Austin Kleon

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THE WORK OF DAN PERJOVSCHI

Many thanks to Gerry for pointing out the work of Dan Perjovschi — a Romanian cartoonist who draws on walls for his huge installations. He just had a show at MOMA that has website with all kinds of goodies, including videos of him creating. You can read Gerry’s interview with Dan and his wife, here.

I’ve been doing some research lately into visiting Romania — especially the town of Alba Julia in Transylvania, where my ancestors are from. (Here is a gorgeous Flickr set of Transylvania by a man named Daniel Wellman.)

Anyways, if anyone knows of some good books on Romanian art, history, travel, etc., I’m all ears.

SILHOUETTES AND PROFILES

So I was listening to the “Hair” episode of Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour, and halfway through it went something like this:

Dylan: I ran into Matt Groening at the comic book store. He took time out from buying the new Superman to talk to me…

Matt Groening: The secret of designing cartoon characters — and I’m giving away this secret now to all of you out there — is: you make a character that you can tell who it is in silhouette. I learned this from watching Mickey Mouse as a kid. You can tell Mickey Mouse from a mile away…those two big ears. Same thing with Popeye, same thing with Batman. And so, if you look at the Simpsons, they’re all identifiable in silhouette. Bart with the picket fence hair, Marge with the beehive, and Homer with the two little hairs, and all the rest. So…I think about hair quite a lot.

Groening has said this in quite a few interviews. I made the graphic above to test it out. It reminds me of what Saul Steinberg said about profiles:

profiles.gif

WHAT IT TAKES TO BE AN INFORMATION DESIGNER

This is a “self-portrait” by Nigel Holmes from Steven Heller’s book, Nigel Holmes on Information Design, that came to me by way of Mark Larson by way of Michael Surtees:

WHAT IT TAKES TO BE AN INFORMATION DESIGNER: A SELF-PORTRAIT by Nigel Holmes

My chart might look like this:

  • 25% easy access to both sides of the brain
  • 25% drawing and writing treated as equals
  • 15% curiosity
  • 10% computer skills
  • 25% sense of humor
  • 25% curiosity about the world

I changed my list. That sense of humor is important — as is curiosity.

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