Some Golden Books and the Rainbow Book of Nature

Came across some really lovely illustration last month in various travels. I think I'm old enough that classic Golden Books still felt like normal, semi-current kids books when I was a child. Last month I came upon a friend's forgotten collection and found that they feel, now, like they are from a different age. Which is funny because you can see clearly that some of them probably felt very advanced when they were made – there are clear modernist touches in some of these with the emphasis on flat shapes and idiosyncratic self-conscious stylization. Others are more traditional and classic, of course. The bears and the rabbit(s) are early Richard Scarry, from when he was still lingering longer over his drawings.

Can't get enough of Little Red Riding Hood's amazing competing check patterns, here.

I also really love the style mash-up of the back cover template illustration. I remember lingering over it as a kid. There's something extremely compelling about usually separate fantasy worlds colliding. It feels faintly subversive in some way, like that the boundaries of reality are permeable. If Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse can escape their worlds into a shared universe, maybe you can, too... or maybe they'll end up in yours. It's pleasingly meta. Note the individual copyright information with its complicated footnoting, labelling each character in an attempt to shore up those boundaries and wall off that sense of possibility. And imagine the legal battles that would prevent anything like this image from being mass-produced today.

and here's a similar idea, but with non-copyrighted fantasy worlds. This was a book I found in a Portland antique shop. Three little pigs, meet Davy Crockett. Where the hell are they all going?

Lastly, here are a few illustrations by Rudolph Freund for the Rainbow Book of Nature, from the 70s, which I found forgotten on a shelf in an unused room in a different house. I love this sort of thing, too. The artist is doing a semi-scientific observational naturalism, but he's also interested in making beautiful drawings. Old bird guides are like this as well, it's a holdover from when art and science were still not fully separate disciplines. A book like this now would likely be full of photographs, which can be done well, but where one often loses clarity in a misguided emphasis on the apparent objectivity of photography.

Semi-Annual Post On Book Design

I'm working on a cover right now for a collection of short stories for children and young adults that the University of Minnesota Press is doing (in conjunction with the Mid-continental Oceanographic Institute/MOI). For that reason I just went back to look at some of the stuff I've come across over the last few months for inspiration – when I'm out in the world I generally try and keep my eyes open for interesting book covers. The images below come variously from the Miami Book Festival, a flea market in Paris, an antique market in Portland and a hotel in Astoria, Oregon... and elsewhere. Along with covers I'm also especially interested in ways designers play with a book's spine,. In my opinion it's an under-appreciated aspect of the package. If only contemporary books for adults were as playful and visually interesting as the old-school YA spines shown toward the bottom of this post.

I love the silhouette images that make up the framing on these Doctor Dolittle books. These were especially fun to find because I am trying to do something vaguely similar with panelling in some comics I'm working on at the moment.

The next two images are of a nice use of a die-cut. From a magazine, not a book, but whatever.

And spines:

(My apologies to the various illustrators and designers who's names I am generally too lazy to track down/look up. Commenters please pipe up if you know)

GPS and the Brain

I had a pretty substantial illustration in the Sunday Review section of the Times yesterday, dealing with a fascinating little piece on GPS and the brain, which is definitely worth a read. Really nice to have this particular strain of my work showcased this way. Many thanks to Alexandra Zsigmond.

The piece went through a bunch of profound transformations before getting to the above at the last minute. Here was one sketch I liked. Too on-the-nose, certainly, but I've been playing with markers lately and had fun with this.

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Victorian Picture Book Illustration

I was in Portland a couple weeks ago and found this beautiful little book at Powell's. It reproduces a number of entire books by several authors/illustrators, and despite having been printed in 1983 the printing and the colors are crisp, bright and gorgeous. The illustrations below are by Walter Crane, Richard Doyle and Eleanor Vere Boyle.