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Tag: christoph niemann

Christoph Niemann’s “Critical Mass”

After posting Chris Ware’s pandemic cover for The New Yorker earlier this week, I remembered I had also meant to post Christoph Niemann’s “Critical Mass” cover from two weeks ago. It may not pull at your heart strings the way Ware’s cover does, but it’s a brilliant and prescient illustration of the pandemic.

I believe that the best concepts develop in the process of drawing. I don’t usually have ideas pop in my head fully formed when I’m not at my desk. Yet the genesis for this image, the idea of a sneezing domino standing on top of a globe packed with other domino pieces, came to me when I was lying in bed, trying to fall asleep… I got up again and sketched down the idea. Only the next day, when I sat down to turn the concept into a proper art work, did I realize that the globe and the pieces actually resemble a virus. In the end, it still proves my theory that all decent ideas come together when you actually draw them.

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Christoph Niemann | Fresh Air

Illustrator Christoph Niemann talks to Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross about his illustrations for The New Yorker, Newsweek and the New York Times Magazine, and his new kids book That’s How:

I care so much about magazines and newspapers and books. This is the world that I live in as a consumer and that’s why I really care about contributing to this world. And I get a much bigger kick out of having my image seen like million times for like 20 seconds and then it ends up in the trash bin rather than having my image on somebody’s like over somebody’s sofa for 20 years.

NPR FRESH AIR: ‘That’s How’ Christoph Niemann Explains It All

The full transcript is here.

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