Who Was Abner Graboff? — Frustrated with the lack information available online about artist, designer and illustrator Abner Graboff, Ward “Ward-O-Matic” Jenkins decided to do some digging himself. His research — now available in a three part series — includes a host of great images of Graboff’s children’s books and book cover designs, as well as a nice interview with Graboff’s son Jon:
Throughout my father’s career, he did hundreds of book jacket designs and I once asked him, in a slightly condescending way, if he enjoyed that kind of work? He said he loved it because he had to nail the vibe of the book in a single illustration and when he got it right, that it was very satisfying. There was a long period of time when I could walk into a bookstore, look around, pick up a book and look at the jacket design credit… and more often than not, find his name. Later on, I started to get fooled. Other designers were either copying or being heavily influenced by his style.
Calling Bullshit on Social Media — Scott Berkun, O’Reilly author of The Myths of Innovation and Making Things Happen (via — irony alert — Mark Bertils on Twitter):
TV forced radio to change and in some ways improve. The web forced TV, newspapers and magazines to change, and they will likely survive forever in some form, focusing on things the web can not do well. Its unusual for new thing to completely replace the old ones and when they do it takes years. Anyone who claims social media will eliminate standard PR or mass media is engaging in hype, as odds are better those things will change and learn, but never die. It’s wise to ask what each kind of media / marketing is good and bad for and work from there.
Berkun’s definitely onto something here and it probably deserves a whole post (maybe later!)… Certainly, he’s right to point out (earlier in the essay) that there have always been social networks. But he doesn’t note that for many city dwellers traditional social and familial networks have been breaking down in the post-war period, which I suspect is part of the seductive appeal of connecting online for us slightly older urban types whose use Twitter and Facebook a lot… Anyway, it’s interesting that some of Berkun’s points about technology probably also apply to e-books.
Berkun’s essay also reminded me of an article I read in Fast Company earlier in the week, Our Kids Aren’t Web-Addicted… Are We?:
It’s only we adults that are at PC workstations all day, looking for ways to avoid doing work or trolling the boundaries of our IT-installed browser filters. And we’re the only ones who have social networks big enough to require a tool like Twitter. Imagine how absurd Twitter seems when you only have 10 or 12 friends, not a network of 300+ coworkers, college buddies and colleagues?
And finally…
Krazy — Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin & Hobbes, on George Herriman’s seminal comic strip Krazy Kat, reproduced at This Recording (via Bookslut):
Krazy Kat gains its momentum less from the personalities of its characters than from their obsessions. Ignatz Mouse demonstrates his contempt for Krazy by throwing bricks at her; Krazy reinterprets the bricks as signs of love; and Offissa Pupp is obliged by duty (and regard for Krazy) to thwart and punish Ignatz’s “sin,” thereby interefering with a process that’s satisfying to everyone for all the wrong reasons. Some 30 years of strips were wrung out of that amalgam of cross-purposes. The action can be read as a metaphor for love or politics, or just enjoyed for its lunatic inner logic and physical comedy.