It’s A Miracle, I Can See Again (ooh yuck, I DO look that bad)

Wow, getting reading glasses makes all the difference in the world!! Okay, yes it makes me feel like the little octogeriatic folks that go to K&S at 4 in the afternoon for supper, but I can read again. No, not just on the computer (thank goodness for 400% zoom settings), but I mean read stuff that clever people write!

And I can work my crosswords again, too!! Amazing little experiment though: I still can’t figure out 95% of the clues even if I can see them!! So much for brain exercises, I think I’ll stick with Scooby-Doo and trying to figure out who dunnit!!

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So moving on it’s time to introduce this week’s überclever interviewee. She comes from a Land Down Under, so please welcome

Telling Stories and Making Things Up, Too

An Interview with Illustrator Lesley Frances Vamos

Lesley is relative new-comer on the pro tour but has talent coming out of the top of her hilariously striped socks! With a skill set that ranges across the spectrum of graphic arts and illustration as well with a style that’ll catch your eye at first glance, the future is so bright she... well, she better put on some sun block and get under something shady ASAP!

I’m sure you’ll find her work as exciting as the Nixon family has over the past weeks, including little Julia (days, mere hours away from age 7) who has just fallen head over heels with Lesley’s style. And along these lines, we bring you a special treat in the article as well!! Enjoy and good on ya!!

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Moving on to this week’s ‘Shout Out’s’:

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Our first ‘Shout Out’ is the rarest of the rare in that we are pleased to give a double shout-out to the very creative Christoph Niemann.

First, as many of you know, love and share with absolute strangers you come across, Christoph continues to put together one of the most clever and original blog collections as featured in the New York Times. Check out one of his latest offerings under the title of ‘Red Eye’, a visual diary documenting a flight from New York to Berlin (with a layover in London).

Amazing indeed if you consider that most of us spend our flights either arguing for another Bloody Mary or whispering curses against the fellow passengers hoping they are sucked out of a window and never heard from again. Needless to say, Christoph’s work is much nicer than that!!

In addition, our 2nd Shout-Out also goes to Christoph, who deserves a big round of clap-clap because he has been chosen a 2010 inductee to the ADC Hall of Fame, administered by the Art Directors Club, New York. Christoph is being honoured along with several other top-flight illustrators, educators, photographers and business leaders in the field. Awesome stuff for sure!!

To read more about Christoph and his terrific work, please take a look at our interview which you can find here.

Our third shout-out may or may not qualify (let's call it an echo-out) but we feel like shouting out about it. We recently signed up as Facebook fans for one of our favourite purveyors of tales of the totally cool, namely Dark Horse Comics (a great palette of terrific titles, including Hellboy, ‘nuff said).

Well, lo and behold we were scrounging through their picture albums when we came across a collection of none other than Jesse Reklaw’s works! Now granted it’s not the newest collection (last updated it seems in March of last year), but to find 27 fully readable sets in his ‘Cartoon Tour Diary’ made all our mining expedition very worth while. Check it out!

To read more about Jess and his unique approach to comics and art of all kinds, please take a look at our recent interview which you can find here.

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FAVOURITE-DESIGN-STORY-OF-THE-WEEK!!

For those of you that have been following the ‘Little Ziggy’ phenomena (at least via Facebook as we haven’t updated the blog in a few days... and yes, that was a shameless plug if there ever was one), you know that

(a) October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and that

(b) this means a lot to the Ziggy Nixon staff since we know quite a number of women that have breasts, including an amazing pair of heroes that have survived this terrible disease.

So we’re very excited to see the participation of the Comics World, too, in this arena. Please check out

http://www.comicsgopink.com/

which will 'take place' on October 10th in many of your favourite strips (we said strips Charles, not strip clubs).

Interestingly enough it is also Climate Change Awareness Day on the 10th, so just think of it as doing what you can to keep Mother Nature as healthy as we possibly can (I mean, she’s a mom and ergo no doubt possessing of said boobage, no?)!!

See you next time true believers!! Aloha!!

Epilogue:

Oh and to all of you newspaper folks that pulled the fantastic ‘Non Sequitur’ for MENTIONING Mohammed – not drawing mind you, just mentioning it – shame on you!!



Let’s ignore for a moment that ‘Non Sequitur’ is one of my must-stop, uh, stops every single day of the year. Let’s ignore the fact that the joke wasn’t even that good on the overall NS scale of hilarity. But this goes against everything that any SANE person should be fighting for, namely tolerance, understanding and respect ON ALL SIDES of the equation!!

If people can’t take it the way they dish it out, well, phooey!! Get with the plan you dopes!!

P.S. Mohammed, Mohammed, Mohammed!! Pull that!!

Been A-tossin' and Turnin' All Night

Click on any image to increase to original size and quality
(by the way, if you’re wondering where you’ve heard these lyrics in the title before, see here)

I have been having a lot of trouble sleeping over the past couple of weeks. It’s mostly been a random combination of jet-lag, weather changes, Mrs.’s Nixon’s asthma acting up, some deep thinking that the holidays brought up, too much caffeine and general worried-ness concerning the job market out there. You see, I’m kind of a ‘pattern’ sleeper: if I get interrupted at approximately the same time more than 1 night in a row, I adopt that pattern. And no, drugs aren’t an option; not because of any moral quandary but because my therapist is still on holiday.

Still, some of the thoughts I’ve been having as I lie awake in bed have not been so bad. My biorhythms for creativity seem to be on a high right now (okay, maybe not in terms of writing but still) even though most of my thoughts involve either actions that would be frowned upon at 3 a.m. (darn my penchant for anything that involves hammering or smashing things) or trying to visualize certain mechanical, physical or even potentially metaphysical things that might potentially-possibly-just-maybe happen if I tried them. I mean, when you’re interested in new art types that involve melting things and you’re trying to work out three-dimensional flow coefficients and coordinates in your head, it gets a bit complex.

There have been though some basic questions that have been rattling in the vast cavernous, uh, cavern of my head and I thought I’d share one or two or a dozen or so of these with you now. And if any of these make you in fact suffer insomnia, like I said, I should be able to get my hands on the good stuff here in a few days and I promise to share:

Does It Seem to You Like More Famous People Are Dying These Days?
Or are we witnessing a peak in the natural outcome of our cultures’ fascination with famous peoples?

Recently another one of my childhood idols passed away – Walter Cronkite – who represented for me so many things that were good about the world I grew up in (I was also a pretty serious child and insisted on watching the news whenever I could). Granted he mostly reported on many things that were very bad about the world I grew up in, but he made it seem like it would somehow be okay. Walter made watching the news interesting, he made it cool to be into current events, and he looked like my Grandfather, or at least what I thought my Grandfather would look like if he grew a professional baseball player-type moustache (folks, this was the mid-70’s, bear with me). But I actually saw the announcement in a crowded restaurant and it was as if the air got sucked out of the whole building, as so many people just stopped and stared at the television screens in the bar.

The world has also seen in the last days the passing of Kim Dae Jung, former President of South Korea as well as Ted Kennedy, essentially the last link to the powerful Kennedy trifecta of John, Bobby and now finally Ted. Think what you want of him, but the world over has been affixed to the Kennedy’s lives – and the lives of their children, wives, ex-wives, various cousins, aunts, uncles and more – for easily more than 5 decades.

But are we making a big deal out of it because it truly matters to us as individuals? Or has the media so entrenched us with this kind of celebrity voyeurism that we have to feel like we’re a part of it? I mean, seriously, how many years will the entire sordid story of Michael Jackson’s demise continue to follow us? Many of us are just now coming to terms with Elvis passing away, now this...

Speaking of which I would just like to share a brief word on the recent passing of Heinz Edelmann. Many of us are most familiar with Edelmann’s work due to his design contributions to the Beatles’ animated ‘Yellow Submarine’. But his offerings over the past decades to the world of art and design go much further than that.

I was fortunate enough recently to have the chance to learn much more about Heinz Edelmann’s work during my interview with Christoph Niemann, one of the many lucky design students that had the unique opportunity to work with this amazing and cutting edge illustrator and educator. (For more on Christoph as well, please continue to follow his NY Times blog, with the latest contribution found here).

Who Gets to Name Diseases?
Now, with the bombardment of the Pharmaceutical Industry’s constant advertising for medications (can’t breath? Take Alleeve! Want to stop smoking? Take Stopitall!), I am reminded that these companies spend millions if not billions and billions on the task of naming their medications.

Now, I appreciate this exercise and it’s contribution to the success in the marketing of ANY product in that I was once on the periphery of a range-naming exercise for a ‘previous-employer-that-shall-not-be-named-but-it-doesn’t-matter-anyway-because-they-don’t-exist-anymore’. I respect the agencies that offer such services that are required for these tasks, including the testing for legal and copyright aspects, seeing how it sounds in various countries and so on. I know both how hard this process can be and then how hard it is to fight for acceptance within the company even before a name is released to the general public. So the naming of the medications I get (gosh, with a name like Alleve I know it will RELIEVE me!).

But the diseases themselves? I mean, for the longest time we’ve had ‘cancer’ or ‘heart attack’, honest names for terrible things that we can nevertheless still wrap our minds around. We have no problem at all going to the doctor and saying ‘I think I have an ulcer’ or ‘gosh darn, but I think my gout is acting up again and I’m all covered in icky red spots.’

Take ‘erectile dysfunction’ if you will (heck, even my spell-checker hates it). Now please stop giggling, this is a serious comment. Honestly, this just sounds absolutely horrible and I’m not just saying that just as a guy of the male persuasion.

It’s just that I truly wonder though how many people are just absolutely petrified about going to their doctor and actually admitting they have something that comes with the partial description of dysfunction. It just sounds so, I don’t know, dysfunctional – and we all know that term should be reserved for families (did I mention how frightening it sounds?). And it seems a tad confusing to me as well, there are even other parts of my body that need to be a little more erect in a kind of ‘stop slouching’ kind of way. I’m even willing to bet that if you asked 100 doctors, that at least 5 to 10 of them would say they’ve had women ask if they (the women, not the doctors) potentially had it.

Plus, are some diseases or let’s tone it down a bit and say, some maladies just being named for the cool acronyms they form? Like ADD: if you’ve ever met a kid that suffers from this, was your first thought ‘they have an attention deficit disorder’? No! I mean, who thinks like that? But it’s so convenient to talk about, quote, A D D, so why not make the name fit the acronym? There’s more sure, but I’m trying not to be too horrible at this. But while we’re at it:

Is The World Too Full of Acronyms?
Be honest: am I the only old fuddy-duddy that gets bothered by this? Is this a sign that I should get away from Facebook while I still have a chance?

This issue has bothered me ever since my little 5 ½ year old daughter got a tee-shirt that has about 50 different ‘texting’ abbreviations on it. I understood maybe 3 of them, including the little sideways smiley face = (;-) (whoa, even the winking one here, I am hipper than I thought!). But there were other ones that when I asked (again she’s not even 6 years old!) she looked at me with such a pained expression that said to me how truly embarrassed she would be for about the next 20 years or so about her father’s obvious stupidity. I even felt inclined to slink out of the room in shame.

Sure, there are acronyms that have stood the test of time in our everyday conversations : ASAP, PDQ, WTF (don’t ask, but it is what I thought when I saw this ad to the right) and more. But one that really gets to me is ‘LOL’ which in the vernacular of the permanently bent-over world of people texting on cellphones whilst ignoring what is happening around them (and for many in my neck of the woods, even while driving their cars, trucks, aircraft, etc.) means ‘Laugh Out Loud’.

Now sure, LOL is a great abbreviation for Laugh Out Loud, but again: who talks like this? Do you actually ever say ‘laugh out loud’ to anyone in normal conversation? ‘Oh golly, but that sure makes me laugh out loud!’ Anyone? Why not ‘TSF’ for ‘that’s so funny!’ We actually say the latter occasionally albeit not so often in my home (or at least not unless it’s said very sarcastically). But do we ever say it or gods forbid even do something that someone might point at and say: ‘Look Jimmy over there is laughing out loud! And TMCOHN!’ (okay that was juvenile [= there’s Milk Coming Out His Nose] but still...)

But here’s a true story (another aside): I knew someone once that I swear when they got invitations to parties, that they thought the ‘RSVP’ at the bottom of the card meant ‘really sweet, very pretty’. And she’d always think it was so kind of the inviting party to acknowledge that, yes, she had these qualities in such lovely abundance. I shudder to think what they thought of anyone who ended a note with ‘PS’...

Let’s change gears a bit:

Are The Arguments From the Far Right Even Sane?
Seriously, before we go another step I want you all to log on to http://www.colorofchange.org/beck/ , read what they have to say and then watch the little video at this link. Go ahead, I’ll wait and hum some Barry Manilow tunes to myself while you’re away. ‘Mornin', just another day, Happy people pass my way, Lookin' in their eyes, I see a memory, I never realized, How happy you made me, oh Mandy...’

Oh you’re back? Yes, friends, as you’ve just witnessed, there is an announcer on a major (+/-) channel in the USA that is actually going around saying not only is Obama a racist, but also implying that he may be (get this) THE ANTI-CHRIST. And this is what gets me: this guy is not even the HEAD OF IRAN, though I think they both use the same speech writer!!

These people just make me think of something I once said to my wife (noting the resulting two weeks of sleeping on the couch weren’t all bad, even though my back was suffering from erectile dysfunction for days afterwards): I said, ‘honey, honestly, I think if I want to win an argument in this house, I’m going to go outside and argue with a tree. At least I have a chance of arguing LOGICALLY with the tree...’ Yeah, I did indeed say that... but luckily I survived. So like I said, it was lonely downstairs for a while.

But there are a slew (‘a slew I wish they’d slay’, he thought morbidly) of people making these types of statements and ultimately arguments all over the place now. I mean, is it like saying to someone ‘I’m against war as a rule, even though I think it’s important that we help settle the situation in Afghanistan’ and they respond with ‘so you think killing innocent unborn babies is okay?’ Sorry, but say what? But it happens all the time, more and more, ad infinitum and ad nauseum! Try saying something like ‘universal health care is a good idea’ and you get ‘I will not surrender my country nor my guns to a commie like you’. Heck, forget the sanity part, is there just no civility left in terms of public debate anymore?

Don’t get me wrong: even though I believe in the premise of universal health care, I think the way the current administration is ‘selling’ it right now needs a lot of work. But you see so many people standing up and shouting ‘you cain’t (sic) have my country, you hippie bastard! Me and my people ain’t gonna stand at all fer this’!

It’s just... well, I can’t tell you how relieved I was when I saw someone stand up and say ‘I understand what you’re saying, but I’m just so afraid it will make the deficit go up beyond a level we can recover from and I just think right now the American government should be focused on other issues. So I’m sorry, but you do not have my support.’ I mean, I applauded, it was such a relief! That’s a legitimate, sanely stated counter-argument.

No, no, no – it doesn’t matter whether you agree or not, but it is a legitimate point of reasonable debate! What has happened to that, please? Is there some kind of new it-makes-you-foam-at-the-mouth transient form of rabies going around that we should all be worried about? Geez...

Does It Ever Freak You Out How ‘Recently’ Some Things Have Changed?
A few days ago – and again, keep in mind this entire diatribe is about lack of sleep – I was literally flabbergasted (a disease named in 1929 by doctors at the John Hopkins University Clinic) to read that on Aug. 26, 1920 – only 89 years ago according to my calculations – the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution was passed. The issue? Guaranteeing women the right to vote. I mean, does it not freak you out to think that there are women alive that might remember a day that at least their older siblings or even mothers could not even vote in the USA?

Don’t get me started about civil rights even. I once worked at one of the departmental libraries in college, and one night when business was slow, I got into a conversation with some of the other, ‘professional librarians’ that worked with us who were in their early 50’s or so and all African Americans. It blew my mind to listen to them talk about riding in the back of busses, or having to drink from other water fountains or even worse. And in terms of time, it was only like yesterday! I mean, the hell with Woodstock, it’s these other anniversaries that make my mind reel.

I know I’ll get the same thing as the kids grow up, too. I just don’t WANT to think about that, because that reminds me of my own mortality. Yes, one day I, too, will suffer from dysfunctional expiring animated terminal hesitation, abbreviated to it’s better know acronym = DEATH.

What is the Big Deal About Homosexuals Getting Married?
This is one I don’t get, I just simply do not comprehend it. I guess my own beliefs never made room for the kind of xenophobic ranting that goes on to this issue.

Up front time folks: I’m not gay. Please don't hold that against me, it's just the truth is all. Heck, I don’t even like looking at my own body, let alone other men’s. But I have friends that are gay, I have family members that are gay, and I’ve met in my time a lot of really fine folks that either admitted up front or I found out later were gay. And that’s 100% perfectly fine with me. In my book, the only thing that counts – and this goes for sexual preferences, religious beliefs, and the whole spectrum of ‘stuff’ that is supposed to define us – if you’re cool with it, and you’re not hurting anyone, then fine. All I insist on is that no one – again see the short list – try to push their own beliefs on me, and I won’t do that either, even in the cases where I know that I’m right and almost everyone else in the world is wrong about at least something. Everyone cool with that?

But I mean, honestly, are you trying to tell me that all the nice conservative folks out there raising heck about this issue don’t stand to benefit at all from letting anyone and everyone marry? That there’s no right-leaning providers of wedding dresses, or flowers, or wedding jewellery, or catering services or – and this is the big one – even divorce lawyers waiting for their client base to increase by a factor of whatever it might be? Well, the Brits have a good word for this = bollocks. I’d bet my bottom dysfunctional dollar that the entire group of ‘em can’t wait to get their hands on the kind of disposable income that’s just waiting on them out there if we’d just say, ‘heck, you two guys or girls want to spend thousands on a one day bash like the rest of us? Be my guest (PS: that’ll be 30’000 dollars for the festival hall rental and the band, thank you so much)’.

And here’s another true story: if you follow these kinds of stories at all, India is in a bit of an uproar about legalizing homosexuality in any form. There are laws permitting it that apparently get passed, then rescinded and so on. But even though they won’t let gays be, well, gay, THEY WILL MARRY FROGS FOR LUCK (in this case, I mean, they marry the frogs to each other, though other on-line inputs talked of people marrying frogs as well)! I kid you not, just take a look at this picture, where the frogs even received gifts of gold jewellery!

(Is it just me, or are some of you wondering if those are two boy frogs? Wouldn’t that be just the most fantastically ironic thing ever?)

Here’s something that didn’t make me lose sleep, I just thought it was appalling, disgusting and more:

Did the Scenes of Celebration for the Freed Lockerbie Bomber in Libya Make You Sick?
Sorry, compassion was shown even though there was a lot of – well-grounded mind you – uproar and emotive discussion on the issue. I really felt for the Scottish judge who really must have gone through hell (and is no doubt not finished) over his decision.

Then that was thrown back in the face of everyone affected by this heinous act and really the rest of the world as well by the appalling display once this monster landed in Libya. There should be no more tolerance for a regime that has snubbed its nose at the civilized world for far too long now. The scenes of jubilation and celebration just go to show that not all ‘humans’ should be counted as such and if you want to add other worn out statements to same, well, obviously a leopard never changes it’s spots.

‘Nuff said.

And finally, because I should probably right this up (and our 50 minutes of solo therapy are about done), I leave you with this thought:

Is The Abundance of On-Line Reporting Leading to Irresponsible Headlines?
Now just read this head-line and think for a few minutes before reading on:

What Britney Spears Can Reveal About Alzheimer's Disease

What did I tell you? It’s actually from a very interesting article about mapping brain activity depending on how we recognize given famous persons and the relation of the wave patterns in terms of our proclivity to Alzheimer’s, which as you can see here once had a rather interesting title as well. It seems indeed to be a very strong study on a disease – a well-named disease we would add – that needs to be cured and now, particularly as the means to do so are indeed available (oops, now I know what will keep me up tonight).

But did the article mention, say, Fidel Castro, Walter Cronkite or even Ted Kennedy? No, it was Britney Spears. Personally, I would think that someone NOT suffering from the debilitating effects of Alzheimer’s shouldn’t even have to remember Britney, that would be healthy to me.

I just think these Internet dudes and dudesses are having way too much fun with their headlines these days. Seriously : ‘Suicidal Planets’? Whoa, scared you didn’t we? It’s really just an astronomy article about a planet they found that is too close to it’s sun to survive! Ha, got you (and besides we know that what’s really happening ‘out there’ is that planets are looking to attack us, not commit suicide!!)! ‘Landslide in Japan’? Okay, that’s pretty normal but instead of a horrible natural disaster, it’s more of a political thing it seems ‘(we’ll see how horrible it winds up being apparently in the next months).

Even my favorite in the past days, read it and tell me what you think it means:

Pack your trunk and leave the beach!
(the small print summary actually states : ‘A French town has banned circus elephants from bathing at its beaches over concerns the animals' excrement could pollute the water and pose a health hazard to other swimmers.’ Well, that’s nice but I’m still not going back to any French beaches any time soon... I mean, the heck with sharks, can you imagine suddenly catching a wave of elephant poop in your face?)

Okay folks, sleep well. Me? I’m gonna go take a nap, I just re-read this and now I think I can make it.

I knew I wrote these darn things for good reasonzzzzzzzz....

Fresh Ziggy: Good-Will Painting!

Introduction to new blog offers on May 22, 2009

Greetings again one and all. Don’t you just love this time of year? Here in the neighborhood of ZN HQ, there's a May tradition of gathering with perhaps 10 to even 15 of the most boring people you’ve ever met in your life and having a long and drawn out lunch-time which inevitably begins to stretch into the next Presidential administration or Summer Olympics, which ever comes last.

Personally, I think we do this now before it gets too hot and would therefore feel much more (but not too much, mind you) inclined to stifle Uncle Guffaw with farm implements and bury Aunt Willsheeverstoptalking somewhere in the nearby marshlands. Sigh, families: can’t live with ‘em, can’t legally... never mind...

As you can see, rather than including this entries long-introduction into a jam-packed e-mail for the Faithful (note the capital F! If you're a 'small f' and want to be a BIG F = get emails, let us know!), we went ahead and put this part into a blog itself. So for those of you reading this (to both of you: as always, thank you! And the check IS in the mail...), just a few words:

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First, many thanks and muchas gracias for all your nice comments about the Enrique Rodriguez article from last time (and to MS who wrote in: well, I guess he is rather cute now that you mention it).

All kidding aside, it really is amazing what this talented young fellow has managed to do over the past few years with his light boxes and really what we’ve come to think of as ‘space enhancers’.

Again, be sure and check back often to his blog and what should also be an updated web-site in the coming weeks!

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Speaking of updated in many ways and forms, we’re pleased to bring you these updates:

First, our favorite Editor-Supremo has picked up our previous entry about Christoph Niemann and published it on the ‘X’, including fine-tuning my En-ga-leesh dialect and also adding some new pictures. Check it out!

Second, speaking of Christoph, he also released just hours after the previous article went live his newest blog entry in the New York Times. This is an exceptional piece and amazing in so many ways, including the power of the story itself – the fall of the Berlin Wall and the memories it has left behind – and also as usual Christoph’s mastery of making absolute genius from seemingly the simplest of approaches!

Someone to watch and enjoy for years to come for sure (just put his name in the NYT search engine for example and you’ll see almost every week new graphics offers!).

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And now for the new bits here at our happy house-hold: it is indeed a privilege and honor to bring you an interview with Ross Bleckner. See

You're On Earth. There's No Cure For That.
An Interview with American Painter Ross Bleckner
Or copy-paste in this URL into your browser: http://ziggynixon.blogspot.com/2009/05/youre-on-earth-theres-no-cure-for-that_6505.html

Ross is not only an exceptional and very well-known American painter but also has just been named Goodwill Ambassador by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Please read on to learn more about Ross’s philosophy’s about life and art, as well as more into his caring about those less fortunate and amazing amount of time he donates to help others.

We hope you enjoy this as much as we enjoyed getting to meet Ross, who was an outstanding ‘host’ and supported the entire interview process with tremendous patience and grace! Thanks again, Mr. Ambassador, sir!!

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And finally, friends, we ask that if you do indeed print out this week’s introduction or even the article itself, that you be environmentally conscious and use only real Roo Poo Paper. Not only does it utilize resources that no one usually can think of a better thing to do with them, but it’ll add another sensory experience to your blogging pleasure!

(Roo Poo Paper not quite your scent? Then try Wombat for that rare audi-... odat-... ouaral- ... for that rare smelling experience!)

Be good Troopers!
Ziggy

P.S. Before we forget, we want to include a little bit about this episode’s blog header image (for those that came in late, we try to change the blogger header image with each new entry, just to keep our own creative juices dripping down the spine of our mornings and into the underpants of our afternoons).

This week’s exercise is really an attempt to follow the KISS principle, namely Keep It Simple Stupid. Several of our interviewees, including also Christoph Niemann, who has now reached his full quota of plugs for the week, have pointed out how important it is to keep things simple, even when trying to be creative. However, keeping it simple – or brief as you’re noticing by now!!! – is not one of the Zigster’s talents!!

Anyway, we took one of the simplest – and really incredibly powerful – images we knew of and tried to imitate that, namely the Little Kitty collection. Our own daughter has several items – ranging from clothes of all sorts, bags, jewellery, books and more – with the simple image of Hello Kitty on it. But it’s amazing! It never changes, it is so gosh-darned simple, and yet it will burn a hole in your brain like nothing else. No joke, when I take the kids to school, I am amazed at the number of these images that abound! I don’t know whether to be very respectful or very very scared... but the group that came up with this should be enshrined somewhere in graphic arts immortality! And – I kid you not – even before I had gotten very far with this, I noticed that I was working in fact with a Hello Kitty pencil! Aaah, it’s everywhere.

So I merely have tried to make similar images of the most popular, uh, popular people or even current faces that perhaps most if not all will recognize in one way or the other (sorry folks, but Fidel’s image is Nr.1 globally). Enjoy... or don’t, your call, but it did teach me something. Which is nice.

Bye!

Get It, Got It ... And It's Good!

An Interview with Illustrator and Graphic Designer Christoph Niemann
(Part 1 of 2, link to Part 2)

Note: all pictures may be enlarged by clicking on them.

For some reason I think Christoph Niemann, the talented German artist now living in Berlin after a long stop-over in New York, wants us to think that he’s a little insecure. One review of a presentation of his even indicated that he stays up at night, tossing and turning, restlessly wondering if we’ll all ‘get it’ in terms of his pieces.

Well, for that reason, I’ve chosen the title above that I did. I personally very much get Christoph’s work or at least I’ve convinced myself of that (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it). If anything then, I think he comes across as much more humble than necessarily scared, as he would lead us to believe. Especially after interviewing him as well as reading countless Internet inputs from fans of his work, enjoying his blog in the NY Times myself for several months and even reading on-line reviews of his children’s books, my only conclusion is that Herr Niemann is indeed a very personable, quite articulate and perhaps a somewhat quiet fellow ... but I say that noting that we didn’t have the chance to discuss evil in a local pub (keep reading). Instead, Christoph strikes me as someone who is in fact very comfortable with what he’s doing and how well he does it. Nothing wrong with that, is there?

Christoph’s images bring out the best in graphic design and illustration. He does more than incorporate a given style that someone might interpret and say ‘oh that’s it!’ in terms of his influences. Instead, if you look close enough, you’ll get a sampling of different flavorings from not only the Western world but other climes as well. And even if you have to look back at a piece twice – perhaps because your brain is screaming at you subconsciously, for example, that the other bathroom door is marked for ‘Scotsmen’ – then that’s okay, too. So sit back, enjoy, and perhaps even get a bit challenged once or twice along the way. Just don’t be scared, you’ll get it:

Christoph, why did you decide to move to New York?
Well, I had done some internships there while I was in college. You see, I studied at the Stuttgart Academy of Fine Arts, which is only about 20 kilometers away from my hometown. It was the perfect University for me. I realized though that a part of studying is that you should also get a sense of the world and even separate yourself a little bit more from your background.

For the last 2 summers while I was in school, I went to New York and that’s when I realized that it was a great city for me. After graduating – having gotten to know the city a little bit – I felt it was the right time to move there, since I had nothing to lose. I had absolutely no sense of luxury, I had no sense of giving anything up, because I’d just dissolved my student apartment and I could go with a suitcase and try it out. If it didn’t work out after a year then I could just come back to Europe.

Why have you decided recently to return to Germany with your family and settle in Berlin?
Ultimately, I found that the things that make NY great – the energy and the sense of inspiration and the drive that’s in the air – can make it a little difficult to start new things. In my case, I felt like it hindered me from making mistakes and I feel in order to advance yourself, making mistakes is crucial.

There’s something about NY where you have an idea and you make it happen without looking left or right. There’s no margin of error not only economically but also emotionally. And looking at the whole industry, I just feel that now is the time to really think about what you’re going to do in the long run and how you’re going to react to changes that are definitely coming, before these actually become real problems. Berlin seems to be a better place to explore and to start new things because the emotional and economic pressure isn’t remotely as tough as it is in New York. But in Berlin, you also have a big city and you’re surrounded by a lot of inspiration. And I am an urban person, I need to be in the middle of big cities. So that seemed like a good trade.

And there’s of course other personal reasons. Even though it was a lot of fun with the kids in New York, we were also thinking about our families in Europe, too (my wife is also German, even though we met in NY). Plus, taking a 6-year-old on holiday to Germany was no problem. But once they’re 14, you don’t say ‘come on, let’s go visit Grandma in Germany’. They’d be like ‘yeah sure, call me when you’re back.’ But if you tell a 14-year-old ‘hey let’s go to NY for a month’ they’ll say ‘I’m there!’ We wanted them to have both cultures, so it seemed easier to have our base here in Germany, with visiting America as an option rather than the other way around.

How has the return to Germany affected your work, if at all?
I’m certain it has but I was imagining that I’d be sitting here comparing my life in NY to the one I have here. That I’d be saying ‘Oh, here this and this is different.’ But life has been so dynamic lately with what has happened economically in the last year, even what’s happened in the industry only in the last 12 months. So many things have changed in terms of what I’ve done with my work that I can’t really go back and say ‘Oh, I did that kind of thing 2 years ago and I’m doing this thing now ... and that’s because of the move.’ Because I feel that I’ve started so many other things like the books and the blog and these have really changed my work.

On the other hand, I have to say I couldn’t imagine doing the blog in NY. I just don’t think I’d have the patience to sit down and work on something so elaborate and so complex. At least not repeatedly; like once, definitely, twice maybe, but not 3, 4, 5, or 6 times in a row. This morning, for example, I was actually preparing some work for a children’s book and just space-wise that would not have been possible in NY. Because I’m painting and even though the formats aren’t huge, here I’m able to put like 18 pieces of paper dripping with ink all around me on the floor. That would not have been an option in NY.

Do you find now living in the relative calm of Berlin that the pace of life in New York was too crazy?
No, not really. I was never even remotely sick of NY in the sense that it was too fast or that there was too much going on. I absolutely loved it, I still love it and I go there a lot. I’m still a huge fan of life there. Maybe later, because I’ve only been gone 6 or 7 months, when I’m there again I’ll think ‘oh this is insane.’

However, I do like the contemplation that you see around here in Berlin. People try things a little slower, things are done with a little bit more thought and patience. And I feel in the long run that’s a good thing – and that was another part of our thought process of coming back to Berlin. I think that when you are 25, there’s just nothing better than NY. But the idea of me doing the same fast-paced game when I am 55 or 65, seems ... odd. It seems a little out of place. It’s not that you can’t keep up but it’s like you want to think in a different mode almost. And then the short breath way of doing things in NY – at some point it just wasn’t compatible with what I imagined myself doing long-term.

Do you feel, for example, that you’ve had enough exposure in New York to continue to get assignments from your clientele there?
So far I’ve kept the exactly the same client list. I just don’t want to change things right now. I’m trying a couple of other things but I have no interest in reaching out too much and only working here, like limiting my work only to Europe. Of course, all the new technologies make it easier, too, and make a huge difference. For example, I’ve got a new Internet phone service which is so much improved over the 1st generation of services. It’s so much more convenient. Plus so much of my work involves email exchange so that has certainly helped.

But no one has called and said ‘oh, you’re in Germany, no no no, I won’t give you that assignment’. Of course, I don’t know if I’ve missed anything fantastic just because I’m here. I’ve done advertising jobs, I’ve done editorial jobs – even ones on very short notice – and so far I think it’s worked out pretty nicely.

Can you explain more about your influences in terms of ‘art’ in general?
Like most graphic designers, I spent a lot of time drawing when I was young. My friends in school and I would also draw extremely realistically. It was kind of about proving with every drawing how well you could draw or how well you could depict something really crazy or really gross, but in a very realistic way. In school though, I was very fortunate to have a very good and well-known teacher named Heinz Edelmann – who was very strict but an excellent instructor – and he introduced me and all my student friends to the idea of a graphic design approach to illustration. This taught us that you certainly need drawing skills but then just as a designer would chose a certain typeface or a certain level of abstraction or realism to make or prove a point – you would use the same approach with illustration.

We worked within a variety of styles but it wasn’t that we went through the styles just for the sake of trying different styles. You would instead evaluate the situation and if the piece required a really cartoonish look in order to be funny, you used a cartoonish look, or instead you perhaps needed the style to be absolutely deadpan and so on. It was about coming up with the idea but then picking an appropriate style based on conveying the message in the right way. And that was something I only learned in school. Before I went to the Academy, I had absolutely no sense of that whatsoever. My approach prior to that was simply that I thought if I could paint more precisely, then that was better.

Your selection of books including both solo works and from collaborations seem to be somewhat broad in their variety. What inspired you for example to produce two such ‘innocent’ children’s books as ‘The Pet Dragon’ and ‘The Police Cloud’ in comparison to working on a book titled ‘100% Evil’?
Well, definitely having kids and becoming a parent helped. Before I was very reluctant to do something like children’s books just because it seemed so predictable: ‘oh I’m an illustrator so I’ll do children’s books.’ It seemed just to be the easy thing to do on top of your career, so I always stayed away from that. Still, I always take new media extremely seriously and I think there’s a lot more to book illustration than just drawing a simple story. It’s definitely not ‘oh it’s for kids so everyone can do it.’

But ‘The Police Cloud’ was kind of an accident. It was a good night story that I shared with my boys, that started making sense after several telling’s and I just wrote it down. There was something that I really enjoyed as well, namely, the format of a book which I absolutely love because all my other work is so temporary. With an editorial assignment, you draw something and it’s basically in the paper for a couple of hours. After that, it’s being thrown out and they’re already working on the next one. So having something as ‘physical’ as a book is a great treat.

But ‘100% Evil’ and these kids books have absolutely nothing to do with each other. The one is a story for kids and the other is more personal. ‘100% Evil’ isn’t even a story for grown-ups, it’s really more like a personal project that we found a publisher for. We – Nicholas Blechman and I – had done other editions on like maps and architecture and even sincerity. And we initially always made only 100 copies; but then we felt there were too many people interested and we didn’t like to be so stingy with our few copies, so we decided we had to get a publisher.

What is actually more related is my work with the kids books and the blog. In both cases, it’s really about trying to find a story that transports a certain thought to as wide an audience as possible.

What is the major difference for you when you work either alone or in collaborations?
For me, there are two kinds of collaborations. There’s one collaboration that I’m not very good at and apart from working with Nicholas, I’ve rarely enjoyed it. That’s the one where it’s a real creative collaboration where kind of two people are holding the same brush and you’re trying your best to paint a picture together. The other kind of collaboration – where you’ve basically got a team of people including an art director and an editor, all of whom give you advice, direction, and who clear stuff even – that’s something I need for everything, whether it’s a book or an editorial piece.

And when you have thing’s like the ‘100% Evil’ book, that’s something where I sat there with Nicholas, we drew and we met in the bar and talked about each drawing. It was really a true artistic collaboration whereas the others are more – I don’t want to say administrative collaborations because there’s of course a lot of creative input flowing in all directions – but I would say that this situation is more like being on a tennis player. It’s like I’m the player and I have a great coach and a great nutritionist and a great tactician getting me ready and helping me. And we collectively discuss how we should go about this problem and that problem – but obviously it’s me trying to score the point.

Can you explain a bit more about your self-professed ‘addiction to clarity’?
I don’t want to psychoanalyze myself too much. But I would take a wild guess and say that a lot of people who start drawing when they are young try to compensate for social insecurity. Maybe it’s a way to prove that even though I may not be a good talker, I can still do something else really well.

Drawing was always something I wanted to show other people and I really wanted them to appreciate it. I know there are other artists out there that do stuff and they couldn’t care less whether people get it or like it. But for me, the art really lives by the audience, it’s something I always do for an audience. Whether it’s a very selective audience or whether it’s a targeted advertising audience or whether it’s everybody, there’s still always somebody out there that I’m doing it for. And if that person doesn‘t laugh, it’s not funny, full stop. Even if I think it’s the most hilarious thing in the world but everybody else looks at it and doesn’t get it, well, I’m not happy.

And maybe it’s for this reason that I’m so addicted to clarity. I like having people react exactly as I’ve planned. I may like ambiguity as a consumer of design but as a designer I’ve found that I want to design my message so that everyone gets it in a very particular way and understands the joke exactly because I put it at a certain point. For example, with my blog, I spend a lot of time to try and plan out the pacing. I want you come to this conclusion at this point, then I want to give you this piece of additional information which together adds to x and so forth. I try to predict how you’ll read and react to my visual story.

In your process, do you have a kind of mechanism built in that helps you to be more clear or concise?
My pieces often end up being simple in an editorial context. They very often have to. On the other hand, I’ve done some really complicated and messy things – if I felt that’s what was needed. In theory, at least, I try to find the right tone and the right degree of simplicity.

I did do this one piece of a Greek statue for the New Yorker and his hair and his beard included all these warriors doing battle with each other. That’s one case where I felt it needed a certain amount of chaos. Still, overall the structure and colors are very simple. But there it needed a lot more detail, more than you could grasp with one glance. It needed to move a little slower. For me it’s not so much about simplicity or clarity but more about readability. And in order to convey this, well, it’s kind of like with music: sometimes you need the whole orchestra and sometimes you need just one tone or voice.

Some of your images bring to mind the propaganda images of Germany or even Russia in various periods of the last century (or China or the US, etc. etc.). Do you see that as well?
I’m absolutely a huge fan of early 20th century graphics of all kinds. I’m certainly aware of the political problems associated with this but I try to treat it simply as a vocabulary for certain visual problems.

It can be tricky though: take for example Ludwig Hohlwein*, who worked in Germany in the 1920’s through to the 40’s. He did all this terrific work in the 20’s and 30’s, great advertising work and beautiful ad campaigns for clothing and beer. And then all of a sudden he does this dreadful stuff for the Nazis. He was an incredible draftsman and he had this amazing way of reducing colors and shapes, but as appealing as his art is, it always has a very bitter aftertaste. (*ZN: for a more thorough sampling of Hohlwein’s works, including the good and the ugly, see here)

Even today, when I look at for example some of the major shoe company ads, sometimes I get shivers, because I feel they use the same tricks that Leni Riefenstahl used to glorify the Olympic Games of 1936 in Berlin. I just feel like they current ads can be so Fascist in their tone, yet they’re just trying to sell sneakers. But it works! That kind of stuff works for a reason because it’s designed to speak to all of us on such a basic human emotional level. So of course the question is: do you use it to sell sneakers or do you use it for a completely sick and horrible campaign of fascism and hate?

While we’re on the topic of Fascists (ahem): I wanted to ask about the process of working with, for example, the art directors at the New York Times or at different magazines: do they call and tell you exactly what they want or are you left some (or all) artistic freedom in terms of interpretation or how does that work exactly?
I usually get calls when people want my ideas. The execution is certainly a big part of it but usually they know that they’re calling for the concept and the execution. I rarely get calls from people that are saying they want a drawing of x, y or z. But I think if they did, they’d be calling the wrong guy. Other people are better at that and I have anyway too much of an urge to put my 2 cents in that it usually doesn’t work out nicely.

I see that there’s a need for collaboration and I try to be unpretentious about the whole thing. I’ve also learned by working with art directors – and I’ve worked as an art director as well – how this whole thing works. You have this process that’s extremely complex and with a lot of pressure involved. You’re working with a writer, with an editor with deadlines, etc.. And if everybody is an ‘artiste’ and acts as if they’re a precious little fragile egg about the creative process, then you’re not going to go anywhere.

And I definitely believe in the back and forth that’s involved. The editors know the magazine, they know where they’re going with a story. And ultimately, if something doesn’t work, the editor has a real problem, not me. So I understand why people sometimes kill stuff. The back and forth, the dialogue I have with an editor and an art director is a necessary part of what makes a piece good.

With collaborations, for me it’s sitting there together and yes, I come up with something but then I discuss it with them. And then you start tweaking, you start exchanging and modifying ideas. And ultimately that’s what makes a piece stronger. And very often I talk a lot of politics and content with people. When I do a piece for the financial page for the New Yorker for example, a lot of the discussions are about which part of the story to illustrate. Like if its an article about taxes, are we talking about the problem the consumer has or the problems the IRS has or is the message ‘the Government is greedy’ or what is it exactly. It’s really something that goes to the context and in these discussions a lot of good things come out. Ultimately, I think you need to have this dialogue with the team to make work that’s understood by a million people. That said: I can’t pretend I don’t complain if an idea I am very fond of gets shot down.

Continued in Part 2

Get It, Got It ... And It's Good!

An Interview with Illustrator and Graphic Designer Christoph Niemann

(Part 2 of 2, link to Part 1)

Note: all pictures may be enlarged by clicking on them.

I loved the input that begins with ‘Art Shmart’, shown in the work here. What were you aiming for here in this message?
That piece was really nothing but a pun on art and making graphic design. I love 20th century art, I love abstract art and I love what you can do with these simplistic, recognizable images. So it was really in that case it was nothing but a silly joke.

Of course, the whole thing with fine art and especially illustration is a very vividly discussed subject. In terms of making fine art, it’s just something that I don’t really care about. For instance, if someone said to me ‘we want to show your work in the Museum of Modern Art’, I wouldn’t say ‘oh no way, it’s only illustration!’ I try to get my work done but I don’t think about creating anything that will eventually end up in a museum or a gallery. If it does, great, I would be extremely flattered and thrilled; but I don’t aim for my assignments to eventually be hanging above someone’s sofa or on a museum wall.

Still, even though I don’t care about that, I do know that a lot of my colleagues – colleagues that I highly value and really admire – are not happy being ‘just’ illustrators. They’d much rather have a gallery show and sell their art and not have to deal with art directors and space content and other restrictions. It’s just to them being an illustrator is a means to ultimately becoming accepted as a true artist. But I’m definitely not like that. I’m completely happy being an illustrator and I could easily see doing it for the rest of my life without having any regrets or in any way feeling like a 2nd league fine artist.

I’ve see you (or others) refer to you as an ‘illustrator, animator, graphic designer, conceptual artist’, etc. Looking at this slightly differently: how would you argue (if at all) with someone who might challenge you and say ‘your work is not design!’?
This would be a discussion I would gladly take on. When I first started school in Stuttgart, they had just renamed the studies I was going to be doing from ‘graphic design’ to ‘visual communication’. And we all made fun of it, we just thought it was ridiculous and so pretentious.

Ultimately, I think visual communication is actually a good way to describe what I do. For me, illustration is a part of design. For example, when you do a pixel drawing and at some point you put the red square against the black square and see whether it works out, well, this is pretty much what a designer does. And so many of the choices that I make every day – when I draw or when I come up with my other stuff – are design choices. It’s about finding the right line weight, it’s about finding the right colors, it’s even about finding the right color balance. You’re picking images that fit together. And so much of that is so similar to what I did when I was doing magazine design or packaging.

How has your work changed in the last years and how do you see it evolving?
When I was studying, I was doing working a lot more ‘experimentally’ than after I first started working as an illustrator. Back then I always tried to use lots of different styles and I definitely feel I did much, much crazier things. But when I work now as an illustrator, I am completely obsessed about working very predictably because again, I know the other side. I know when somebody calls you and they need the drawing in 5 hours, they need the drawing in 5 hours! The pressure simply limits everyone’s taste for surprises. On the other hand, you cut out a certain amount of chance, of ambiguity and maybe poetic force if you work too professionally.

I know for the work that I do, you can’t substitute for professionalism. Still, I would be curious to see what happens if I loosen up a little bit more. That’s definitely something I want to see in the long run. While I would love to still do editorial illustrations on assignment for the next 50 years, I just don’t think that kind of thing will be around as much as it is today. I think it’s just the normal and natural thing to find other ways of creating images for your own stories rather than for the ones that people give you, which will also allow for more experimental executions.

Have you thought about illustrating for movies or doing more high end animation?
I’ve done a couple more animations recently and it’s always fun. The problem with animation is that it’s such a time-consuming thing. There is such an intense amount of labor involved that a 5 minute film is automatically a 3 month project.

Another problem is that I love to work by myself rather than having an assistant that collects cells and fills in frames, etc.. So I don’t really see myself doing that much animation, at least for now. What I could imagine though is writing a screenplay – not right now or in 2 years but perhaps maybe in 5 years. It would be something where I could say here’s what it looks like and we have an image of a person walking from here to there. But again, right now I’m too obsessed with doing every little aspect of it.

I do see that what I’m doing with the Times blog and with the children’s books is helping because I’m trying to think in terms of expressing myself over more than one panel. Now I’m thinking more about stories, about drawing up a little world rather than just one angle that fits in with an assignment. But there’s plenty of challenges right now in my life and I want to explore these first before taking the next big steps.

Your imagery about Asia seems to be somewhat mixed to me. There are playful images either from your book or even other pictures compared to such images as the ‘Panda’ that addresses sending emails to China that may include political content. What is your attraction to Asian art and how has this influenced various works in your collection?
Well, I was never too crazy about manga and that aspect. That was never a big thing for me. It was more the ancient Chinese and Japanese woodcuts and paintings which I think are absolutely stunningly beautiful.

As far as these pieces – really as all of my illustration works go – I don’t have aspirations of creating a new style, rather I want to use what’s already out there. I want to be able to use them to communicate certain ideas. That’s why I love 20th century advertising graphics, that’s why I love Renaissance painting. I was at an opening here recently where they had the most amazing Egyptian hieroglyphics painted in orange on blue. It looked absolutely gorgeous. I’m not keen on learning what they mean but graphically they were just stunning. So for me the whole world is full of these beautiful styles that can be used to tell certain stories.

When I came up with the idea for the book on Chinese characters, I was excited to study older Chinese art in order to come up with a style that somehow incorporated the historic aspect of Chinese art, but still felt modern and helped me tell my story. I wanted to make a mix of computer images but also use what I think is an amazing blend of gradients and colors inspired again by the woodcuts. They have these fantastically smooth backgrounds and smooth shadings but yet these very precise drawings in between, which is something that I think is just visually so great.

In terms of your blog: how did you get such a fantastic gig? Was it your idea or were you approached to do this by the NYT staff?
It was kind of both. The NYT was the 1st place I really started working for when I came to NY and I worked a lot for the Op-Ed page. I’ve worked with a lot of their art directors fairly closely. And I’ve even built relationships with some of the editors.

When I decided to move back to Berlin I felt I was ready to try something a little larger in scope that the things I had done for them before. I had seen what Maira Kalman and Jeff Scher had done with this format and was inspired to try it out for myself. This leap of faith into story telling was very scary: like this is your story and there’s no excuse of ‘oh it’s just an assignment, I wouldn’t have picked this topic’.

Then I talked to the art director at that time for the Op-Ed page, Brian Rea (the blog is part of the Op-Ed page) and we talked to his editor whom I also knew. And then they called back and said they’d love to do it. So I initiated it but they were very receptive to it.

Also, it seems that for so many viewers the main attraction is that the blog works on so many levels (meaning = we get it!). The illustrations have both a child-like innocence and simplicity to them, yet they are creative enough to draw in a large fan-base and keep the adults in the audience laughing as well. How do you balance the almost Disney-esque stylization of keeping ‘all’ ages interested, for example, with your recent piece using Lego blocks to illustrate scenes in the area of NYC?
That could be but I think the Lego piece is more of a grown-up thing. I showed it to my boys who liked it for the Lego part of it. But ultimately it’s more for grown-ups because it’s about New York culture, architecture and pop reference, rather than about abstraction per se.

But even when dealing with just ‘grown-ups’, that still leaves you with a huge span of people. And I try very consciously to keep it as wide as possible, especially for the blog. I try to keep things in there that are challenging even for somebody whom I would consider very much visually literate. I want start a bit less complex, to give the reader the chance to acquaint himself with the concept. When I introduce a new way of visualizing a story I think it has to start a little slower before you go all crazy.

An example with the Lego chapter: one of the first frames includes ‘No Smoking’ and ‘Union Square.’ A good friend of mind said these were a little lame, they were so obvious. I just felt that the 1st two or three (images) were necessary to kind of establish the rules, then I could start messing with it and come up with metaphors like NYC’s worst building. I knew that only a few people would understand which one I was referring to, but I felt in the context of a blog that’s actually fun. Because you have the comments section – and if it comes up there, someone else will comment what it actually is. It makes it a little bit like a riddle, it makes it more fun.

I once saw a lecture on design, called something like ‘what makes good design’ given by Alexander Gelman, the famous Russian designer who lived in New York for a long time and has been in Tokyo for the last ten years. As an example, he took a glass of water and moved it around the table. He showed that you can put it on the left or you can put it on the right of the table, and said ‘this is what a designer does.’. But then he put it on the edge of the table, literally like where 51% of the glass was on the table and 49% was hanging over the edge. And he pointed out that it’s when your audience wants to jump up and grab it, when they think oh god it’s going to fall down: then that’s good design!

And I thought that was such a great metaphor. Having this thing that’s still thrilling, where you want to be challenged. After all, you don’t want a crossword that’s too easy to solve, it’s no fun. But if you have one that can’t be solved, that’s no fun either. So it was the same with the Lego pieces. I wanted to have a couple of pieces where everybody could feel like they were just challenged enough. And then they would have the great thrill of solving something. But it has to be a little bit of a struggle before you actually get all of it.

What’s next for Christoph Niemann?
Right now I feel like that with the blog I’m faced with a huge challenge to come up with something again and again. In terms of timing, we had talked about doing one every month which I’m finding is actually incredibly hard. But my editors are nice enough – and smart enough – to know that if I did these in a rush it just wouldn’t work out. It’s a lot effort. I have to come up with a story, I have to come up with a problem and a solution. It’s just so complex that I don’t think it would work on a deadline. I always feel like ‘oh god, I have to stop now, it’s too painful, it’s too hard, it’s impossible.’ Trying to get a couple of new chapters for that out is definitely all I can creatively obsess about right now.

But I love the whole blog experience. The chance to interact with the reader, of actually knowing what people think about what you’re doing, is great. Whereas when you have something in a magazine, you get like 1 angry letter to the Editor a year and that’s about it. Apart from that people might like it but you’ll never find out about it, there’s just no reaction. So I really want to use this experience to my full advantage.

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If I could borrow a bit of Christoph’s biography input straight from his blog links at the New York Times – especially as this is one of the few inputs you’ll find on the web that has the latest status on he and his family in terms of living in Berlin with not 2 but now 3 children – plus one or two additional inputs:

Christoph Niemann was born in Waiblingen in the German Southwest in 1970. After his studies at the Stuttgart Academy of Fine Arts with Heinz Edelmann, he did the whole New York thing we talked about. His illustrations have appeared on the covers of The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone (the magazine, not the band), Entertainment Weekly, BusinessWeek and American Illustration. His work has won numerous awards including from the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), the Talent of the Year Award from the Art Directors’ Club (ADC)in Germany in 1998, SPD and American Illustration, as well as from the Lead Academy in Germany in 2006 and 2007. He is a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale. He has taught a class on conceptual design at the School on Visual Arts in New York, and lectured widely in the U.S. and Germany, as well as Japan, South Africa, and Mexico.

He is the author of two children's books, "The Pet Dragon," which teaches Chinese characters to young readers, and "The Police Cloud." He also illustrated the interestingly titled children’s book ‘The Boy with Two Belly Buttons’, written by the, quote, fabulous Stephen Dubner (of Freakonomics fame). In addition, along with co-conspirator Nicholas Blechman, he is the publisher of the artist’s book series 100%, which he describes as presenting “editorial illustration without an editor.” The latest issue, 100% EVIL, was published by Princeton Architectural Press.

After about 11 continuous years in New York, he moved to Berlin with his wife, Lisa, and their sons, Arthur, Gustav and Fritz, which indeed comes to three in the kids department. And he welcomes any and all comments you’d like to send in about his work including his blog. Just maybe drop him a line and tell him ‘I got it!’

For additional links of interest, ZN highly recommends (perhaps even marked earlier):
- A great descriptive about the creation of ‘The Police Cloud’ found here;
- Also some great examples of Christoph’s illustrations for ‘The Boy With Two Belly Buttons’ can be seen here (that Director character in the picture above looks oddly familiar);
- A presentation that Christoph made to the AIGA in 2007. It’s very well done, just don’t let the solo act at the end by the moderator put you off;
- WARNING: unless you’re prone to seizures caused by flashing lights, check out Christoph’s MySpace page. The fancy effects are a result of his own hacking and trying to see how far he could push the software before the system broke. Oh, and if you’ll notice, one of his ‘Top 6 Friends’ is a famous fellow with the mailing address of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue;
- And of course, there’s his collection of blogs at the NY Times, titled ‘Abstract City’, which can also be accessed here. Whether you’re a fan of NY or not, its worthwhile to visit and let your imagination run wild as you enjoy Christoph’s coffee-based drawings (seriously), an adventure into decorating his bathroom, or even how his boys loved riding the subway.

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All pictures used with the express written consent of Christoph Niemann. Remember: he lived in New York for 10 years. I have no idea if that matters or not, but still... If you’d like to see more of his work – or even want to buy a copy of a particular cover or print – please see his home page where he’s put together several really terrific galleries and more.

Portrait photo by Jason Fulford.