Friday, October 28, 2011

Mark Frauenfelder


Mark Frauenfelder is a writer and illustrator who co-founded bOINGbOING, the magazine that would eventually become the major blog of the same name. His illustrations use flat colors and bold outlines, and are often throwbacks to the cartoons and comics of the 60s and 70s. I would be surprised if he doesn't use Adobe Illustrator for the bulk of his work, because they look mostly like vector art. I have this shirt with a design from his then 9-year-old daughter, which he took and vectorized to sell as a Woot tee.

Mark wrote this book after immersing himself for a year in pursuing do-it-yourself projects. He kept chickens and bees, took up organic gardening, and built cigar box guitars. The cover you see is for the paperback edition; the hardcover edition uses a photograph depicting Mark with a cigar box guitar. I think this illustrated cover works far better, as it is literally made by hand, and shows more of Mark's personality and who he is. It also gives off a more adventurous tone, which suits a book about delving into projects you might not have considered before. There's also the chance to show a lot of the things included in the book, which might have looked tacky if done so with a photographic cover.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Alex, I agree with you. The paperback cover is much better than the hardback cover!

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