Austin Kleon

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2008: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

2008: The Year In Review

What a nutty year. The pages of my paper 2008 diary are full—right up until the end of June, when things got crazy, and I lost six months of my life to writing a book, buying a house, and watching Obama get elected. Phew! About the same happened with this blog: July came around…and poof! I blogged about half as much for the second half of the year. (Check out the infographic above and the 2008 Visual Archive.)

So what now, 2009? The only thing I have planned is the book release in September. I’m going to take a break in January and February, curl up on my office couch, and read some really big books. Hopefully start blogging some more. Around March, I’m going to try to start on another book. Maybe a graphic novel. I’ll be posting whatever I come up with here, along with a bunch of blackout poems that didn’t make the book.

Thanks for reading. It was a great year for me, and everybody who visited the site, left comments, linked to the poems…y’all made it so.

My very best to you. Warm wishes for a great 2009!

NEW FRONTPAGE (AND STORE COMING SOON!)

new homepage

For those of you reading via RSS, pop over to my homepage real quick and check out the new front page and updated portfolio.

Why the change? I’m hoping that the front page will now be a more friendly portal to newcomers.

For those long-time readers, if you want to skip the frontpage and go straight to the blog, update your bookmarks:

http://www.austinkleon.com/blog/

I should also point out that there’s a new subscription options page. If the blog feed isn’t enough for you, you could always upgrade to the Blog + Tumblelog Superfeed!

And for those of you with eagle eyes, you’ll have noticed a (gasp!) shopping cart. Yeah, it’s just a teaser for now, but one of our projects this summer is trying to get some merchandise up for sale. We want to start small with maybe just some mini-poster prints, and then move on to bigger and better things.

A couple questions:

  • What’s the most successful way to sell products online? Paypal? Etsy? Ebay?
  • What would you like to see sold in my store? Prints of poems? Mini-comics? T-shirts?

If anybody has any advice or comments, please let me hear them!

FAVORITE POSTS: I DONE BEEN TAGGED

I usually almost always ignore these things, but Tim tagged me, and I really like Tim and don’t want to let him down, and lord knows I don’t have any NEW content, so:

Go back through your archives and post the links to your five favorite blog posts that you’ve written. But there is a catch:
Link 1 must be about family.
Link 2 must be about friends.
Link 3 must be about yourself, who you are… what you’re all about.
Link 4 must be about something you love.
Link 5 can be about anything you choose.

Post your five links and then tag five other people.

These aren’t my “all-time” favorites, but they’re some decent ones. Here goes:

family

FAMILY: A TIME MACHINE STUCK ON REPEAT

Tuesday, July 4th, 2006

My grandmother’s 80th birthday. A trip to Salem, Ohio. Family slides, deja vu, and memories of things that never happened.

Moments flickered on the edges of my sight that never happened. A life that was never lived. It was something like the opposite of deja vu: what I was seeing in front of me triggered memories that had never existed.
chan.jpg

FRIENDS: CAT POWER OUTAGE

Sunday, October 16th, 2005

My buddy Nathaniel, who was going to UVA at the time, tells a great story about going to see Chan Marshall live in Charlottesville, Virginia.

A few minutes later, she muttered something about the KKK, claimed she felt “this weird energy,” and literally RAN off stage.
james kochalka

MYSELF: IT’S JUST A SERIES OF GAG STRIPS WRITTEN IN A SECRET CODE

Saturday, June 24th, 2006

The first post where I tried to articulate my thought that an artist’s job is to create his own “secret code.”

People talk about voice and style, and I have no clue what they’re talking about. “Find your voice!” they say. Screw that. I’m working on my secret code.

Other related posts:
meghan

SOMETHING I LOVE: DRAWING THAT SIGNIFICANT OTHER (SCENES OF DOMESTIC BLISS)

Monday, October 1st, 2007

I really love drawing my wife. She’s the perfect model: she’s beautiful, she doesn’t complain, and she’s always around. This post has examples of other cartoonists drawing their significant others.

More drawings of my wife:
hawkline ep

ANYTHING I WANT: PROCESS: MY COVER FOR HAWKLINE’S UPCOMING EP, “SHIPWRECK”

Friday, July 27th, 2007

This was a really fun project to work on, and I think it gives a really accurate, honest portrait of how I work.

I tend to look at everything through the medium of collage: all we’re really doing with art is taking things that we’ve seen and making something we can call our own. Borrowing. Stealing. Mixing. We take the words we know and put them into sentences. We take the notes we know and put them into melodies. We take the experiences we have and shape them into stories.

Okay, I spent way too much time on that. This trip down memory lane is over (thank God). I guess I’ll tag Mark, Maureen, Darby, James, and Adam.

SEEKING ALWAYS FOR THE PICTURE

…the soundest advice is to be seeking always for the picture…”
—Paul McHenry Roberts, How To Say Nothing in 500 Words

I need to write in a visual way… for example, with cut-out words.
—Julie Doucet

Once again, I have redesigned the blog. After talking smack about sidebars, I realized that, duh, they can be quite useful and add to the content—but only if they’re used in a dynamic way…if the content of the sidebar changes with whatever page you’re viewing. With the new design, you’ll notice that “meta” information appears in the sidebar next to the post. Making optimal use of the web browser’s real estate. (Can you tell I do web geekery for a living, now?) Clean white to remind me that it’s the actual content that makes a blog. No more lightning bolts or black.

Poke around, let me know what you think.

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