Blog | Print Magazine

Sep 27, 2018
3 min

When the U.S. Army Banned a Comic Book About War

It was 1966, in the midst of the Vietnam War. President Johnson was escalating his lies to Congress and the public that prolonged this horrific and unwinnable South Asian conflict. And in that year, America suffered 6,350 fatal military casualties, well over triple the number of deaths in 1965. And a war comic titled Blazing Combat was banned by the armed forces. No Glorious Enterprise Blazing Combat, along with Creepy and Eerie, two other black-and-white, magazine-sized pulp

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Aug 3, 2018
4 min

Design Expert’s 10 Coffee Table Book Recommendations

Curated by Daniel Dejan, Print and Creative Manager at Sappi North America Coffee table books are having a moment, and as a lifelong creative with a deep love and appreciation for good design, quality printing and engaging content, I am fully on board. Over the years my own collection has grown and evolved, but I have my favorites—and one key thing they all have in common is premier paper. When considering a coffee table book, the feel of the paper it’s printed on has a lot t

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Mar 8, 2017
2 min

Who Run the World? Bad Girls & Ann Shen

Illustrator Ann Shen: Bad Girls Throughout History “Suddenly they were very human, likely having the same doubts and fears, which made me feel more connected to them and as a result, a little braver.” It’s only February, and it’s already been an interesting year for feminism. We’ve said goodbye to Mary Tyler Moore, arguably one of Hollywood’s most iconic women’s rights advocates. We’ve marched in the streets around the world. And now illustrator Ann Shen is releasing a noteca

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Sep 19, 2016
2 min

Marketing the American Dream, Automotive Design Division

Those high-end design history books won’t tell you, but a great deal of brilliant and fascinating automotive design graphics were produced during the decades prior to Koenig and Krone’s “Think small.” Indeed, contrary to the Henry Ford “…as long as it’s black” myth, American cars as well as their promotion material have had a colorful history from their very beginnings. And this month, Taschen Books has helped repair this oversight by publishing a vividly illustrated—hey, it’

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May 16, 2016
3 min

World Premiere: The Unseen Movie Designs of Saul Bass

What else can be said about Saul Bass? Plenty, as TV Week’s Chuck Ross demonstrated a few days ago when he posted twelve pages featuring “A Treasure Trove of Previously Unpublished Works,” with detailed commentary. These are among Bass’s formative efforts, just before the breakthroughs that would cement his status as Feature Films’ Founding Father of Graphic Design Modernism. Al Kallis is an illustrator, art director, and International House of Pancakes co-founder, currently

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Dec 28, 2015
2 min

Beyond the Graphic Novel: A Comically Surreal Comic Collage

Appropriation art—sampling, mixing, whatever—is as old as the first time some creative person joined together scraps of ephemera into a composition. Fast-forwarding to the 1950s, the standard for comic collage art was set by Jess Collins, a Bay Area bohemian known simply as Jess. Jess meticulously de- and reconstructed Chester Gould’s ghoulishly grim gumshoe Dick Tracy strip into works of jazzy, downbeat visual bop poetry. And now Siglio Press, publishers of an indispensable

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Dec 18, 2015
2 min

Beyond the Graphic Novel: Is She Available?

You don’t need Seymour Chwast, Chip Kidd and other designers to tell you that cartoons and comics are vital sources of creative inspiration (although they do that here). So maybe you’re thinking about exploring the graphic novel realm, but you’d like something more exceptional than usual, more out of the ordinary. Well, here’s the first of a series of suggestions that either defy or disregard categorization as comics. And the first, Is She Available?, is an eBook that also ch

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Dec 4, 2015
19 min

Curious Pictures & Curiouser Conversations: 15 Artists in Wonderland

150 years ago, when Macmillan England published Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, it set off a revolution in the art of children’s books. 75 years ago, when Walt Disney—who’d directed the live and animated Alice’s Wonderland in 1923—opened his Burbank, Calif., production lot, he set the stage for that city to become the hub of the entertainment industry. And today, Alice, art, and animation have converged there for a celebratory exhibition, “Curiouser and Curiouser.” Burbank

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Feb 6, 2015
3 min

Skull Art: When Death Covered the Newsstand

Zombie Haiku is the touching (albeit cold and clammy) story of a zombie’s gradual decay—and here’s the unique twist—it’s told through the intimate poetry of haiku. Get yours here. Forget The Walking Dead; they’re so… buried. It’s now the day of the Dead Dead! Vintage skull art and images—covers of cheap, lurid horror, mystery, and thriller fiction that once haunted newsstands, drug stores, and cigar shops—have begun to rear their cadaverous crania. It should be duly noted tha

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Jan 22, 2015
3 min

The Importance of Creating Provocative, Uncensored Art

Don’t say you weren’t told. WARNING! Graphic Content: Political Cartoons, Comix and the Uncensored Artistic Mind has well over 350 controversial illustrations by artists from around the world and throughout history. They deal with extremes of political, cultural, sexual, racial, and, yes, religious issues. It’s also an ebook, enhanced with plenty of video and audio clips. Most challenging – and most rewarding – is the lengthy and lively text, which is as insightful and inspir

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Jun 13, 2014
1 min

06/13/2014: World Cup book

Another well-designed World Cup project, this one a collaboration between Hey and Studio DBD. The book project contains facts about players from each of the 32 teams playing in the 2014 games, and the book, as well as prints are available for purchase at Twenty Twenty Two. Check out more images here. #design #book #icons #ColorampDesign #WorldCup

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May 18, 2012
1 min

A View From Inside the 1960s Music Revolution

“When did music become so important?” That’s Don Draper from last week’s Mad Men, set in 1966. Later in the episode he turns off “Tomorrow Never Knows,” from the Beatles album Revolver, and walks out of the room. art: Rick Griffin There’s something happening here, but you don’t know what it is—do you, Mr. Draper? One year later, Rolling Stone magazine will make its debut, followed soon by Rock and Other Four Letter Words. The editor-designer was a writer named J Marks. The ph

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Mar 10, 2011
1 min

Today's Obsession: Designing Media

As SxSW interactive begins tomorrow (I’m in Austin; look for me and say hello, or even better, feed me booze), I will be looking more at the media industry for the next few days. Here’s one great piece I found yesterday: a book, Designing Media by Bill Moggridge, examining the making of the media landcape as we know it, and possible ways it could be heading. There’s interviews with 37 people who’ve been there, from the publisher of the New York Times to the founders of Twitte

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Feb 25, 2011
1 min

Today's Obsession: Brilliant

Here’s a book I can’t believe I missed out on when PopMatters posted it last October—Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light sounds like a fascinating read. It traces the history of artifically-created and transported light from the end of the last Ice Age, when we first began to express ourselves, to today’s massive power grids going unexamined by… nearly everyone. But artificial light is one of the most valuable things we’ve ever produced—it allows us to take informati

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When the U.S. Army Banned a Comic Book About War

Design Expert’s 10 Coffee Table Book Recommendations

Who Run the World? Bad Girls & Ann Shen

Marketing the American Dream, Automotive Design Division

World Premiere: The Unseen Movie Designs of Saul Bass

Beyond the Graphic Novel: A Comically Surreal Comic Collage

Beyond the Graphic Novel: Is She Available?

Curious Pictures & Curiouser Conversations: 15 Artists in Wonderland

Skull Art: When Death Covered the Newsstand

The Importance of Creating Provocative, Uncensored Art

06/13/2014: World Cup book

A View From Inside the 1960s Music Revolution

Today's Obsession: Designing Media

Today's Obsession: Brilliant

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