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EDITORIAL ILLUSTRATION IDEAS AND CONCEPTS
The Onion Magazine
16th November 2023
2nd September 2005
20th January 2006
29th March 2013
27th September 2019
31st May 2019
12th September 2024
The Onion is an American satirical news company who’ve, since 1988, published a variety of articles and titles displaying humorous critique into American mainstream journalism and American politics.
With The Onion’s visual style, they intentionally follow a safe and standard news magazine cover format as to trick people into thinking it’s a legitimate news source but then sport a title with an oftentimes outwardly biased or laughably boring story.
The Onion’s general style of satire follows twisting pre-conceived sayings and beliefs around news publications, having biased articles glaringly obvious and cartoonishly evil as to poke fun at how many news sources undermine issues that they don’t deem as important, such as certain political measures, the environment or tragedy/war overseas.
They also publish articles with intentionally underwhelming and boring title stories, a critique on how most news companies would rather publish something safe and appealing to no one instead of reporting something impactful.
I find a lot of inspiration within how The Onion creates its political satire as I believe its humour is not only effective comedically, but it also conveys it’s points clearly and simply with minimalistic visuals and text.
Liz Lunney
Street Dawgz #1
(Berlin 2014)
At The Themepark...6
At The End Of Your Garden
Lizz Lunney is a British artist based in Berlin who makes humorous short comic strips and illustrations within their own self-published zines.
Within Lunney’s zines, they like to portray menial and boring everyday life with fantastical creatures and scenarios, getting humour from the relatability contrasted with the surrealness of the situations. Their use of deadpan humour with their simplistic art style makes the general tone of their pieces quite blunt, making the humour more subtle.
Their art style has a lot of charm despite its simplicity as it allows for a lot more dynamic characterisation through facial expressions, posing and dialect.
I find a lot of inspiration within Lunney’s work as I believe their simplistic approach to design and storytelling is incredibly endearing and shows how effective minimalism can be especially within works that should be seen as relatable, as it allows room for the audience to see themselves within the characters/situations.
Daniel Clowes
Feb 29 2016 ‘privileged characters’
Oct 23 2023 ‘Quiet Luxury’
Oct 12 2009 ‘the food chain’
Eightball #8
Daniel Clowes is an American illustrator and graphic artist, most known for his graphic novel series ‘Ghost World’ and independent comic book series ‘Eightball’. Clowes has worked frequently within editorial illustration and has worked multiple times for The New Yorker specifically.
Due to Clowes’ history of being inspired and working within the ‘Underground Comix’ scene, his art style, though realistic, is grotesque, kitsch and somewhat off-putting due to the excessive detail he puts into facial features and the human form.
His style works heavily within his favour within his satirical works, this is evident within his covers for The New Yorker, his works are often cynical in nature. For example, his cover ‘Quiet Luxury’ portrays the wealthy couple as incredibly garish and gaunt surrounded by an insanely massive amount of gold, satirising the performative nature of wealth. Another example is his cover ‘Privileged Characters’ in which he depicts a line of identical sentient Oscar awards queueing to get to the red carpet. This piece can take on multiple meanings, but obviously focuses on the subject of power and privilege given how the trophies are given special treatment and respect, this could be interpreted as being a response to the outcry against the 2016 Oscar Awards, this was due to the observation that there was a clear lack of diversity within the nominees, causing many to boycott attending or viewing The Oscars.
Within Clowes’ personal works and graphic novels, he often explores and critiques modern American life and this bleeds out into his professional and commissioned work as well. What make’s Clowes’ works so unique to me is not only his visual style, but in the way he presents his work as it always has a sense of griminess or unease, making the atmosphere more tense, foreboding or glum using intense angles and composition and colour, either being intensely bright and flashy or incredibly de-saturated and dreary to match the emotional tone of the piece.
Gary Baseman
The New Yorker (may 13 2002)
New York Times For Kids (march 26 2023)
The Atlantic (august 1991)
Fast Company (August 2005)
Rolling Stone (1995)
Fiona Apple, Rolling Stone (1999)
Gary Baseman is an American artist known for his distinctive kitschy cartoony art style, inspired by Hanna-Barbera and Looney Tunes his work embodies whimsy, childishness and innocence.
Baseman’s art style is incredibly visually distinct, utilising traditional image making techniques such as oil pastel, watercolour and acrylic, his art possesses an overlying grittiness, contrasting with the usual naive and charming visuals.
Within Baseman’s work, he tends to put a lot of emphasis on colour, utilising bright yet de-saturated colour schemes, achieving a sickly-sweet aged affect, honing into and intensifying the aspects of its vintage children’s book and cartoon inspirations.
This is also seen within Baseman’s character design and expressions, taking inspiration from cartoons, his expressions and posing are heightened to an absurd degree, having characters bend and pose as if they’re made of rubber, this is especially noticeable for the cover he illustrated for The Atlantic, the exaggerated body language and posing helps visualise that the subjects are rushing forward from the left side of the page in excitement for the weekend, all holding different objects related to activities they’re excited to partake in over the days. The composition as well within this piece is strong, as it frames the people as rushing towards the right, drawing the readers eye to flip the page and read the contents of the issue.
Within Baseman’s editorial work, he makes use of his naïve art style into light-hearted commentary, making serious situations more childish for satirical affect. An example of this is his cover made for Fast Company in which the cover story talks about the frustration against HR Departments, Baseman depicts HR as a young girl throwing a tantrum and brutally abusing and breaking her toys. This is obviously meant to portray HR as being inescapable, ruthless and unthinking when it comes to employee wellbeing and creativity, stunting employees’ ability to advance within their job.
Another example is the illustration Baseman did to accompany Peter Wilkinsons article ‘The Last Wave’ for Rolling Stone. This article detailed Mark Foo’s, a famous surfer, death by drowning at a surfing competition and the controversy surrounding it. The illustration Baseman made to complement this article shows a dark oil pastel illustration depicting a skeleton riding a dangerously tall wave, clearly illustrating how this wave was fatal to Foo’s life.
EDITORIAL IMAGE MAKING PROCESSES
(HOW ITS MADE)
Pinky & Pepper Forever
Feb 29 2016 ‘privileged characters’
Oct 23 2023 ‘Quiet Luxury’
Oct 12 2009 ‘the food chain’
Eightball #8
Daniel Clowes is an American illustrator and graphic artist, most known for his graphic novel series ‘Ghost World’ and independent comic book series ‘Eightball’. Clowes has worked frequently within editorial illustration and has worked multiple times for The New Yorker specifically.
Due to Clowes’ history of being inspired and working within the ‘Underground Comix’ scene, his art style, though realistic, is grotesque, kitsch and somewhat off-putting due to the excessive detail he puts into facial features and the human form.
His style works heavily within his favour within his satirical works, this is evident within his covers for The New Yorker, his works are often cynical in nature. For example, his cover ‘Quiet Luxury’ portrays the wealthy couple as incredibly garish and gaunt surrounded by an insanely massive amount of gold, satirising the performative nature of wealth. Another example is his cover ‘Privileged Characters’ in which he depicts a line of identical sentient Oscar awards queueing to get to the red carpet. This piece can take on multiple meanings, but obviously focuses on the subject of power and privilege given how the trophies are given special treatment and respect, this could be interpreted as being a response to the outcry against the 2016 Oscar Awards, this was due to the observation that there was a clear lack of diversity within the nominees, causing many to boycott attending or viewing The Oscars.
Within Clowes’ personal works and graphic novels, he often explores and critiques modern American life and this bleeds out into his professional and commissioned work as well. What make’s Clowes’ works so unique to me is not only his visual style, but in the way he presents his work as it always has a sense of griminess or unease, making the atmosphere more tense, foreboding or glum using intense angles and composition and colour, either being intensely bright and flashy or incredibly de-saturated and dreary to match the emotional tone of the piece.
The Onion’s general style of satire follows twisting pre-conceived sayings and beliefs around news publications, having biased articles glaringly obvious and cartoonishly evil as to poke fun at how many news sources undermine issues that they don’t deem as important, such as certain political measures, the environment or tragedy/war overseas.
They also publish articles with intentionally underwhelming and boring title stories, a critique on how most news companies would rather publish something safe and appealing to no one instead of reporting something impactful.
I find a lot of inspiration within how The Onion creates its political satire as I believe its humour is not only effective comedically, but it also conveys it’s points clearly and simply with minimalistic visuals and text.
Lizz Lunney is a British artist based in Berlin who makes humorous short comic strips and illustrations within their own self-published zines.
Liz Lunney
Street Dawgz #1
(Berlin 2014)
At The Themepark...6
At The End Of Your Garden
Lizz Lunney is a British artist based in Berlin who makes humorous short comic strips and illustrations within their own self-published zines.
Within Lunney’s zines, they like to portray menial and boring everyday life with fantastical creatures and scenarios, getting humour from the relatability contrasted with the surrealness of the situations. Their use of deadpan humour with their simplistic art style makes the general tone of their pieces quite blunt, making the humour more subtle.
Their art style has a lot of charm despite its simplicity as it allows for a lot more dynamic characterisation through facial expressions, posing and dialect.
I find a lot of inspiration within Lunney’s work as I believe their simplistic approach to design and storytelling is incredibly endearing and shows how effective minimalism can be especially within works that should be seen as relatable, as it allows room for the audience to see themselves within the characters/situations.
Daniel Clowes
Feb 29 2016 ‘privileged characters’
Oct 23 2023 ‘Quiet Luxury’
Oct 12 2009 ‘the food chain’
Eightball #8
Daniel Clowes is an American illustrator and graphic artist, most known for his graphic novel series ‘Ghost World’ and independent comic book series ‘Eightball’. Clowes has worked frequently within editorial illustration and has worked multiple times for The New Yorker specifically.
Due to Clowes’ history of being inspired and working within the ‘Underground Comix’ scene, his art style, though realistic, is grotesque, kitsch and somewhat off-putting due to the excessive detail he puts into facial features and the human form.
His style works heavily within his favour within his satirical works, this is evident within his covers for The New Yorker, his works are often cynical in nature. For example, his cover ‘Quiet Luxury’ portrays the wealthy couple as incredibly garish and gaunt surrounded by an insanely massive amount of gold, satirising the performative nature of wealth. Another example is his cover ‘Privileged Characters’ in which he depicts a line of identical sentient Oscar awards queueing to get to the red carpet. This piece can take on multiple meanings, but obviously focuses on the subject of power and privilege given how the trophies are given special treatment and respect, this could be interpreted as being a response to the outcry against the 2016 Oscar Awards, this was due to the observation that there was a clear lack of diversity within the nominees, causing many to boycott attending or viewing The Oscars.
Within Clowes’ personal works and graphic novels, he often explores and critiques modern American life and this bleeds out into his professional and commissioned work as well. What make’s Clowes’ works so unique to me is not only his visual style, but in the way he presents his work as it always has a sense of griminess or unease, making the atmosphere more tense, foreboding or glum using intense angles and composition and colour, either being intensely bright and flashy or incredibly de-saturated and dreary to match the emotional tone of the piece.
Gary Baseman
The New Yorker (may 13 2002)
New York Times For Kids (march 26 2023)
The Atlantic (august 1991)
Fast Company (August 2005)
Rolling Stone (1995)
Fiona Apple, Rolling Stone (1999)
Gary Baseman is an American artist known for his distinctive kitschy cartoony art style, inspired by Hanna-Barbera and Looney Tunes his work embodies whimsy, childishness and innocence.
Baseman’s art style is incredibly visually distinct, utilising traditional image making techniques such as oil pastel, watercolour and acrylic, his art possesses an overlying grittiness, contrasting with the usual naive and charming visuals.
Within Baseman’s work, he tends to put a lot of emphasis on colour, utilising bright yet de-saturated colour schemes, achieving a sickly-sweet aged affect, honing into and intensifying the aspects of its vintage children’s book and cartoon inspirations.
This is also seen within Baseman’s character design and expressions, taking inspiration from cartoons, his expressions and posing are heightened to an absurd degree, having characters bend and pose as if they’re made of rubber, this is especially noticeable for the cover he illustrated for The Atlantic, the exaggerated body language and posing helps visualise that the subjects are rushing forward from the left side of the page in excitement for the weekend, all holding different objects related to activities they’re excited to partake in over the days. The composition as well within this piece is strong, as it frames the people as rushing towards the right, drawing the readers eye to flip the page and read the contents of the issue.
Within Baseman’s editorial work, he makes use of his naïve art style into light-hearted commentary, making serious situations more childish for satirical affect. An example of this is his cover made for Fast Company in which the cover story talks about the frustration against HR Departments, Baseman depicts HR as a young girl throwing a tantrum and brutally abusing and breaking her toys. This is obviously meant to portray HR as being inescapable, ruthless and unthinking when it comes to employee wellbeing and creativity, stunting employees’ ability to advance within their job.
Another example is the illustration Baseman did to accompany Peter Wilkinsons article ‘The Last Wave’ for Rolling Stone. This article detailed Mark Foo’s, a famous surfer, death by drowning at a surfing competition and the controversy surrounding it. The illustration Baseman made to complement this article shows a dark oil pastel illustration depicting a skeleton riding a dangerously tall wave, clearly illustrating how this wave was fatal to Foo’s life.
EDITORIAL IMAGE MAKING PROCESSES
(HOW ITS MADE)
Pinky & Pepper Forever
Feb 29 2016 ‘privileged characters’
Oct 23 2023 ‘Quiet Luxury’
Oct 12 2009 ‘the food chain’
Eightball #8
Daniel Clowes is an American illustrator and graphic artist, most known for his graphic novel series ‘Ghost World’ and independent comic book series ‘Eightball’. Clowes has worked frequently within editorial illustration and has worked multiple times for The New Yorker specifically.
Due to Clowes’ history of being inspired and working within the ‘Underground Comix’ scene, his art style, though realistic, is grotesque, kitsch and somewhat off-putting due to the excessive detail he puts into facial features and the human form.
His style works heavily within his favour within his satirical works, this is evident within his covers for The New Yorker, his works are often cynical in nature. For example, his cover ‘Quiet Luxury’ portrays the wealthy couple as incredibly garish and gaunt surrounded by an insanely massive amount of gold, satirising the performative nature of wealth. Another example is his cover ‘Privileged Characters’ in which he depicts a line of identical sentient Oscar awards queueing to get to the red carpet. This piece can take on multiple meanings, but obviously focuses on the subject of power and privilege given how the trophies are given special treatment and respect, this could be interpreted as being a response to the outcry against the 2016 Oscar Awards, this was due to the observation that there was a clear lack of diversity within the nominees, causing many to boycott attending or viewing The Oscars.
Within Clowes’ personal works and graphic novels, he often explores and critiques modern American life and this bleeds out into his professional and commissioned work as well. What make’s Clowes’ works so unique to me is not only his visual style, but in the way he presents his work as it always has a sense of griminess or unease, making the atmosphere more tense, foreboding or glum using intense angles and composition and colour, either being intensely bright and flashy or incredibly de-saturated and dreary to match the emotional tone of the piece.
Their art style has a lot of charm despite its simplicity as it allows for a lot more dynamic characterisation through facial expressions, posing and dialect.
I find a lot of inspiration within Lunney’s work as I believe their simplistic approach to design and storytelling is incredibly endearing and shows how effective minimalism can be especially within works that should be seen as relatable, as it allows room for the audience to see themselves within the characters/situations.
Daniel Clowes is an American illustrator and graphic artist, most known for his graphic novel series ‘Ghost World’ and independent comic book series ‘Eightball’. Clowes has worked frequently within editorial illustration and has worked multiple times for The New Yorker specifically.
Daniel Clowes
Feb 29 2016 ‘privileged characters’
Oct 23 2023 ‘Quiet Luxury’
Oct 12 2009 ‘the food chain’
Eightball #8
Daniel Clowes is an American illustrator and graphic artist, most known for his graphic novel series ‘Ghost World’ and independent comic book series ‘Eightball’. Clowes has worked frequently within editorial illustration and has worked multiple times for The New Yorker specifically.
Due to Clowes’ history of being inspired and working within the ‘Underground Comix’ scene, his art style, though realistic, is grotesque, kitsch and somewhat off-putting due to the excessive detail he puts into facial features and the human form.
His style works heavily within his favour within his satirical works, this is evident within his covers for The New Yorker, his works are often cynical in nature. For example, his cover ‘Quiet Luxury’ portrays the wealthy couple as incredibly garish and gaunt surrounded by an insanely massive amount of gold, satirising the performative nature of wealth. Another example is his cover ‘Privileged Characters’ in which he depicts a line of identical sentient Oscar awards queueing to get to the red carpet. This piece can take on multiple meanings, but obviously focuses on the subject of power and privilege given how the trophies are given special treatment and respect, this could be interpreted as being a response to the outcry against the 2016 Oscar Awards, this was due to the observation that there was a clear lack of diversity within the nominees, causing many to boycott attending or viewing The Oscars.
Within Clowes’ personal works and graphic novels, he often explores and critiques modern American life and this bleeds out into his professional and commissioned work as well. What make’s Clowes’ works so unique to me is not only his visual style, but in the way he presents his work as it always has a sense of griminess or unease, making the atmosphere more tense, foreboding or glum using intense angles and composition and colour, either being intensely bright and flashy or incredibly de-saturated and dreary to match the emotional tone of the piece.
Gary Baseman
The New Yorker (may 13 2002)
New York Times For Kids (march 26 2023)
The Atlantic (august 1991)
Fast Company (August 2005)
Rolling Stone (1995)
Fiona Apple, Rolling Stone (1999)
Gary Baseman is an American artist known for his distinctive kitschy cartoony art style, inspired by Hanna-Barbera and Looney Tunes his work embodies whimsy, childishness and innocence.
Baseman’s art style is incredibly visually distinct, utilising traditional image making techniques such as oil pastel, watercolour and acrylic, his art possesses an overlying grittiness, contrasting with the usual naive and charming visuals.
Within Baseman’s work, he tends to put a lot of emphasis on colour, utilising bright yet de-saturated colour schemes, achieving a sickly-sweet aged affect, honing into and intensifying the aspects of its vintage children’s book and cartoon inspirations.
This is also seen within Baseman’s character design and expressions, taking inspiration from cartoons, his expressions and posing are heightened to an absurd degree, having characters bend and pose as if they’re made of rubber, this is especially noticeable for the cover he illustrated for The Atlantic, the exaggerated body language and posing helps visualise that the subjects are rushing forward from the left side of the page in excitement for the weekend, all holding different objects related to activities they’re excited to partake in over the days. The composition as well within this piece is strong, as it frames the people as rushing towards the right, drawing the readers eye to flip the page and read the contents of the issue.
Within Baseman’s editorial work, he makes use of his naïve art style into light-hearted commentary, making serious situations more childish for satirical affect. An example of this is his cover made for Fast Company in which the cover story talks about the frustration against HR Departments, Baseman depicts HR as a young girl throwing a tantrum and brutally abusing and breaking her toys. This is obviously meant to portray HR as being inescapable, ruthless and unthinking when it comes to employee wellbeing and creativity, stunting employees’ ability to advance within their job.
Another example is the illustration Baseman did to accompany Peter Wilkinsons article ‘The Last Wave’ for Rolling Stone. This article detailed Mark Foo’s, a famous surfer, death by drowning at a surfing competition and the controversy surrounding it. The illustration Baseman made to complement this article shows a dark oil pastel illustration depicting a skeleton riding a dangerously tall wave, clearly illustrating how this wave was fatal to Foo’s life.
EDITORIAL IMAGE MAKING PROCESSES
(HOW ITS MADE)
Pinky & Pepper Forever
Feb 29 2016 ‘privileged characters’
Oct 23 2023 ‘Quiet Luxury’
Oct 12 2009 ‘the food chain’
Eightball #8
Daniel Clowes is an American illustrator and graphic artist, most known for his graphic novel series ‘Ghost World’ and independent comic book series ‘Eightball’. Clowes has worked frequently within editorial illustration and has worked multiple times for The New Yorker specifically.
Due to Clowes’ history of being inspired and working within the ‘Underground Comix’ scene, his art style, though realistic, is grotesque, kitsch and somewhat off-putting due to the excessive detail he puts into facial features and the human form.
His style works heavily within his favour within his satirical works, this is evident within his covers for The New Yorker, his works are often cynical in nature. For example, his cover ‘Quiet Luxury’ portrays the wealthy couple as incredibly garish and gaunt surrounded by an insanely massive amount of gold, satirising the performative nature of wealth. Another example is his cover ‘Privileged Characters’ in which he depicts a line of identical sentient Oscar awards queueing to get to the red carpet. This piece can take on multiple meanings, but obviously focuses on the subject of power and privilege given how the trophies are given special treatment and respect, this could be interpreted as being a response to the outcry against the 2016 Oscar Awards, this was due to the observation that there was a clear lack of diversity within the nominees, causing many to boycott attending or viewing The Oscars.
Within Clowes’ personal works and graphic novels, he often explores and critiques modern American life and this bleeds out into his professional and commissioned work as well. What make’s Clowes’ works so unique to me is not only his visual style, but in the way he presents his work as it always has a sense of griminess or unease, making the atmosphere more tense, foreboding or glum using intense angles and composition and colour, either being intensely bright and flashy or incredibly de-saturated and dreary to match the emotional tone of the piece.
His style works heavily within his favour within his satirical works, this is evident within his covers for The New Yorker, his works are often cynical in nature. For example, his cover ‘Quiet Luxury’ portrays the wealthy couple as incredibly garish and gaunt surrounded by an insanely massive amount of gold, satirising the performative nature of wealth. Another example is his cover ‘Privileged Characters’ in which he depicts a line of identical sentient Oscar awards queueing to get to the red carpet. This piece can take on multiple meanings, but obviously focuses on the subject of power and privilege given how the trophies are given special treatment and respect, this could be interpreted as being a response to the outcry against the 2016 Oscar Awards, this was due to the observation that there was a clear lack of diversity within the nominees, causing many to boycott attending or viewing The Oscars.
Within Clowes’ personal works and graphic novels, he often explores and critiques modern American life and this bleeds out into his professional and commissioned work as well. What make’s Clowes’ works so unique to me is not only his visual style, but in the way he presents his work as it always has a sense of griminess or unease, making the atmosphere more tense, foreboding or glum using intense angles and composition and colour, either being intensely bright and flashy or incredibly de-saturated and dreary to match the emotional tone of the piece.
Gary Baseman is an American artist known for his distinctive kitschy cartoony art style, inspired by Hanna-Barbera and Looney Tunes his work embodies whimsy, childishness and innocence.
Gary Baseman
The New Yorker (may 13 2002)
New York Times For Kids (march 26 2023)
The Atlantic (august 1991)
Fast Company (August 2005)
Rolling Stone (1995)
Fiona Apple, Rolling Stone (1999)
Gary Baseman is an American artist known for his distinctive kitschy cartoony art style, inspired by Hanna-Barbera and Looney Tunes his work embodies whimsy, childishness and innocence.
Baseman’s art style is incredibly visually distinct, utilising traditional image making techniques such as oil pastel, watercolour and acrylic, his art possesses an overlying grittiness, contrasting with the usual naive and charming visuals.
Within Baseman’s work, he tends to put a lot of emphasis on colour, utilising bright yet de-saturated colour schemes, achieving a sickly-sweet aged affect, honing into and intensifying the aspects of its vintage children’s book and cartoon inspirations.
This is also seen within Baseman’s character design and expressions, taking inspiration from cartoons, his expressions and posing are heightened to an absurd degree, having characters bend and pose as if they’re made of rubber, this is especially noticeable for the cover he illustrated for The Atlantic, the exaggerated body language and posing helps visualise that the subjects are rushing forward from the left side of the page in excitement for the weekend, all holding different objects related to activities they’re excited to partake in over the days. The composition as well within this piece is strong, as it frames the people as rushing towards the right, drawing the readers eye to flip the page and read the contents of the issue.
Within Baseman’s editorial work, he makes use of his naïve art style into light-hearted commentary, making serious situations more childish for satirical affect. An example of this is his cover made for Fast Company in which the cover story talks about the frustration against HR Departments, Baseman depicts HR as a young girl throwing a tantrum and brutally abusing and breaking her toys. This is obviously meant to portray HR as being inescapable, ruthless and unthinking when it comes to employee wellbeing and creativity, stunting employees’ ability to advance within their job.
Another example is the illustration Baseman did to accompany Peter Wilkinsons article ‘The Last Wave’ for Rolling Stone. This article detailed Mark Foo’s, a famous surfer, death by drowning at a surfing competition and the controversy surrounding it. The illustration Baseman made to complement this article shows a dark oil pastel illustration depicting a skeleton riding a dangerously tall wave, clearly illustrating how this wave was fatal to Foo’s life.
EDITORIAL IMAGE MAKING PROCESSES
(HOW ITS MADE)
Pinky & Pepper Forever
Feb 29 2016 ‘privileged characters’
Oct 23 2023 ‘Quiet Luxury’
Oct 12 2009 ‘the food chain’
Eightball #8
Daniel Clowes is an American illustrator and graphic artist, most known for his graphic novel series ‘Ghost World’ and independent comic book series ‘Eightball’. Clowes has worked frequently within editorial illustration and has worked multiple times for The New Yorker specifically.
Due to Clowes’ history of being inspired and working within the ‘Underground Comix’ scene, his art style, though realistic, is grotesque, kitsch and somewhat off-putting due to the excessive detail he puts into facial features and the human form.
His style works heavily within his favour within his satirical works, this is evident within his covers for The New Yorker, his works are often cynical in nature. For example, his cover ‘Quiet Luxury’ portrays the wealthy couple as incredibly garish and gaunt surrounded by an insanely massive amount of gold, satirising the performative nature of wealth. Another example is his cover ‘Privileged Characters’ in which he depicts a line of identical sentient Oscar awards queueing to get to the red carpet. This piece can take on multiple meanings, but obviously focuses on the subject of power and privilege given how the trophies are given special treatment and respect, this could be interpreted as being a response to the outcry against the 2016 Oscar Awards, this was due to the observation that there was a clear lack of diversity within the nominees, causing many to boycott attending or viewing The Oscars.
Within Clowes’ personal works and graphic novels, he often explores and critiques modern American life and this bleeds out into his professional and commissioned work as well. What make’s Clowes’ works so unique to me is not only his visual style, but in the way he presents his work as it always has a sense of griminess or unease, making the atmosphere more tense, foreboding or glum using intense angles and composition and colour, either being intensely bright and flashy or incredibly de-saturated and dreary to match the emotional tone of the piece.
Within Baseman’s work, he tends to put a lot of emphasis on colour, utilising bright yet de-saturated colour schemes, achieving a sickly-sweet aged affect, honing into and intensifying the aspects of its vintage children’s book and cartoon inspirations.
This is also seen within Baseman’s character design and expressions, taking inspiration from cartoons, his expressions and posing are heightened to an absurd degree, having characters bend and pose as if they’re made of rubber, this is especially noticeable for the cover he illustrated for The Atlantic, the exaggerated body language and posing helps visualise that the subjects are rushing forward from the left side of the page in excitement for the weekend, all holding different objects related to activities they’re excited to partake in over the days. The composition as well within this piece is strong, as it frames the people as rushing towards the right, drawing the readers eye to flip the page and read the contents of the issue.
Within Baseman’s editorial work, he makes use of his naïve art style into light-hearted commentary, making serious situations more childish for satirical affect. An example of this is his cover made for Fast Company in which the cover story talks about the frustration against HR Departments, Baseman depicts HR as a young girl throwing a tantrum and brutally abusing and breaking her toys. This is obviously meant to portray HR as being inescapable, ruthless and unthinking when it comes to employee wellbeing and creativity, stunting employees’ ability to advance within their job.
Another example is the illustration Baseman did to accompany Peter Wilkinsons article ‘The Last Wave’ for Rolling Stone. This article detailed Mark Foo’s, a famous surfer, death by drowning at a surfing competition and the controversy surrounding it. The illustration Baseman made to complement this article shows a dark oil pastel illustration depicting a skeleton riding a dangerously tall wave, clearly illustrating how this wave was fatal to Foo’s life.
EDITORIAL IMAGE MAKING PROCESSES
EDITORIAL IMAGE MAKING PROCESSES
(HOW ITS MADE)
Pinky & Pepper Forever
Feb 29 2016 ‘privileged characters’
Oct 23 2023 ‘Quiet Luxury’
Oct 12 2009 ‘the food chain’
Eightball #8
Daniel Clowes is an American illustrator and graphic artist, most known for his graphic novel series ‘Ghost World’ and independent comic book series ‘Eightball’. Clowes has worked frequently within editorial illustration and has worked multiple times for The New Yorker specifically.
Due to Clowes’ history of being inspired and working within the ‘Underground Comix’ scene, his art style, though realistic, is grotesque, kitsch and somewhat off-putting due to the excessive detail he puts into facial features and the human form.
His style works heavily within his favour within his satirical works, this is evident within his covers for The New Yorker, his works are often cynical in nature. For example, his cover ‘Quiet Luxury’ portrays the wealthy couple as incredibly garish and gaunt surrounded by an insanely massive amount of gold, satirising the performative nature of wealth. Another example is his cover ‘Privileged Characters’ in which he depicts a line of identical sentient Oscar awards queueing to get to the red carpet. This piece can take on multiple meanings, but obviously focuses on the subject of power and privilege given how the trophies are given special treatment and respect, this could be interpreted as being a response to the outcry against the 2016 Oscar Awards, this was due to the observation that there was a clear lack of diversity within the nominees, causing many to boycott attending or viewing The Oscars.
Within Clowes’ personal works and graphic novels, he often explores and critiques modern American life and this bleeds out into his professional and commissioned work as well. What make’s Clowes’ works so unique to me is not only his visual style, but in the way he presents his work as it always has a sense of griminess or unease, making the atmosphere more tense, foreboding or glum using intense angles and composition and colour, either being intensely bright and flashy or incredibly de-saturated and dreary to match the emotional tone of the piece.
Pinky & Pepper Forever
Feb 29 2016 ‘privileged characters’
Oct 23 2023 ‘Quiet Luxury’
Oct 12 2009 ‘the food chain’
Eightball #8
Daniel Clowes is an American illustrator and graphic artist, most known for his graphic novel series ‘Ghost World’ and independent comic book series ‘Eightball’. Clowes has worked frequently within editorial illustration and has worked multiple times for The New Yorker specifically.
Due to Clowes’ history of being inspired and working within the ‘Underground Comix’ scene, his art style, though realistic, is grotesque, kitsch and somewhat off-putting due to the excessive detail he puts into facial features and the human form.
His style works heavily within his favour within his satirical works, this is evident within his covers for The New Yorker, his works are often cynical in nature. For example, his cover ‘Quiet Luxury’ portrays the wealthy couple as incredibly garish and gaunt surrounded by an insanely massive amount of gold, satirising the performative nature of wealth. Another example is his cover ‘Privileged Characters’ in which he depicts a line of identical sentient Oscar awards queueing to get to the red carpet. This piece can take on multiple meanings, but obviously focuses on the subject of power and privilege given how the trophies are given special treatment and respect, this could be interpreted as being a response to the outcry against the 2016 Oscar Awards, this was due to the observation that there was a clear lack of diversity within the nominees, causing many to boycott attending or viewing The Oscars.
Within Clowes’ personal works and graphic novels, he often explores and critiques modern American life and this bleeds out into his professional and commissioned work as well. What make’s Clowes’ works so unique to me is not only his visual style, but in the way he presents his work as it always has a sense of griminess or unease, making the atmosphere more tense, foreboding or glum using intense angles and composition and colour, either being intensely bright and flashy or incredibly de-saturated and dreary to match the emotional tone of the piece.
His style works heavily within his favour within his satirical works, this is evident within his covers for The New Yorker, his works are often cynical in nature. For example, his cover ‘Quiet Luxury’ portrays the wealthy couple as incredibly garish and gaunt surrounded by an insanely massive amount of gold, satirising the performative nature of wealth. Another example is his cover ‘Privileged Characters’ in which he depicts a line of identical sentient Oscar awards queueing to get to the red carpet. This piece can take on multiple meanings, but obviously focuses on the subject of power and privilege given how the trophies are given special treatment and respect, this could be interpreted as being a response to the outcry against the 2016 Oscar Awards, this was due to the observation that there was a clear lack of diversity within the nominees, causing many to boycott attending or viewing The Oscars.
Within Clowes’ personal works and graphic novels, he often explores and critiques modern American life and this bleeds out into his professional and commissioned work as well. What make’s Clowes’ works so unique to me is not only his visual style, but in the way he presents his work as it always has a sense of griminess or unease, making the atmosphere more tense, foreboding or glum using intense angles and composition and colour, either being intensely bright and flashy or incredibly de-saturated and dreary to match the emotional tone of the piece.