SPD GUEST EDITOR: November 2014 Archives

OH NO! Who's Taken Our Car?

[A note from the SPD Grids Editors: This is the fourth in our ongoing series of Guest Editors on the Society of Publication Designers website. Andy Cowles is a creative director (Mademoiselle, Rolling Stone) and media consultant with an active blog and social media presence. His writings appear regularly in a variety of venues, and he's been a prominent voice in articulating the current state and future direction of magazine making. Andy will be driving the SPD car all this week, providing his tasty take on magazine design, art directors, content creation, reader engagement, and much more. But be careful! He tends to drive on the wrong side of the road... Many thanks to Andy for his hard work and generous contribution to the SPD site all this week!]

By Andy Cowles
andycowles.com

My name is Andy Cowles, I'm an independent content consultant based in London. Currently consultant creative director for Ink Global; previous full time roles include Editorial Development Director for Time Inc. UK, Creative Director of Mademoiselle for Condé Nast, and Art Director of Rolling Stone for Jann Wenner.

Thanks SPD, for giving me the keys to the blog for the next five days. I intend to drive it like I stole it...

(Image courtesy of Braunstonetown Parish Council).

Presidents: A Lifelong Obsession Has Blossomed into a Long-Term Dream Project

By Steve Brodner

Presidents is a book due out in 2018 from Nation Books on administrations that have been key to understanding the America we know. History can be thought of as a huge animal connected to the small tail we see as "news." To know the latter without a former is to know too little. So I have been reading and absorbing a good deal of history this year. These are some observations I have made so far, along with some early pieces done for the book. It is very important to mention: I am not a historian. This shouldn't, however, prevent one from treading carefully upon historical observation. But, of course, it is very helpful to have historians you can talk to. So that's what I am doing. And reading their work.

One thing I have discovered: these are all complicated people. No villain has not done something commendable. No great president is without his lapses. 

WOODROW WILSON was, for example, a walking contradiction: a great liberal from the South, the epitome of the great Progressive movement, getting a head-spinning amount done in his first term.
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Considering the Nose: Seven Top Portrait Artists Contemplate that Face You Got

By Steve Brodner

I took part in an experiment at Johns Hopkins University last spring where I lay in an MRI while drawing on a small pad. The researchers were trying to unlock the secrets of what happens in your brain when you draw a portrait.  I have spent a lifetime drawing people, occasionally wondering about that same thing. Of course you don't have to know. It's like riding a bike. You just do it a lot and then you get better. But it is still very mysterious and I think I would be hard pressed to tell an interviewer exactly how or why I do it. So I decided to torture my friends with these questions instead. Edward Sorel, John Cuneo, Anita Kunz, Jason Seiler, Joe Ciardiello, Victor Juhasz and Burt Silverman were not only equal to the task but came up with far superior answers to my questions, which proves that people would know that artists are intellectuals if only they talked to them. Each one had fascinating things to say, which makes me look like a hell of an interviewer. My tough job was to make up these questions and then smile as this evolved into a wonderfully illuminating exchange by some of my favorite artists working today.

(Above: Illustration by Edward Sorel)

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What is your first conscious or unconscious act in sizing up a face as you begin a project?

Edward Sorel: Since we work from photos rather than from the person, the first question is, "Does this photo look like the person?" If it doesn't, you either need another photo or, if you like the expression, get other pictures from other angles--profiles are helpful. Then you exaggerate the feature that is at variance with the ancient Greek ideal of the face.

Burt Silverman: 
I simply think about setting up a light and dark structure to best make the face a sculptural image and then to let the process of constructing it go forward. Inescapably that begins to inform the art of what I feel about that face or person...It's a coincidental process, each reinforcing the other.

Joe Ciardiello: Once I subdue the anxiety of whether I can pull this off, I immediately go to the web and search for as many decent quality pics of that person I can find (how did we ever survive before Google images?). Then it's a matter of studying the face and features...how close together are the eyes, what's the shape of the head, the size of the nose, etc....all with the hope that a somewhat interesting drawing can be made. Then comes much procrastination before actually putting pen to paper.

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Illustration as Authorship: When the Story Starts With You

By Steve Brodner

My (40 year) freelance career has always been a combination of commissions coming from media and my own pitches for stories going out to them. Coming up with ideas and being lucky to find great designers to collaborate with has made my career more vivid and exciting. It also gives me levels of control I would never otherwise have. When ideas come (and I always have a few floating around) I am grateful for the open door at places I respect. Here is a sampling of projects I've written, drawn and sold over the years.

Note: Although these stories originated with me, they were all collaborations on a very intense level. My great thanks to all the creative directors, designers, writers and editors who sharpened, clarified and focused these projects. You have helped make my life in art and journalism possible.

(Pictured top): In 1984 I proposed my first story to a magazine. I wanted to travel through the Midwest and interview farmers who were being thrown off of their land by Reagan administration farm policies. It was a priority of the Farmers Home Management Agency to turn large parts of farmland over to multinational agribusinesses. I interviewed some 30 farmers for The Progressive. I dove deeply into the process of telling personal stories in words and pictures. This happened with the great support from Patrick J.B. Flynn, art director of The Progressive.

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POW! Which Artwork Landed the Strongest Punch Ever?

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2016 Election: The Clown Taxi and the Attack of the 50 Foot Woman

By Steve Brodner
The 2014 mid-term elections bring the sudden and discomfiting realization that the 2016 presidential campaign is kicking off. And before we get ready to inaugurate Hillary, it would be good to think about both parties, who the leading players are, and what they may portend for the election and the country.
 
Drawing portraits and caricatures of politicians forces one to look especially hard the elements of the faces and allow them to fall into shapes that connect with what you know about the person. The result is a blending; the face becomes a shorthand symbol for the creature itself.

Here, somehow connecting with all that, is my take on the 2016 morning line and what these faces "mean" to me and portend for the long campaign to come..
 

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This Week's SPD Guest Editor: Steve Brodner

[A note from the SPD Grids Editors: This is the third in our ongoing series of Guest Editors. Steve Brodner is an illustrator, artist, journalist, teacher, and all-around graphic provocateur who has been responsible for some of the most memorable publication imagery of the past 30 years. His work has been collected in the book Freedom Fries: The Political Art of Steve Brodner, published by Fantagraphics. Steve will be sharing his work and selections from some of his favorite illustrators, along with some very smart graphic and political commentary during the coming week. Consider this a healthy antidote to last week's election results! Many thanks to Steve for his generous and enthusiastic contribution to the SPD site.]

By Steve Brodner
There is nothing wrong with your computer. It's just SPD taking temporary leave of its good common sense and giving the guest editor keys for the next week to me. I've been an artist/journalist in media since the president was an unpopular, brooding, dispirited, secretive bomber of people overseas. No, not him, I mean Nixon. Since then I've gone from drawing editorial cartoons for daily newspapers to rendering political and cultural stories for top magazines and websites.

 

This journey has included many stories reported, written and illustrated on such topics as the Clinton impeachment, guns in Philadelphia and what it's like to climb Mount Fuji. I've also dabbled in video at great expense to The New Yorker, PBS and Slate. All the while I have been amazed and grateful at how a visual artist can arrange (through great luck and lots of sweat) to join the national conversation on the questions, great and small, of our time.




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