produced without access to the Bob Dylan Archive, we decided to focus on that body of materials and what it might reveal. 

What emerged was an almost “inside-out” biography, with various albums, songs, tours and other episodes explored through the items that Dylan kept and collected across the years. To do this, we went page-by-page through the contents of the archive, each lyric manuscript, piece of correspondence, notebook, photograph, and other ephemera, to select exemplary and representative items of the archive’s voluminous and rich holdings. This material was supplemented by additional material like film stills, tape boxes, previously unpublished excerpts from the archive, interview outtakes from the documentary “No Direction Home,” and original interviews conducted by the Bob Dylan Center. 

Taken together, all of these elements form a prismatic portrait of Dylan’s creative life, revealing themes and connections that cross Dylan’s long and still-evolving career, while also shedding new (and often surprising light) on specific songs, projects and events. 

Whose idea was it to include so many different creative voices in the book?
Callaway: The book [team] commissioned 30 different writers and artists to come to the center, pick one artifact and use it as the starting point for an essay or meditation; those essays became our breakouts between the nine chapters that frame the full arc of Dylan’s life.

Davidson: The book had its origins in the years immediately following the arrival of the archive in Tulsa in 2016. Michael Chaiken, the first curator of the Bob Dylan Archive, and Robert Polito, poet and professor at the New School in New York City, began bringing writers, artists and musicians to Tulsa in 2017 to engage with the archive and to do a public program in Tulsa. While here they were asked to choose an item from the archive and to write a short essay about it in a style of their choosing. 

The book was initially going to be a collection of these essays, but once we started working with Nicholas Callaway, the scope enlarged immensely. To accommodate Callaway’s vision, Parker and I made the editorial decision to include more voices, expanding on the approach that Todd Haynes took to Dylan in the film I’m Not There. We wanted to include Dylan’s own words, through interviews and excerpts from the archive, as well as those of his collaborators and contemporaries, again taken from the archive as much as possible. This allowed our own authorial voice to be more of a skeleton of a story where others could fill in the detail. We tried to present the available evidence and allow people to make their own interpretations, like the question of what really happened at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

What is the influence of design on such a massive enterprise?
Davidson: Callaway Arts and Entertainment has been producing books of the highest quality for decades, and they had an immense impact on the design and overall trajectory of the book. It’s in many respects a visual biography, with photographs, manuscripts and other images providing the jumping-off point for illuminating Dylan’s working career as a musician. We all worked very closely day after day, Zoom after Zoom, carefully honing the layout. We would explain how images related to one another and to the larger narrative, and they’d somehow find a way to make it work. It’s a design that reflects the rawness of an archive, but is also somehow very elegant. And their attention to detail was second to none. The intricate tracing of the edges of ripped manuscripts or spiral notebooks just makes those images feel like they jump off the page.

Did Dylan have any input whatsoever?
Callaway: None.

Davidson: This book is the first fully authorized deep dive into the Bob Dylan Archive.

Is the Dylan material at the Tulsa center all there is, or are there other archives in other places?
Callaway: There are several other smaller archives, assembled, primarily, by obsessive collectors, in Hibbing, MN, at the Morgan Library and elsewhere. 

Fishel: Obviously no collection is complete, and individual items and other small collections (sometimes of some importance) exist in other institutions or in private hands. There are also wonderful fan collections around the world. But in terms of the size, scope and incredible depth of the Bob Dylan Archive, there is nothing comparable.

What did you learn from this material that you did not know beforehand?
Callaway: I learned that the depth and scope of Dylan’s creative achievement is monumental, even more than I realized from a lifetime of listening and studying.

Fishel: When someone has been creating art at a consistently high level for 60-plus years, and continues to do so, I think we have a tendency to flatten that into words like “genius.” What gets erased is the considerable labor that goes into the act of creating. Dylan himself has talked about songwriting as a mysterious process, and I don’t think the archive does anything to dispel that observation. But the archive does give glimpses into Dylan’s songwriting processes and how those have evolved throughout his career. 

In his 60 Minutes interview with Ed Bradley, Dylan speaks of his early songs as being written with a kind of penetrating magic. You can see that—a song nearly fully formed—in the draft of “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” But you can also see different creative processes jostling around in a draft of “Tangled Up in Blue” from one of the pocket notebooks in which Dylan wrote the 1975 album Blood on the Tracks, and still different approaches to writing in a draft for “Tempest” from the 2012 album of the same name. Dylan employs different methods at different times for different reasons, and it’s fascinating to see.

Davidson: The archive reveals the depth of his work ethic from the earliest drafts of “Chimes of Freedom” and the songs from Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited through the songs on Tempest, the last album of original material he worked on prior to the sale of the archive in 2016. We can see that he was a judicious and sometimes malicious editor of his own work and that he would not release material he didn’t feel was finished. 

It’s clear that for Dylan, a song isn’t finished with the written word, and that’s sometimes even true of the studio recording. He’s constantly working and reworking the words and music, whether it’s in the studio or in live performance after the song has been released. Just look at the recent approaches he took to his early songs on his most recent album, Shadow Kingdom.

Is it true that Dylan has never visited the Center?
Davidson: Bob Dylan has not visited the Bob Dylan Center, though he did visit the Woody Guthrie Center [next door] several years ago and seemed to enjoy his visit. He hasn’t played a concert in Tulsa since April 2022, and the Center opened in May, so who knows.

There is a lot of art, painting and sculpture that he’s produced. A few of the familiar things (e.g., album art) are in the book. But is this a separate archive altogether?

Fishel: Dylan’s work in the visual arts is maintained independent of the Center. However, Dylan created the ironworks portal to the entryway of the Center, and through generous donations the Center also has the Face Value painting series and a 1968 painting that was Dylan’s first—both currently on display.

What would you say is the ultimate value of having all this material in one place? Is it scholarship, nostalgia, fandom or a bit of all?
Callaway: The value and importance of having the vast majority of such a great artist’s body of work preserved and archived in one location is still rare and of inestimable value for this and future generations. The book is one expression of Andre Malraux’s idea that a book can be the virtual museum, the museum without walls.

Davidson: I think the answer differs based on who you are and where you are coming from in relation to Dylan and his music, but surely scholarship, nostalgia and fandom are three factors that come into play. Whatever the motivations for picking up the book, Parker and I hope that the way the story is presented furthers the mission of the Bob Dylan Center in using Dylan’s work to inspire creativity in us all. 

Fishel: As an active artist, Dylan’s music continues to have a profound impact on our culture. Bringing together these elements in a book hopefully sheds new light on the extent of that influence, but there is one crucial limit to the printed page: You can’t hear the music, which Dylan told us in his Nobel Lecture, is the way he thinks of his own work. So that’s where I’d encourage everyone to visit the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, OK, where visitors can have a rich multimedia experience that is really complementary—and I’d say almost essential—for the full enjoyment of Mixing Up the Medicine.

The post The Daily Heller: Bob Dylan’s Back Pages appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Last week I received an email that has haunted me for reasons that will become clear. The missive explained that a passerby stumbled upon a pile of trash on 100th Street and Central Park West in New York City, including garbage bags containing numerous large ring binder portfolio books filled with original cartoons and illustrations. The passerby grabbed as many as possible and lugged them home to share with his wife. By coincidence she happens to be friends with an artist pal of mine, to whom she sent an email in hopes of learning something about the creator of the discarded art work. Included in the email were photos of the artwork, each signed with a name. My friend had no idea who the creator was, so she forwarded the photos to a friend of hers, a cartoonist, who is also a friend of mine. He did not recognize the artist either. So he decides to send the correspondence to me on the off chance I might know the artist, “because,” he wrote in his email, “you know everyone.” This is a flattering exaggeration, but … it turns out I do indeed know the artist, whose name is Bill Lee.

Not only did I know Bill Lee, but for many years we had a close working relationship and deep friendship. Bill was one of a new breed of satiric gag cartoonists. He had a singularly fluid linear style. He was also the humor editor of Penthouse and Viva magazines and he created one of my favorite comic sculptures: President Richard Nixon as a shrunken head**, which he made into a poster that hung on my office wall. Bill also suggested the title of my second book, Man Bites Man: Two Decades of Satiric Art, in which his work was featured prominently.

I haven’t seen Bill in over 30 years (such is the nature of living in New York) and I don’t recall why we ended our friendship (such is the nature of memory loss). Nonetheless, I am convinced this sequence of totally random connections that triggered memories of Bill after three decades was somehow destined to be (such is the nature of paranormal energy).

That night I was trying not to think about the implications of this surprising sequence of events. The next day I contacted Ammon Shea, the man who salvaged and shared Bill’s work with his wife, Alexandra Horowitz, who had written the email to Maira Kalman, who passed it on to Rick Meyerowitz, who forwarded it to me.

Ammon told me in an email that he removed only a very small selection of what was tossed. “My son and I were walking east on 100th between Columbus and Amsterdam last week, and noticed a man headed west, holding an armful of framed pictures,” he recalled. “A hundred feet further on we came to a private sanitation truck, loading what looked to be the contents of someone’s apartment into the back of the truck. It seemed obvious that someone had just passed away, and that their possessions were all being thrown away, without any concern.” 

“I saw a large portfolio,” he added, “opened it and saw that it was filled with someone’s art, and thought it was the sort of thing someone somewhere would be glad to see rescued. There were a couple of young men there going through the furniture, and I heard one say ‘no, leave those behind … those are Polaroids … you need special equipment to look at them.’ The ‘Polaroids’ turned out to be a set of binders, filled with Kodachrome slides. These were a mixture of travel pictures and slides of art, and so I grabbed these as well.”

Ammon concluded, “It is, I suppose, entirely possible that the decision to throw all this out was a considered one—I didn’t know Bill Lee, and know nothing of the circumstances surrounding his works and their appearance on 100th Street. But I couldn’t imagine just walking past the destruction of something that was once terribly important to someone without seeing if it could be otherwise handled.”

I suppose we have all seen art discarded in urban trash bins or town dumps. A librarian friend of mine, who has since passed away, made regular rounds of artist studios and the offices of creative institutions to collect discarded artifacts for his research library; he had collected some rare, important items. Over the years, I’ve salvaged pieces of value to me. I always wondered who and why someone would discard personal or professional creations in such an unceremonious manner. How did the art lose its value? Were they failed experiments? Was it an uncontrollable emotion—a release of frustration or anger? Or was the reason more prosaic—an existential shift in circumstance, like moving to smaller quarters or dying?

Whatever the reason, there is something sorrowful about the disposal of art, whatever the perceived quality. Among the material saved by Ammon and Alexandra were drawings from a trip Bill made to Poland to cover the Solidarity era in cartoons, possibly for Penthouse. There was a proposal for a charming book of fantasy, comic animal furniture that was inspired (Bill scribbled on one of them) by his young daughter. Who knows what other items were hauled away to heaven knows where?

I began seeking out clues to my estranged friend’s whereabouts. I was impatient to find a rationale. I recalled that he had lived near 100th Street and CPW, where the bags were found. Before the pandemic I heard he was not in the best of health and required a caregiver to help him get around. I was given his telephone number, which I lost, though I found it on one of the discarded drawings. I dialed the exchange and an expressionless computer-generated voice immediately answered: “This number is no longer in service.” Click.

I found no record of Bill’s death on Google or Wikipedia. I found no personal website. Although he was often published, very few of his cartoons are archived online, even under the tag “Penthouse.” I found a brief biography on a cartoonists’ fan site and wrote to the site administrator but he could not help. “I never actually spoke to him,” he admitted.

Next, I dug deep into my hazy memory for his daughter’s name. It eventually came into focus, so I thought. I also thought she was a professor or college instructor outside of New York, and after a few frustrating hours clicking around faculty databases and trying out variations of the name, I stumbled on a possible match. In fact, I was so certain of it when I saw a photograph of a woman who resembled Bill that I wrote an email to her and waited. Two or three days went by without a word. I eventually looked in my spam folder and found that she had instantly responded:

Hiya Steve,

This is indeed an odd story! I’m sorry to say, though, that I’m not [the person] you’re looking for (there are SO MANY of us). 

I wrote to Maira to relate my brief search. She wrote back:

Hi Dear Steve,

I’m sorry this has stirred up so many memories. Isn’t that how it always is. You wake up in the morning and don’t know what’s going to hit you.

Yes, it stirred up something. But more than faded memories, I am distressed that so much original artwork was relegated to the garbage heap. It is not possible to protect and save the gargantuan amounts of artifacts and documents that define an individual’s life on earth; there is not enough time or space to store and care for it all. By this measure a creative life, unless rescued by chance or diligence, is easily reduced to just so much burdensome refuse.

Other than the mystery of not knowing whether Bill is alive or dead, I am haunted by the sad fact that he is just one of too many artists who were not archived or collected, and are now relegated to attics or, worse, a landfill. I am continually asked by many illustrators, cartoonists and designers now in their 70s to 90s or their heirs who are responsible for the work, where to deposit it and how to preserve it. I shrug. There are some museums, archives, libraries and study centers that take donated materials; more extensive and historically significant collections are bought. But not everything can (or should) be saved. Not everything made by an artist has a measurable value. Still, this story provokes a sense of despair.

Preservation is validation. Validation is proof of life. Long ago, I published a fair amount of Bill’s art. Other than what is in Man Bites Man I do not have anything of his—and what I do have (somewhere) are photostats, anyway. Stored but not easily accessible. I am certain I saved tattered copy of the Nixon shrunken head poster. Maybe what remains of his work eventually will find an appreciative home—and maybe the best of it already has. Well, at least for now, some of it is off the street.

The post The Daily Heller: When Art is Garbage appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Jules Feiffer is 95, and his most recently published book is a graphic novel for children titled Amazing Grapes. It is a fantasy about a trio of siblings and multi-dimensional time and space travel, aided and abetted by various degrees of menacing monsters. Each episode in this complex story exposes the kids to untold dangers as they search for their mother, who is stuck between dimensions. It is a chaotic amalgam of characters and narrative twists, and Feiffer—who has written and illustrated conventional children’s books, among novels, plays, screenplays and all manner of imaginative endeavors—has yet to embark on a project as unique as this. He is 95, but making this book keeps him, he says, “7 years old.”

Over 40 years have passed since I worked with Feiffer on a collection of his weekly Village Voice comic strips. He was among the best political satirists. Around age 50, he turned his passion toward children’s books and graphic novels for adults. Now, he has almost completed his graphic autobiography. I can’t wait for it.

Recently I had the opportunity to talk with Feiffer about the work he is doing right now—and his surprisingly infectious optimism, despite suffering from an incurable degenerative macula disease that is stealing his eyesight and that of many other illustrators of his generation.

I finished Amazing Grapes, and I must tell you, I dreamed about it last night before this interview.
Yeah, what do you think?

I think it’s wonderfully absurd.
… And it was a lot of fun to do, too. My method of working has changed over the years since you and I [worked] together.

How so?
I don’t want to know what I’m going to do until I start doing it, and a voice says, “Do this, and do that.” I take instructions from some unknown voice that basically directs me. I don’t know what the story is going to be until the voice tells me what it’s going to be. I like to be ignorant of what’s about to happen—the book, in a sense, instructs me on how to write and draw it.   

This is not your first graphic novel. How did this book come about?
I did a series of three noir graphic novels, and I felt it was time for me to write a story for children that was a little more complicated and a little more mysterious than the usual. I didn’t know quite what it was going to be. So, I started with the mother looking out a window, but I didn’t have a clue why she was doing that. Then the story started to tell itself. I had not planned on the interstellar travels or going from planet to planet. I just took instructions from the book and it told me where to go.

Did any of your editors have any input into the book?
Not really. The essential editor on these books of mine is my longtime editor, Michael Di Capua; Michael and I have had this lovely relationship since Sendak sent me to him 100 years ago, and so we trust each other implicitly. He knows how my mind works and how I think, and so he went along for the ride just as I was going along for the ride.

In the beginning of the book, you introduce the father, who simply leaves his wife and kids without any money.
The only thing I was sure of in terms of all of the characters, is that he was a bad guy. I didn’t know anything about the mother, other than she liked to look out the window and stare into space. Another thing I knew throughout is that there are a brother and two sisters and it’s their competitiveness and rivalry with each other that dominates over everything. So, they can be in the middle of space travel and awful things going on, but they’re concerned with what goes on in the relationship, mostly.

I thought that would be a lot of fun, and it was. And they seem to be looking for some sort of anchor with their mother, who doesn’t seem to want to be the anchor (we find out why later—she’s actually a creature from outer space and didn’t know it). At the end of the book, she has found her proper place, which is not to be with her children, but to be back in the planet that she fled from when she was little. But I didn’t know any of that was going to happen.

How did you decide on the title Amazing Grapes?
I was so affected when President Obama got up in the 2015 memorial for the Charleston church shooting, where the children were killed, and out of nowhere he started singing “Amazing Grace.” I mean, everybody in the country’s jaw dropped. I still have tears from that; I found it one of the most moving memories in my bank of memories, and it became a key signifier of the book. It’s what allows the characters to be free, and it’s a sign of hopefulness. It’s a sign of survival amidst all the perils that face you. It’s a sign about hope.

Why did you make such a sharp pivot from politics to doing children’s books?
I still deal with politics now and again. I’ve gone through so many shifts, changes and alterations and a sense of despair and discouragement—none of which I feel right now, by the way. Then there was my personal life, which was in repeated states of cataclysm. My work, whether it’s a cartoon, children’s book, play, a story that combines all of the above, is, in some ways, disguised as autobiography. I take what is on my mind and let all the things just happen, and they come out, and I try to structure them into a work of art and a work of amusement.

… And a work of exorcism?
Absolutely … a work of exorcism. But everything I’ve ever done is to get me out of the trouble I did. From the time I was a kid, cartoons [were] my own psychotherapy. You know, I’d be working through … well, I didn’t know what my problem was that I was working through. There’d be these aha moments over the years, and whether it was a children’s book or whether it was a play or whether it was a Village Voice comic, the older I’ve become over the years, knowing this self-analysis and feeling this way, the more playful my work has been to me and has become. And now, as much as anything else, it is a continual round robin of play. And when I made that discovery some years ago, it opened doors I didn’t even know were there, and I’m very grateful for that. And the doors will continue to continue to be open. I mean, I’m 95-and-a-half, and I’m still a 7-year-old boy.

One of your characters is a dog who is really a cat. In his dog guise, is it Virgil, the guide who takes us through your version of Dante’s Inferno?
I stole the dog from Walt Kelly [the creator of Pogo]. In his version, “man’s best friend” is leading people down the wrong path, and was always speechifying. And Kelly, who never had a nice word to say to me in my entire career, I decided to pay back by using his dog in my book. The dog is named Kelly.

Walt Kelly was also a strong voice against McCarthyism, wasn’t he?
Kelly taught me a lot about the cartooning world that I was finding myself moving into at the same time he was doing Pogo. He was the editorial cartoonist for the New York Star, which was the successor to the newspaper PM, and he was doing some of the toughest, most radical and imaginative cartoons on McCarthyism and the whole spirit of McCarthyism. He was much tougher than [Washington Post cartoonist] Herblock—and meaner. He just knocked me for a loop and strongly influenced the kind of politics that I moved toward as I was getting older and coming of age. Kelly was a great hero of mine.  

Is it accurate to say that Amazing Grapes is a kind of coming-of-age book for the 95-year-old you?
You know, Steve, they’re all coming-of-age books. To me, they are all books of self-discovery. They all were stories I was telling, none of which I understood as I was telling them, that explained themselves to me as they, in a sense, wrote themselves and instructed me how to write. And that process is still going on. That is one of the things that I’ve learned over the years.

How has the macular degeneration changed the way you draw?
It doesn’t so much in some ways; as it always has been with my craft, the limitation becomes a plus. Instead of thinking of it as something that prevents me from doing what I want to do, I change it into something that frees me into doing something I’ve never done before, which is in many ways more innovative and fun—and fun is an important word in all my life. I’m out to surprise myself. I found a way to make them work for me, and I’m still doing it with the blindness. I had macular degeneration when I did Amazing Grapes but I hadn’t developed to a point where I thought I might lose my eyesight.

I was taking shots in the eye and stabilized during that period, and then it destabilized for a while, and I stopped taking the injections, because they stopped doing any good. But at the same time they allow me to do some of the best work I’ve ever done. So screw it.

The post The Daily Heller: Jules Feiffer at 95: “Doing the Best Work of My Life” appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Merry Christmas … again.

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(This post was originally published on Dec. 24, 2018)

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We spoke about the expanse of influences and inspirations that have contributed to a vital art and design community of kindred spirits, and about raising awareness around Caribbean makers and ceramic art traditions of the Black diaspora.

What inspired this research and development?
My research and development for Crafted Kinship began during my MFA at Tyler School of Art and Architecture. While studying ceramics, I found myself diving deeper into my heritage—my mother is from St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and my father is from Jamaica. As a first-generation American, I wanted to understand what it means to exist in this in-between space of belonging. That exploration started with my creative practice but grew into a broader inquiry into how Black Caribbean makers use their work to tell stories, preserve culture and innovate. It became about creating a dialogue around shared histories and the resilience that ties us together.

You are a textile artist and designer in your own right. How many unknown artists and artisans did you know before doing this project?
Before starting this project, I personally knew a few makers, and I was familiar with most, but many were new to me as well. The Caribbean’s creative ecosystem is vast and often underrepresented, so researching to find makers from as many islands as possible was deeply exciting. As a stranger to most of the makers, I felt honored that they allowed me into their studios, which are often off limits to many. It was both humbling and inspiring to learn about their practices and how they use creativity as a tool for storytelling and social change.

Where does your own work fit into this continuum?
My work sits at the intersection of storytelling, cultural preservation and innovation. As a multidisciplinary artist and textile designer, I see myself as part of the same continuum as the makers in Crafted Kinship—we’re all drawing from deep cultural wells while navigating the complexities of our present. My work often explores themes of migration, identity and memory, and this project expanded my understanding of how those themes resonate across the Caribbean diaspora.

What did you learn socially, culturally and artistically from your research into their work?
Socially, I learned how interconnected we are despite geographic distances and how creativity serves as a bridge for community-building and resistance. Culturally, I saw the depth and breadth of influence Black Caribbean makers have globally, even if their contributions are often overlooked. Artistically, it was a reminder to stay authentic—these artists taught me the power of creating from a place of personal truth and cultural pride.

What is the African diaspora’s importance in this Caribbean experience and practice?
The African diaspora is not just a part of the Caribbean experience and creative practice, it is at its heart. For many of the makers in Crafted Kinship, their work is deeply tied to carrying forward the traditions and values of our African heritage. The diaspora is the foundation—the cultural, spiritual and historical thread that connects us across borders and generations. It shapes how we make, how we see the world, and how we tell our stories. Whether through textiles, ceramics or design, there’s a constant dialogue with African traditions—adapting and reinterpreting them within the Caribbean context. This connection to the diaspora isn’t just about honoring the past, it’s about grounding ourselves in resilience, innovation and a sense of belonging that transcends place.

How exhaustive was (and is) your quest? There are so many unfamiliar artists.
When we talk about unfamiliar artists, it’s important to ask—unfamiliar to who? Within the Caribbean diaspora, these makers are deeply known and celebrated. They are accomplished makers of various disciplines whose work holds significant meaning within their communities and cultural landscapes.

This project isn’t about “introducing”‘ them but rather amplifying their voices in a broader global context. Crafted Kinship aims to bridge that gap, showcasing the incredible depth and innovation of these makers while emphasizing that they’ve always been integral to the story of Contemporary Caribbean creativity.

You founded the Black Artists and Designers Guild. Tell me about its goals and accomplishments.
The Black Artists and Designers Guild (BADG) was founded with the goal of empowering Black makers of African descent to create culturally immersive spaces that reflect our heritage and identity. We wanted to build a community where we could support each other and collaborate under the principle of Ujima—collective work and responsibility. It’s about creating spaces that are for us, by us, and connecting in ways that amplify our shared vision.

Our journey began with humble beginnings—we showcased our work in the corner of a consignment furniture store. Today, we’ve had the honor of designing the library for the Smithsonian Design Triennial at the Cooper Hewitt, known as the Underground Library, and we’ve worked on many significant projects—such as curating the Beyond the Mask Exhibition, Blackflauge at the VIP Lounge at Design Miami and designed murals for Colossal Media. Each of these accomplishments represents a milestone in our mission to elevate and support Black artists and designers.

What do you have planned in the wake of this book?
In the wake of this book, I plan to continue my book tour across the United States, the Caribbean and Europe, reaching as many places as possible where the Caribbean diaspora is present and where communities are eager to support the makers featured in Crafted Kinship.

But this book is also a resource that’s inspiring me to go deeper into my own creative practice. The research and connections made through this project are pushing me to explore new ways of engaging with themes of heritage, identity and community. I look forward to developing more installations through my studio, as well as developing public art projects. These themes will continue to inform my work, and I’m excited about the new possibilities that will unfold as I dive further into this exploration.

The post The Daily Heller: Black Caribbean Craft and Design on the Rise appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Mexican Prints at the Vanguard
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, through Jan. 5

Among the most acerbic protest and satiric art of the late 19th and early 20th centuries originated during and after Mexico’s populist revolution. I’ve collected many artifacts of this time. But had I not been gifted a copy of the MET Bulletin, I would have missed this trove of printed publications, Calavareras (broadsheets) and pamphlets.

As the Bulletin explains: “The rich tradition of printmaking in Mexico—from the 18th century to the mid-20th century—is explored in this exhibition of works drawn mainly from The Met collection. Among the early works presented are [pages] by Mexico’s best-known printmaker, José Guadalupe Posada, whose depictions of skeletons engaged in human activities helped establish a global identity for Mexican [comic and satiric] art. Following the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920), printmaking proved to be the ideal medium for artists wanting to address social and political concerns and voice resistance to the rise of fascism around the world. Artists also turned to printmaking to reproduce Mexican murals from the 1920s and to create exhibition posters, prints for the popular press, and portfolios celebrating Mexican dress and customs.”

In addition to Posada, whose work is chronicled in dozens of books and catalogs, are the great Mexican muralists Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and Leopoldo Méndez. They exemplify how prints defined and critiqued social and political issues, a role of graphic arts that continues in Mexico today. French artist Jean Charlot donated a plethora of his own prints and many by other artists in the mid-1940s when he represented the Metropolitan Museum in Mexico. The collection is stunning … and, for me, a wonderful holiday surprise (along with the MET’s other offerings).

(Images taken from the MET Bulletin.)

Imaginary Books: Lost, Unfinished and Fictive Works Found Only in Other Books
The Grolier Club, through Feb. 15

The Grolier Club is a deep source of bibliophilic scholarship and obsession. Its exhibits are replete with invaluable knowledge and various rarities. One of the club’s more curious exhibitions presently on view this holiday season is at once a conceptual art installation and hilarious entertainment, featuring a collection of books that do not really exist. Imaginary Books: Lost, Unfinished and Fictive Works Found Only in Other Books is part literary phenomenon, part satire. It is “an alternative library” that imagines the look and feel of some of the major “what ifs” of bibliographic history.

Curated by collector and club member Reid Byers, the exhibition includes more than 100 imaginary books: “lost texts that have no surviving example, unfinished books, and fictive works that exist only in story. In this post-structuralist art project, presented with a dry wit,” all of these props are “meticulously created by Byers with a team of printers, bookbinders, artists and calligraphers.”

The gallery setting is a collector’s ersatz library featuring such impossibilities as William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labours Won, the simulated lost sequel to Love’s Labour’s Lost, of which no known copies survive; Ernest Hemingway’s first novel, which vanished when his wife’s luggage was stolen from a train at the Gare de Lyon, Paris, in 1922; and the Necronomicon, a magical volume that had been sealed in a Wells Fargo strongbox. An accompanying book/catalog with serious parody citations is published by Oak Knoll (U.S.) and Club Fortsas (France). It is more than a hoot, it is high- low-techery in an age of digital AI fakes and simulacra.

If you cannot see the exhibit, get the real printed book. Or do both. After all, it is the holiday for giving and getting.

“An encounter with an imaginary book brings us forcibly to a liminal moment, confronted with an object that we know does not exist, but then it leaves us suspended in this strange space, for being magical. … It appears before us only to amuse, to prompt a gasp, a knowing chuckle, or the briefest thought of ‘O, how I wish!’” says Byers, adding, “Every book in the world was an imaginary book when it was first begun to be written.”

(Book covers taken from the catalog, and the collection of Reid Byers.)

The post The Daily Heller: Two Must-See Exhibits in NYC This Holiday Season appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Ultimately, Kühne belongs to two cults: poster making and letterpress printing. For him, this book is multifaceted, as monograph, manifesto and self-examination. This comes through in a section of questions that are central to his practice. For instance:

Why print?

The printed poster is dying. Why posters?

Why typography?

How important are unforeseen incidents in analog printing?

How important is movable type?

Why letterpress?

His answers are rational, not dogmatic cult regurgitation.

He believers that single-use printed matter is not sustainable, but many messages deserve to be printed: “The haptics, the smell, the physical experience has qualities that a digital medium cannot offer—and vice versa.” He adds, “the poster is the supreme form of visual communication: The reduction of complex messages down to a few words. One simple visual concept on one single page.”

Moreover, “a poster can be so many things: that functional piece of visual communication and intervention in our public space—wheatpasted legally or illegally, brand new or faded and age, tagged and sprayed by teenagers, loved or hated—and most definitely not forever. It is a part of our culture.”

Kühne’s posters are not stylistically consistent, nor are they always legible. “Legibility is relative,” he says. “I don’t believe that pure legibility is the primary goal of a good typographic poster.” However, since his work begins by wrestling with language, “a good poster cannot be created without a well-formulated message.” For his process, “the first step is always to play with possible words. Not all the words and formulations supplied by clients are coherent and sacrosanct.” And he’s right. He also continues ideas hailing from Futurism and Dada, and more recently ’80s–’90s New Typography, but with materials and hardware that date to the dawn of commercial art in the late 19th century.

Poster Cult is indeed smartly designed, with one optimally printed full-page poster per spread, and useful citation on the opposite page. With an introductory historically insightful profile by Angelina Lippert, director of Poster House New York (which collects Kühne’s work), and an afterword by Christian Brändle—who explains why Kühne is “high priest” of the letterpress poster cult—this volume is as engaging to read as it is to savor the craft and typographic wonder of these luminous posters.

The post The Daily Heller: The Workings of a Devoted Poster Cultist appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Hingston Studio has designed the visual identity and opening title sequence for The Day of the Jackal. Founded by Tom Hingston, Hingston Studio is an independent design practice based in London, specializing in motion, design, and creative direction. Over the past 25 years, Hingston Studio has collaborated with an impressive roster of influential brands, artists, and organizations. Their portfolio spans diverse industries, including fashion, beauty, music, film, and technology, with title sequence work that includes The Darkest Hour, Atonement, and Control.

The word “Jackal” serves as the graphic centerpiece. Letterforms are deconstructed – spliced and distorted into isolated fragments that drift through the frame. This evolving composition embodies a metaphorical game of concealment and revelation. Brief, fleeting glimpses of the lead protagonists heighten the tension and intrigue – like pieces of a moving jigsaw puzzle, the fragments gradually align to reveal the main title.

The sequence draws on 70s cinema. The title track, “This Is Who I Am,” scored by Celeste, moves effortlessly between nostalgia and contemporary. Hingston worked closely with the track to create a seamless synergy between visuals and music. The geometric visual form is choreographed to mirror the song’s haunting melody.

The final sequence combines footage from the series with the original portraiture of the lead cast members, shot by Tom Hingston, who I queried about making titles for an adaptation of such an iconic film.

What is the genesis of your approach to The Day of the Jackal title sequence?
We wanted to create something that embraced the enigmatic essence of Jackal’s world. To craft an opening sequence that would nod to the era of the original film – harnessing the underlying tension between characters – and presenting this through a contemporary lens. It was also important to define a visual language that felt stylized and cinematic, reflecting the look and feel of the show itself.

The original film had great resonance at the time of its release. What, if anything, do your designs reference from the original story?
There are specific themes which carry over from the original film, the primary one being the underlying cat-and-mouse narrative that runs throughout – our edited sequence captures that constant oscillation between hunter and the hunted. The grade and texture of the footage that appears in the sequence are also evocative of 70s cinema.

How have you made the new, serial version your own visual personality?
We created a visual language that was derived from the main title itself. Taking the word “Jackal” as our primary element, we deconstructed the individual letterforms – spliced, fractured, and distorted – these isolated fragments drift through the frame, forming a sequence of moving apertures, that reveal glimpses into the world. Playing with this graphic device allows us to continually shift perspective – who is hiding from (or hunting) whom. Fleeting glimpses of the lead protagonists build a sense of tension and intrigue, like a moving jigsaw puzzle, the fragments gradually converge to reveal the main title.

Were there alternative ideas? Or did you nail this out of the box?
We were actually brought in quite early on in the process before they had started filming, so there were a number of different approaches that we worked through with the show’s creators, before landing on the final idea. Our team was on the project for around eight months, so ideas had the time and space to develop and evolve.

More generally, do you believe streaming shows have opened a new golden era of motion graphic sequences?
Yes, absolutely. It’s an exciting time in that respect. I think streaming has opened up a real opportunity in this space and it’s so much more than a renaissance of a bygone era – you’re seeing some beautiful work that really transports you into the world of a show – innovative work that pushes expectations and techniques in whole new directions. 

The post The Daily Heller: The Titles of the Jackal Have Their Day appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Sample books have a special place in the archives of graphic and type design. They are, at the same time, examples of letters and entire alphabets and examples of the way the respective typefaces can be used in real and speculative layouts. Many years ago, I stumbled across a rare bookshop in upstate New York that was selling the type specimen collection of author,designer, former editor of American Artist Fridolf Johnson, known for his popular Dover books on bookplates, vintage printing ephemera, and the prints of Rockwell Kent, among others, His collection included two large cardboard boxes with file folders organized by typeface and including a few hundred specimens from Bauer, ATF, Huxley, Barhardt and Spindler, Deberny & Peignot, and dozens more type foundries. Acquiring them was the trigger for various books and articles I edited and wrote.

In the stacks of the rich typographic legacy of Letterform Archive are many of these rare specimen books and brochures. The archive has chosen to publish facsimile editions of some of the choicest pieces by leading typeface designers, collected in portfolios ingeniously designed by Letterform Archive’s art director, Alice Chau.

These titles publish in the trade in early February but are available directly from Letterform during December and January. The first three-volume set is available here: Type By Lucian Bernhard; Type By Roger Excoffon; Type By Aldo Novarese. I also spoke with publisher Lucie Parker about the plans for future facsimiles in their Type By series.

What is your intention for the series?
Our intention with Type By is to present these marvels of marketing exactly as they were first produced: at full length, in full color, and in their original trim sizes, bound into individual booklets or folded into simple pamphlets. 

This is in part to share examples of foundries’ inventiveness in print during the first half of the twentieth century when such ephemera flourished, but also to present the complete original typefaces in all available styles and sizes—alternate glyphs and all—for type students and scholars. 

While in-use examples ultimately do so much to shape a typeface’s story, there’s something particularly special about seeing a typeface presented in its original specimen, which served as a sort of visual statement of purpose at the time of the type’s release. In their proposed use cases and choices in layout, format, and material, specimens give us a sense of what type designers and foundries envisioned for their typefaces and hint at the design ethos and ideas that led to the faces’ creation. 

Individual spreads of these specimens are often reproduced in publications, but we wanted type enthusiasts to have access to every page of the specimens’ rich and wonderful context and experience the physicality of their unique formats. As a cornerstone of Letterform Archive’s collection, we find these specimens just too delightful—colorful and dynamic, innovative and daring—to show only a handful of layouts. 

We’ve focused the first three on the output of individual designers to show their remarkable range, as well as the relationships between the various faces they designed.

Are you planning more in the series?
If there’s demand, we’d be thrilled to produce more titles in the series. We have a collection of more than 4,000 type specimens, and we’re eager to share them with our core audience of type lovers. First up, though, is Stephen Coles’s Modern Type, a mega volume on twentieth-century type told through the lens of type specimens, which will come out in 2026. So the next installment in the Type By series would likely be in early 2027.

Who and what else?
It’s very early days—we’re in the fun phase of looking at our collection materials and seeing what would make the most robust and visually splendid selections. But the team here is excited to research Adrian Frutiger, A. M. Cassandre, Rudolf Koch, and Imre Reiner as potential subjects for the next installment. 

The post The Daily Heller: Type Specimen Simulacra From Letterform Archive appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

I’ve spent a few years examining how the slippery idea of “modernism” was Americanized and soon, thanks to the work of design historian Prof. Christopher Long, whose book on Lucian Bernhard was a boon to our knowledge of early modern practice, there will be more ingredients for the origin-story-stew. Long’s forthcoming book Modern Americanness: New Graphic Design in the United States 1890-1940 (which will be assessed in depth in a future DH column) questions the mythology and truth of modernism as a tool kit of tropes versus what Paul Rand said was modernism’s fluidity and adaptability. In his view, there was a modern spirit rather than modern commandments. Nonetheless, certain principles fortified and underscored that spirit.

So, back to the debate: Who did what and when is a rabbit hole that I’ll avoid for now. In The Moderns: Midcentury American Graphic Design by me and Greg D’Onofrio, we wrote:

Throughout the mid-thirties and forties, Lester Beall was one of the two most influential American graphic designers—the other was Paul Rand—for having introduced European avant-garde concepts of visual expression into an otherwise decorous American graphic design scene. Beall was fluent at translating into American the Constructivist style of the twenties and early thirties, which was characterized by an asymmetrical layering of words and images, dynamic use of flat color and block type, experimental photography, and iconic/ironic photomontage to achieve both an identifiable style and clarity of message. He developed a personal style, exemplified by the three series of Rural Electrification Administration posters he created for the U.S. government between 1937 and 1941, that was exceptionally and emblematically his own.

In a November talk at Poster House New York focusing on Lester Beall’s iconic Rural Electrification Administration posters, Mark Resnick, a leading Beall collector, asserted that Beall was the outlier of modernism in the USA. Rand said that modernism was not composed of one, but many attributes, notably the rejection of conventions, sentimentality, and cliche; it was an approach that embraced the best of the new and re-imagined old methods. This is best illustrated through these covers of Scope magazine, published by Upjohn Pharmaceuticals, designed by Lester Beall between 1944-1948, employing a range of distinctive styles under a wide modern umbrella that rejects dogma, sentimentality, and cliche in favor of new and old imagining. Scope was a hot house for Beall; its editor, Dr. A. Garrard Macleod, gave him freedom to experiment with photography, montage, illustration and bespoke typography. In the spirit of “modernism” Beall said his goal as a designer was to “pave the way for a new visual approach” that advocated the Bauhaus and The New Typography in America.

The post The Daily Heller: The Scope of Lester Beall’s Art and Design appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

“Where the Truth Lies”, the Fall 2024 semester SVA MFA Design class I teach, was held amid talk and acts of authoritarianism in otherwise democratic societies. I took the opportunity to start a BRANDING DEMOCRACY project, an ongoing demonstration of how designers, artists, filmmakers, and photographers interpret the various facets of democracy and sum up its key ideals – its truths and fallacies. In the spirit of the theme, participants are asked to create, using various expressive and representational media, what democracy means to them in social, political, philosophical, and humanist terms. The door was even open to defining the concept through style, fashion, and just about anything that can be branded.

What is and is not democracy? Democracy is neither black nor white, there are many shades of light and dark democratic behavior. Participants in this project are invited to address one or more nodes along the democracy spectrum.

Throughout 2025, I plan to offer up some examples from my class but also encourage other design and illustration programs to take part.

Assignment:

Design a visual/graphic sign, symbol, campaign, or other visual narrative strategy that speaks to YOUR understanding of democracy as a social/political construct.

Expectation:

Conceive and create representation(s) of democracy in symbolic or narrative form(s).

All media are acceptable.

You do not have to focus on American democracy but democracy as an overarching concept that spans history and has evolved to the present day.  

In short, “What does democracy look like?”

The first example, by You Min Choi, is a blinkered view of democracy as a “work in progress.” Using design symbols and animation as brand elements, her strategy is to celebrate the advantages while highlighting the flaws of democracy, what she calls “Democracy in Progress” (DIP).

The post The Daily Heller: The Shifting Shapes of Democracy appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

London-based Lucinda Rogers interprets and represents NYC and here she reports on why she does. And what fills her impressive new book of drawings, Lucinda Rogers New York.

What is the best part of drawing New York City?
The beauty inspires me; the combination of strong colors all around (red-brown and grey-blue for buildings, blue for the sky, signs red, cabs yellow, green subway ironwork and trees, black for night and water tanks); the enveloping feeling of Manhattan; the way you can see so far into the distance; the sun shining on the tops of tall buildings when you’re down below in the shadow. Seeing something to draw everywhere.

How long have you traversed NYC to find your subjects?
I’ve been going there regularly to draw since 1990 and, at the start, walked around different areas one by one. Some subjects I saw by chance while on the way somewhere else. Or I may go to a neighborhood on purpose to look for a subject. For example, Orchard Street, knowing it a bit in the 90s I went back in 2002 to see whether things were still the same and report on it. In 2018 I went to look for any remaining meat packing companies in the meat district and drew one from the High Line.

What part of town is the most interesting to draw? Why?
For a long time, I always returned to Canal Street; it’s the combination of human activity and buildings and being on the edge of different neighbourhoods. It used to be full of sellers on the street and plastics stores. The heavy traffic and giant trucks never put me off. I like it all the way along: the big solid buildings around Canal and Sixth Avenue, the edge of SoHo, the part of Broadway going south from Canal, Lafayette Street, Chinatown. The art store Pearl Paint was also on Canal Street, where I went regularly.

The book of drawings is more than a sketchbook, it has a documentary quality. What is your intent for the book and an entity or object?
Each drawing was done at a particular moment for its own reasons, but by putting the collection into a book that spans 30 years, my intent was to show aspects of New York over a period of time, to enable you to revisit parts of the city through the drawings, like time travel. They are mostly large – about 30 inches on the longer side is typical – and can take up to eight hours to draw, sitting in one place and not using photographs. I do not call them sketches, apart from my first short visit in 1988 when I drew in pencil in a very small student sketchbook.

[NB a reproduction of that sketchbook was published this year by Dashwood Books]

Have you ever been harassed while drawing people?
No, I find it’s the opposite! Drawing in the street is a form of communication that makes the big city feel friendly because most people are open to art, they readily accept drawing as a normal thing to be doing, along with everything else. The people whose actual portraits I have drawn were willing and often helped by standing still for a while. Sometimes people look out for me while I’m there, thinking the same, that I may be harassed.

There are a few artists who have drawn NYC and published what they’ve done (e,g, Joel Holland on storefronts, Jason Polan on people). Where do you see yourself as filling the gap?
Doing these drawings has been my own preoccupation, and I haven’t tried to fill a kind of gap, but I guess my drawings are more about the architecture, with wider-angle views of the streets than those two. The scope of the book is similar to that of street photography (I greatly admire many of those photographers, such as Robert Frank and Berenice Abbot), but I use the completely different medium of drawing, which has different results.

The post The Daily Heller: In NYC, Everywhere There Is Something to Draw appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

A veteran street artist, Turnbull reflects on the nation’s new unsettling, normal reality, with the MAGA phenomenon and the resurgence of extremist ideologies echoing in all corners of the land. MAGABUCK draws chilling parallels to D.W. Griffith’s 1915 Birth of a Nation, a “classic” film that, when it was released, mythologized Jim Crow and legitimized white supremacy. It was President Woodrow Wilson’s favorite film to show to his guests at the White House. Turnbull’s MAGABUCK is a counter-narrative.

In its illegal posting, MAGABUCK is an act of defiance, with Turnbull viewing the audience’s reactions as an integral part of the experience. Acts of defacement or critique are expected, and welcome.

This is part of a larger project that will culminate in a major show, Rebirth of a Nation, in London from March 24 to April 10, 2025, including a depiction of Abraham Lincoln’s statue against the riotous backdrop of contemporary American iconography, among other reimagined icons and memes.

I asked Turnbull how Q came to possess his mortal form and also to address his split personality as a key attribute of his public and provocative design.

Ben, incredible piece of work, can you tell me how it came to be?
The honest truth and short answer is I became someone else – Candidate Q

The longer, more complex answer is that Ben Turnbull had given up. He was tired, frustrated, and genuinely felt he had nothing left to say. Dark times indeed.

It’s a cliché to admit to thoughts of ending it all (all artists go through ups and downs), but it’s safe to say that Q was a resurrection moment – a rebirth for a man who had spent too long trying to please a world that didn’t deserve him. As The Smiths said: “Why do I give valuable time to people who don’t care if I live or die?”

Q has no such hang-ups. The thrill and ecstasy that he obtains from producing artwork is enough of a drug to keep him happy. Unused intellect has inspired the creativity of Q. The controlled split-personality order has devised a new way of working: Turnbull is the technician; Q is the artist.

I’m interested in the range of symbolism. Would you explain your inspiration, influence, and origins?
It’s a challenge and a bit of a conundrum when you want to create a piece that incorporates fascist elements. Where do you draw the line in terms of taste?

Fortunately, Q, the alter ego, has no boundaries or quandaries in this department (the freedom and inhibition of the second personality?).

To represent the Dollar Bill as a prophecy of doom, Q forewarned of an apocalyptic fallout by using pop cultural elements: the Punisher heads brandished by right-wing Patriots’ Prayer, comic superhero shields waved by Proud Boys at MAGA rallies.

There is also something liberating about the artwork acting as a billboard. The irony is that the more out in the open it is, the less bothered you seem to be about any controversies within the work. Degenerate Pop (Q’s own brand).

How long did this take Q to finish and what challenges did Q and/or you face?
Time and money, as usual. What you have to consider is that Turnbull quit art. He returned to the real world, with all the tube zombies, and worked two or three different jobs of varying degrees of hideousness to pay for Q’s privilege to make art.

As a result, MAGABUCK took three and a half months to complete.

It is an arrangement that suits both parties now. It creates a “reset” feeling, bringing back the element of magic needed when creating, something that seemed to have been educated right out of Turnbull’s soul.

Has it been defaced as yet by vandals or police?
It was either stolen or removed within 24 hours of being put up. But that is all part of the fun. Has someone stored away some crinkled-up paper, hoping for a big payday (good luck with that), or was it scraped off and tossed into the bin in total disgust?

The Texas intervention of Magasound had another bizarre outcome. The bottom half was removed after a couple of days (the section depicting a field of fluttering Nazi flowers), leaving Julie Andrews standing with the missiles flying above her head. Wonderful stuff!

The important thing is that these artistic statements go up. We did it. We have proof of it. Q’s point is made, and we move on to the next one.

It is part of a larger exhibition in London, what other works will you be showing?
It sure is. MAGABUCK is just one of a number of major pieces in an exhibition that has taken two years to accumulate, titled Rebirth of a Nation. The plan is to exhibit Q’s journey through the American paste-ups and billboards alongside the studio-based originals. People will be able to understand the full process of how the work was made from cut-up comic collections and other throwaway print materials. Unbelievably, nothing was bought new for this project. Q used all of Turnbull’s offcuts and leftovers to create his own Brave New World. There will be documentary footage and photography from the streets of New York, Texas, Philly, and beyond.

It is truly a beast of a project that has morphed and grown into something unrelenting, but it will be a celebration of the many facets of Turnbull, Q, and his team.

I’ve always been engaged by street art — murals especially — but what do you think the impact of your piece will have on viewers?
Q’s art is generated to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.

The American people have made their choice in this election, and Q’s prophetic artwork has alarmingly become a reality. The next stage will be to see if it alters people’s perceptions. Do we even live in a world that cares, though? One can only hope.

What’s next for you?
Q is currently considering a project that will shift from outside spaces to something that comes directly to people’s homes. A kind of Amazon-meets-art idea that will provide everyone with something all too necessary. Apocalyptic times, my friend. Over and out, Q.

The post The Daily Heller: Q’s Art Comforts the Disturbed and Disturbs the Comfortable appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

MoMA has long been on my holiday shopping circuit.

The Dip Ice Cream Scoop was designed by Aruliden, the New York-based partnership of Johan Liden and Rinat Aruh. Their work was featured in MoMA’s Talk to Me and Design and the Elastic Mind exhibitions. The scoop is the best I’ve used. Its heavy-weighed cone handle provides leverage; the deep spoon acts like an icebreaker’s hull on frozen surfaces. The Dip deserves the MoMA imprimateur.

The post The Daily Heller: The Best Holiday Gift I Received (So Far) appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

It was one of a dozen Q-and-As we did together. He had claimed he preferred this format to giving a lecture. Indeed he was in his comfort zone.

Below are selected clips from the Cooper Union evening event, starting with my introduction of Rand.

Below, Rand responds to W.A. Dwiggins’ critique of modern designers, which he derisively called “those Rand boys,” accused of disrupting typographic conventions and following the Bauhaus approach and tradition (which Rand called “very vague.”)

Rand discusses the role of intuition and play in art and design, below. “I just like being playful,” he said.

Rand on art schools in general, the content of textbooks, and the teachers, “of course.” Most teachers, he said, talk about technique, biography, and if lucky, aesthetics and beauty, another vague topic, which is usually drowning in sentimentality . . . (below)

On Rand’s first introduction to the Bauhaus, which was never mentioned in art school (below). Rand told his mom he wanted to go. “Fortunately we were too poor . . . ,” or Mr. Hitler would have got him, he said.

In this last clip, Rand discusses the role of imitation in art and design — in fact, the necessity of doing so. “Even Picasso imitates,” he said. He also talks about the need to have good — enthusiastic — clients in order to do good work. “I don’t know how you get them,” he noted, “you just have to be lucky.”

The post The Daily Heller: Excerpts From Paul Rand’s Penultimate Public Conversation, 1996 appeared first on PRINT Magazine.