I saw a bit of a PBS nature special today - it had something to do with eagles, I think. I just caught a bit on my way through stumbling over Legos and figuring out what I did with my glasses. But this cartoon came to mind.
Artists and Illustrators Unite!
The Web accelerates a lot of things that humans would want to do anyway, particularly connecting with other people. For artists, the ability to connect is like gold. Looking at other people's work makes your own work better.
The Escape from Illustration Island blog is a terrific example. Thomas James spends a lot of energy on amassing useful tips of all sorts for artists and illustrators. It's indeed a gold mine.
Here are a few items that I find particularly useful:
What do you wish you knew when you started? Read the comments, where artists (like me) offer hard-won wisdom
68 Useful and Inspiring illustration resources - tons of links here!
How to work with an illustrator, over on Thomas' own site
So if you are a freelance artist, or you know one, or someone you know is considering getting into the field (perhaps after they graduate), send them over. These are the types of resources that artists need in order to run their business and not feel like they are selling out or being taken advantage of. Thanks Thomas!
What Can I Do For You?
- I can LICENSE YOU ART OR CARTOONS - for books, magazines, presentations, merchandise, displays, anything you need.
- I can CREATE SPOT ILLUSTRATIONS for your presentation, article, or project
- I can help you VISUALIZE CONCEPTS, explain yourself to your audience, MAKE COMPLEX THINGS CLEAR
- I can ILLUSTRATE YOUR STORY OR BOOK
- I can MAKE ILLUSTRATED EBOOKS/MOVIES, stories, introductions and slides after the style of the Creative Beast (and many others)
- GOT ANOTHER IDEA? Something you'd like to talk about? Try out? Play with? Write me right away! (mail AT betsystreeter.com) Let's sketch and talk!
How to License Artwork and Cartoons:
I am uploading new stuff there all the time.
They are wonderful, and easy to work with. Check them out!
If you can't find what you seek there, email me (mailATbetsystreeter.com) with:
- A description or caption
- Where you saw the art or cartoon or animation
- What you want to use it for (type of use, circulation or number of copies)
That's all I need.
I can get you the file, and quote you a license fee right quick.
I look forward to talking with you!
About Me
Hi there! I'm Betsy Streeter, and I'm glad you came to visit.I'm a teaching cartoonist + illustrator + designer + mom. I write about drawing, thinking, thinking while drawing, and drawing while thinking.
I live in Northern California with my kids, cats, husband and an enormous collection of books and music.
I believe Art is the Power to Speak the Truth.
My goal each day is to draw something for someone.
I publish e-books on creativity. Here is one called "Ten Great Uses for a Pencil," and here is another called "How to Draw Nothing." Both are free. I also did this one:
View more presentations from betsystreeter.
If you want the full career rundown, you can see my resume on LinkedIn.
Want to work together? Got a question? Here's my address: mail AT betsystreeter.com.
Here's a partial client list:
Cartooning and Illustration:
King Features
The Funny Times
Utne Reader
Body + Soul Magazine (a Martha Stewart publication)
Coaching Sanctuary
For Women First Magazine
Z Magazine (cover, double issue)
Universal Press
Wiley Publishing
Thomson Learning
Henry Stewart Talks
Daily Press, Newport News Virginia
Utah Statesman, Utah State University
The Lamoni Chronicle, Lamoni, Iowa
The Rake, Minneapolis, Minnesota
She Shines (YWCA), Rhode Island
Smithsonian Astrophysics Observatory Exhibit, "Black Holes and Time Twists"
Mommy Tracked
Oxford University
Cambridge
Stanford University Press
Deloitte
T-Mobile
Design, Design Strategy, UI, UX:
Xerox (design appears in Jakob Nielsen's book, "Designing Web Usability")
Schwab
Janus
Electronic Arts
PG&E
Indus International
Sapient
Please feel free to email me and I will be happy to draw something for you!
Cartoons About Animals
You can sometimes make a point better with animal characters than you can with humans.
Often I license cartoons to people who are making a point in print or in a presentation that might be kind of sensitive, or they want to use animals to help people see the humor in a situation that might not otherwise be so funny.
Consider using humor to make your point. It keeps people's ears open.
NOTE: These cartoons are copyrighted, and are samples - there are many more where they came from (over 2,000, actually). If you'd like to use a cartoon, or see more, you can contact me directly or check out the big ol' archive on CartoonStock.com.
Cartoons About Business
When I was spinning through the Internet Boom and Bust in the 1990s, cartooning was my "shadow career." It was a repository for all of my observations and angst. These days, I license them out to people to use in their books, presentations, and websites - I suspect often for the same purpose. Some samples are below.
NOTE: These are all copyrighted, and there are TONS more where they came from (over 2,000 to date). If you're interested in using a cartoon, you can contact me directly or you can also get my cartoons on CartoonStock.com (those guys are great.)
Visualising Complicated Decisions
Nonprofits are always hungry for ways to generate interest and funds. This often results in many well-intentioned ideas that may not pan out to actually be profitable. This drawing helps me clarify how we at our theatre company should think about whether or not to throw an event. We are unique in that we have this really cool old theatre building to work out of, so there are no end of ideas. But here I've shown that there is a water line that we must stay above for an event to be worth it.
A nonprofit generally wants two things: to reach people, and to bring in money. So I put those above the water line, and then put the things that erode those two things below the water as if they are pulling down. The objective of the game is never to end up underwater.
There are many many factors at work here, and for a particular event different ones will come to the fore. But it's all about the difference between the pluses and minuses - do you end up above water or not? Are there flotation devices that will help you, like getting volunteers or partnering with another organization? Are you sinking yourself by not allowing enough lead time or putting all the responsibility on only one or two people and burning them out?
This came out of a discussion at a board meeting - I knew there were a lot of things flying around the room, and we were bouncing from a time discussion to a technical discussion to a money discussion - this helped me to really get it all down in one place and have a tool to evaluate events with going forward.
A nonprofit generally wants two things: to reach people, and to bring in money. So I put those above the water line, and then put the things that erode those two things below the water as if they are pulling down. The objective of the game is never to end up underwater.
There are many many factors at work here, and for a particular event different ones will come to the fore. But it's all about the difference between the pluses and minuses - do you end up above water or not? Are there flotation devices that will help you, like getting volunteers or partnering with another organization? Are you sinking yourself by not allowing enough lead time or putting all the responsibility on only one or two people and burning them out?
This came out of a discussion at a board meeting - I knew there were a lot of things flying around the room, and we were bouncing from a time discussion to a technical discussion to a money discussion - this helped me to really get it all down in one place and have a tool to evaluate events with going forward.
The Lost Queen - 10 new pages
Alrighty, I've passed 100 pages! This batch takes us to Page 107, and Liesel and Gerritt are faced with a dilemma - Liesel's parents are clearly in danger, but Liesel's Book of Wishes seems to be sending them to a place that has nothing to do with saving them. The Illuminator of Manuscripts just draws em as he sees em. So Liesel and Gerritt emerge, after scaling the destruction left behind by the dragon, into a very different landscape than was there before.
Here's the link to the complete set of drawings on Flickr.
As I've mentioned, I've also got the first part of this novel out complete with narrative and dialog, it's a big PDF so you may have to be patient, but it lets you see how the text and drawings work together.
Now I must start looking for somewhere to publish the rest. This is such a small sampling of the story, but that's the beauty of visual storytelling - you can stay with some of the pages for a while and add your own ideas. We'll see where Liesel and Gerritt end up next... I've got a lot of Moleskines to fill!
Here's the link to the complete set of drawings on Flickr.
As I've mentioned, I've also got the first part of this novel out complete with narrative and dialog, it's a big PDF so you may have to be patient, but it lets you see how the text and drawings work together.
Now I must start looking for somewhere to publish the rest. This is such a small sampling of the story, but that's the beauty of visual storytelling - you can stay with some of the pages for a while and add your own ideas. We'll see where Liesel and Gerritt end up next... I've got a lot of Moleskines to fill!
Web Strategy for a Small Nonprofit - Lighten the Load
As a member of the board for a small nonprofit theatre company, one of my challenges is to help the organization connect with - and win support from - its surrounding community.
We operate out of a 96-year-old building, known as Town Hall, which has a rich history in the area. Tons of people drive by it every day. It's even by a stoplight.
That said, it can be a challenge, even in a relatively small town, to really reach people. Sure, there's the cross-section of folks who are always involved, who bring their kids to classes, and who attend shows, but to many many people, there's this historic building on the corner and some stuff happens there but we're not sure what that is.
So what we need is a way of communicating that opens that building up for all to see, and makes them feel welcome. That's where the Web comes in.
There is really nothing more sad than a website for a nonprofit that clearly hasn't been updated for months or even years. I always feel bad when I see that - I figure there's no one to do the updates, or maybe the organization has gone dormant for some reason. Needless to say, this does not help to win supporters, donors or sponsors.
So, we knew we needed to make the Town Hall Web presence vibrant, to show an active company with lots to offer. And when you are a theatre, there is always some upcoming event, something to announce, tickets going up for sale, shows ending and needing to be taken down. It's a really fast cycle.
Sometimes I will hear people say, "We just don't have anyone to build us a site, and we can't afford to hire someone to do it." There's this barrier, which is getting the site built and edited, that stands in the way.
So here's what we did, and maybe it can work for you too: We converted our whole site to a blog.
What did that do for us? Well first, it removed the "website development" process. Our staff can now edit the site on a dime, and all we need to do is make sure that it stays tidy and is written well. There is no middle step between needing to publish something and publishing it, and there are no technical skills involved in getting content up there.
This has had the effect of letting us not only be much more current, but it has also enabled the staff to work together to make the face that the theatre puts out into the community. That ownership is priceless.
One neat tip: In order to maintain the latest and greatest news on our home page, we have one post that always has the most recent date on it. That one has all the "Today at Town Hall" news on it, and it's the first thing you see. So if we make a new post, that has a more recent date/time, we just go back in when we're done and set that "Today at" post to the most recent date and time. That way it pops back onto the home page. So just because it's a blog does not mean you have to lose control of your home page.
We then put all of our information about our staff, board, how to donate, tickets, map, etc. down the side so it's always there.
In this day and age, with all the tools out there, if you've got something you want to say on the Web, and you aren't saying it, it's because you're not using the right tools. In our case, as a small nonprofit, we decided it was much more important to be active and up to date than it was to have some big Flash site or other technically-complex solution. Especially since now, when the phone rings, the staff can point people to up-to-date information on the site and mean it.
If you're operating on low-to-no budget, and you want those who are creating the content to have control of what gets published, a blog-based site might be right for you too. I'm now thrilled when I see new things going up there, and it happens almost daily. If you'd like, you can see it here.
The Lost Queen Graphic Novel - With Narrative!
Now, you can see it with the narrative and dialogue.
It's a PDF, so the best way to view it is in single-page view and go through one page at a time. And it's a big file, so be patient... it is a graphic novel, after all.
I will still be putting up new artwork as well, but wanted you to have a chance to see the first part of the novel in its complete form.
It took a while to settle on a narrative approach, but in the end I am essentially bringing a movie storyboard to life. The Invention of Hugo Cabret goes back and forth between pages of text and wordless sequences of drawings. The Arrival has no words at all. And webcomics tend to have the dialog embedded in the visuals, which is not a style that I take to in this particular instance. The drawings really want to stand on their own.
So, see what you think, and send me a note! And, thanks for reading. I really appreciate it.
Do the Old Rules Still Apply in Design?
The Internets have been around long enough you can now go back and look at "old" website designs and see what's changed. It's really fascinating to look at an interface design book from a while ago and see what people were dealing with.
For example, the time it took for a page to load used to be of paramount importance. We were in the land of dial-up connections. People carefully constructed Web pages so that they wouldn't have to load too many graphics. Making people stare at a spinning clock or hourglass - and half a graphic - was death.
Well, these days we've got YouTube videos all over everything, animated popup ads that slap themselves over the top of whatever you are looking at, weird little dancing people in banners at the side of the page -- is this good?
One thing that hasn't changed is how much people like to control the display of information. Listing things according to what people care about is still extremely important. I remember working on the info architecture for the Xerox website years ago, and we came up with a way to compare various printers and copiers by letting people re-sort the list of products according to things like paper size, whether it could fax, resolution, etc. This was pretty new, and some of the architecture got into Jakob Nielsen's book Designing Web Usability (page 215, yes I'm still proud darnit).
These days, people sort things all the time. You can sort your email, sort your files on your desktop, and shopping sites are one big sorting festival.
So, yes, the old rules still apply - the ones that say the user wants control. It's just that now, we can give people control of the information along with a nifty video of the latest celebrity meltdown or an animated person gaining and losing weight over and over. Isn't that great?
Cartoons are Prototypes for Life.
I recently came across an article from a while back: "A Forgotten Prototype Technique: Comics" by Jared Spool.
When I worked in film and video production, I used visualisation all the time. In film, sketching things out on paper is critical to saving yourself a ton of headaches - and money - later. I drew storyboards, once taking one down as dictation while the director paced up and down and described the plot of his rap music video. I sketched out set designs too. I even sketched a design for a retail store once for a gentleman who needed to visualise how a new layout for a Gap store might look.
The thing about using this technique for prototyping a user interface is, you can include the prospective user in the visuals. Just like Mystery Science Theatre, you can get reactions while showing what's going on on the screen.
It is not as simple as it looks - figuring out what to include in each frame, what dialogue might occur, and how to tell the story clearly requires a cinematic approach. It is almost more like developing a graphic novel than an interface design.
I often cartoon about people - and animals - interacting with technology. Now, I'm thinking that maybe these could be counted as user testing. That is, if you want to know how animals might use computers. Wave of the future, you know.
HyperCard and Night Driver
There's something terrific about being my age, which is that your life spans a period of time from when it was normal to get an electric typewriter to take with you to college, up to now. And, it's not actually that long, so it's not like I'm 150 or something.
I remember when my friends first got their little Macs in their dorm rooms. This was a whole new way to create a term paper! Of course, you still had to plan your time to allow for the printing process, in which the tractor-feed printer would sit there and make awful noises in its strain to output all of your pages. But shoot, that was nothing next to re-typing or white-out.
And boy, I got excited about HyperCard. Here was something that let you come up with your own interface! I would make little stacks of cards and click through them over and over.
My age also means that as a kid I played on an Atari. We had Pong, and Night Driver. And Asteroids. And, we had Space Invaders. I had a system whereby I NEVER LOST at Space Invaders. I could play it infinitely. The only thing that controlled the length of play was basic human needs like eating and going to the bathroom. I had a choreographed set of moves that I could replicate over and over and score 100,000 points. Ask anyone who knows Space Invaders - that's a lot of points.
And get this - at my husbands childhood home, in the drawer in the coffee table, there's one of those original electronic Football games. You know, the one that goes "BDEEEE! BDEEEE!" when you score a touchdown. It still works. We still play it.
I think that knowing about these things keeps you humble. I feel grounded in a world that doesn't just include rectangular screens, because I used to dial rotary phones. And this helps me to remember that when designing or illustrating, all you're doing is thinking visually and that the screen isn't the point. The human experience is the point.
We dig the Internets not because they happen on a screen, but because they enable people to actually meet and date and get married. And find rare comic books. And get tickets to the monster truck rally.
These days as I look over the landscape of people slouched over their rectangular devices, I know that the world they are relating to is still lumpy and human and messy. The device isn't going to change that. You can get a rude email just like you can get a rude phone call or talk to a rude person. So when we draw or design it's all still just people. Mostly people who think rotary phones are hilariously sad, but people nonetheless.
Humor-Centered Design
I think it's really weird to try and analyze why things are funny.
But getting funny things down in a form that other people can enjoy - that requires some thought.
When I go to create a cartoon, often I have some fragment of an idea in my mind - like, "that's stupid," or "Huh," or something really articulate like that.
These get put on shreds of paper all over my house and car.
Then I have to get from that shred to something that's actually able to be seen and read and understood.
Single-panel cartooning presents special challenges. I think of my panels as one-frame movies. They've got a plot, and characters, and a setting, and dialogue.
There's a past, a present and a future, and you have to decide in which of these the cartoon takes place. Did something just happen? Or is it about to happen? Or is it happening right now?
Something stupid that is about to happen is funny because the reader can anticipate it. Something stupid that just happened is funny because of the reaction to it. Something stupid that is happening right now is funny because it's an observation of life.
Here's something stupid that is about to happen:
And, here's one where something stupid already happened:
And here's one where something stupid is happening, also known as "observational humor:"
See? Humor being designed. Telling a story, one frame at a time. Someday maybe I'll string all the little panels together and that will be my life story. There are over 2,200 of them at this point, after all.
Unintentional Messages in UI Design
"I can't get this to work."
"Well, maybe they don't want you to do it that way."
Who are these "they" people anyway? Well, as we move through the world, often we are faced with things that we know were made by someone else. Ticket machines, electronics, websites, even doors. If they don't work as we expected, we often assume that the "they" behind that thing didn't intend for use to use them in that way. They didn't put that option in there.
Websites and interfaces are especially susceptible to this. I was watching a friend try to navigate a website the other day - he was evaluating a company that he might work for. He could not look at the company's employees by function, which meant that he couldn't determine who was in what department. "I guess they don't want you to know that," he said.
Hmm.
Was that message intentional, or unintentional? When you leave things out of your interface that users are going to want, are you doing that on purpose? Is it like the velvet rope outside a nightclub?
Or, did you just leave it off because you didn't think of it, and now people are taking away a message that you did not intend?
The things that are not there send a message, that says "That's not the intent here." So make sure you send that message on purpose. If you bury your "careers" link, maybe it's because you aren't hiring right now. But if you do want to be hiring, don't bury it. Put it right where someone new would see it right away.
UI Design: Selecting a Halloween Costume
I love to think about everyday problems and then design user interfaces to address them.
Many parents have had this conversation, usually while driving or doing something not even remotely related:
"Mom, know what I want to be for Halloween?"
"Honey, Halloween was last week."
"I know. For NEXT Halloween."
"That's a while from now."
"I wanna be a space robot. Or a Transformer. Or a rock star."
"Okay, we'll see when it gets closer, okay?"
"Actually, I wanna be Hannah Montana..."
I would love to have a little widget that can generate tons of great costume ideas, based on what my kid likes. They could play with it all year, changing their minds hundreds of times, and have fun pretending to be different creatures and characters (since that's what this process is all about, after all). Then, as Halloween becomes more relevant (i.e. it's actually, say, September) we could figure out how to either or make or buy a costume.
The first thing I did while thinking about this was to sketch a little mind map of the various issues that come up when considering a Halloween costume:
I began to notice the types of things kids would want to control, such as overall scariness or cuteness. Then, there are things like the actual age and size of the kid. And, there's the great decision of whether to Make or to Buy a costume.... and a few other things that seemed most relevant.
Then, I set about sketching some actual interface ideas, so as to get an idea of real estate. I feel that if an interface is going in the right direction, there are really not that many things needed in front of the user at once. So I sketched around a bit and did a fair amount of erasing and re-drawing:
What I got to right away was the notion of a simple set of controls at the top, that would generate a really nice, visual list of ideas at the bottom. Rather like a parent saying, "How about a mummy? Or an astronaut? Or the Tooth Fairy? Or..."
In addition to that suggestion-generator, which I think would be what kids would use a whole lot throughout the year without really needing to get any details, I felt that the next level would be to try and settle on a real costume by understanding what it would take to either make or buy it. So the details on a costume might look like this:
Here, I noticed that this would present a great opportunity for sponsored links, either to shopping sites or to sites that have how-to's on making costumes. Again, the listings would need to have lots of pictures so users could quickly sift through tons of options and go, "Nah, nah, nah.... yeah! Yeah! Nah..."
Finally, I added some other notes about things I think this Costume o Matic would need to do:
So, the entire sketch ended up looking like this:
At this point in the process, I like to put the thing down for a while and let it sit. Sometimes a big new issue will present itself, like the idea of kids wanting to dress up with their friends, which would mean either group or collaborative costumes.
Now, I just wish someone would go out and build something like this for me - and all those other parents out there having the aforementioned conversation. Maybe that way, once we'd kicked around some ideas, the kids could generate and print a list of costumes, keep it awhile, make another, and pretend all year until it was time to get the actual job done. And then on November first, we could start it all over again.
More Evidence Cartoons are Good for You.
Cartooning brings me in contact with people that I never would have met, who have seen a drawing and have thoughts, or who want to use a cartoon to make a point or explain something difficult.
Example: recently I gave permission to someone to use this cartoon
in a presentation about how kids who have been exposed to trauma regress to extremely concrete thinking. Who knew? How great is that?
Then there's this one,
Which someone is going to use in a talk involving how to respond to training budget cuts.
I just love that. It's what makes the job worth it. Using pictures and words to help people out is just so fabulous.
I do that when I draw mind maps and do design also, sometimes it feels like cartooning is just another form of info architecture. With laughing. Love that.
Concept Mapping: Getting it All on One Page
Recently we were working on the plan and schedule for summer classes at the local community theatre. Obviously you're going to get a lot more students if you schedule things at a time people can get there, and offer the types of classes people want. To figure that out, it helps to get a picture of what the parents are dealing with when they go to figure out what their kids are doing in the summer.
I knew it would be a lot of things, but I was still surprised at how quickly the whole page filled up. This is why making things super simple for parents is so important. Their heads are already filled up with all of this stuff.
This really helped me as we created our plan, maybe it's useful to you too. Or, you can just contemplate it and say, "Wow." I did that too.
I knew it would be a lot of things, but I was still surprised at how quickly the whole page filled up. This is why making things super simple for parents is so important. Their heads are already filled up with all of this stuff.
This really helped me as we created our plan, maybe it's useful to you too. Or, you can just contemplate it and say, "Wow." I did that too.
How's the Lost Queen Looking Now?
The Lost Queen is up to about 100 drawings, which seems like a lot but it's only the tiniest sliver... now it's time to wrestle it into a form that is readable, and that explains itself, while still letting the reader stay immersed in the drawings...
This means playing around with different narrative structures and experimenting with how much text to add, and where, and who might be narrating this thing anyway.
It really helps to look at how others have dealt with this issue. When you've got a story to tell, and a way of telling it, you still have to find a way to make that story accessible to readers. In my case, books like The Arrival and The Invention of Hugo Cabret have been enormously helpful, as well as looking at online formats like Red Light Properties by Dan Goldman. And, of course, every movie I have ever seen - this feels more cinematic than anything, like a living storyboard.
So now, I think I know what I have in mind at least for reading it on a screen. Take a look at the teeniest sample below of the structure and narrative style.... it's best if you set your PDF viewer to single-page view to go through it.
Oh, and dig the typeface I made out of my handwriting - I really felt that I needed hand-written text for this. I made it at yourfonts.com - and it worked!
Click the picture below to view the PDF and see what you think.
Avatar and Graphic Novel Writing
Last week I went and saw Avatar. It was totally cool. We wore our 3-D glasses and flew around on big dinosaur creatures and visited floating mountains and things were blue and tribal and there were bad military weirdos and the whole indigenous people vs. evil corporate interests thing.
I think the fact that I'm working on a graphic novel made me see it a little differently though.
See, I'm at the point where I've made 97 drawings, and feel like I've only barely touched the surface of the characters and the story. I mean, it's truly tiny. Miniscule.
But along with this project comes the responsibility of properly introducing the characters and their motives, and structuring the story in a way that is going to make sense. And motivating the reader to care what is going on. So, I've got a lot of work to do.
Or, I guess you can just be a big-budget Hollywood movie type and make things that make no sense at all.
See, the Avatars, when they get disconnected from their human controllers, just drop to the ground as if asleep. I don't think I'm spoiling anything by saying that.
If you were hanging around with someone, and they had this tendency to pass out, and not wake up, even when you scream at them and drag them around, wouldn't you either a) get really mad or b) take them to the doctor? Or both?
On a subconscious level, ignoring such a basic thing, and having the characters ignore it too, makes them look rather dumb. I wonder if it lowers the audience's opinion of their intelligence without their knowing that's happening.
Sigh. It's okay because the 3-D flying dinosaurs are really cool.
Anyway, it is a really really big job to make a fantasy world work, and there are elements that help. Most of those elements are rooted in very simple principles of story and character, observed in everything from Blade Runner to The Terminator. The rest is just noise. For lots of discussion of this, check out this 7-part discussion of why The Phantom Menace is such a horrible movie and ruins the franchise (WARNING: NOT kid friendly. You may find some of it weird/unfunny, though I thought it was hilarious. But his analysis of the movie is really spot-on. I learned a lot.)
Anyway, I enjoyed running around with the blue people, but I still feel like I've got a whole lot of work to do to make sure that my story doesn't have a plausibility hole in it that you can drive a big, futuristic military helicopter through.
Shop Class as Soulcraft
I just finished reading the book, "Shop Class as Soulcraft," by Matthew B. Crawford. In it, Crawford draws a stark contrast between the supposedly lofty (and economically rewarding) world of abstractions and cubicles and numbers and paperwork, and the supposedly lowbrow (and economically non-viable) world of working with one's hands.
As an artist, I found the book interesting on a whole different level beyond just social/economic discussion. Because one of the great struggles of being a person who makes things is, explaining why you wouldn't want to a) Make lots of money by using computers to do everything and being really efficient and technological and b) Make lots of money by turning everything you do into a "product" as opposed to a work of art. There's a big difference.
Don't get me wrong, I obviously love computers and the interWebs and all that, it lets me connect with other artists and readers and people and that's wonderful.
But the process of creating something, for me, involves paper and pens and pencils (and pencil sharpeners, darn them) and messiness and smearing ink and being outside and carrying my sketchbooks around with me on the train and a whole host of other messy factors. I don't really draw a drawing, I kind of build it. And I suspect a whole lot of other artists are the same way.
Recently I got to hang out with other cartoonists at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco, one of whom was Karen Luk. She sat there and worked on a page in watercolor, mixing the paints and layering them onto the paper. Later she said she would take an iron to the paper to flatten it out. It was really tactile, and pretty to watch.
Anyway, Crawford's book is a nice reminder, yet again, that the measure of everything in our society tends to be economic, that our power structure is in fact an economic one, and that this one-dimensional orientation tends to suck out the soul. He really hates liberals and doesn't like conservatives much either. But it's not a screed, and he spends a lot of time just expanding the reader's view of what it is to make something. That's the part I appreciated the most.
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