This beautiful tome had to arrive in the mail to remind me that I have work on show at the Letterform Archive in San Francisco. STRIKETHROUGH: TYPOGRAPHIC MESSAGES OF PROTEST, curated by Silas Munro and Stephen Coles, is exactly what it says on the tin; a look at visual works of activism across time and space with a particular focus on typographic usage.

The tome in question acts on one hand as the catalogue for the exhibition, but on the other hand as a standalone overview of over a century of typography in relation to activism.

Within its pages are powerful works from the black liberation movement, anti-war protests, OSPAAL, feminist uprisings, pro-vote campaigns, indigenous struggles and so much more.

Absolutely essential to anyone even remotely interested in activism or graphic design and even better for those interested in both. Available direct from the Letterform Archive shop.

#work #reads

Getting back into the habit of reviewing things semi-regularly. Most recently a couple graphic novels: – SHUBEIK LUBEIK by Deena Mohamed – PATIENCE by Daniel Clowes

#reads

Finally remerged back to life right before Labor Day weekend, otherwise known as another American excuse to grill meat and watch sports. Neither of which I did, but rather O got to tend to some lingering house issues (some of which involved power tools, so yeah, still very American).

Have also been working on multiple comix projects, one of which is pictured above; an Arabic edition of a short autobio thing called SELECTIVE MYOPIA which I did for The Nib many moons ago. Because it'll be running in B&W, I had to mess with various attempts at tones to replace the colors, which is what you're seeing in the print-tryouts above. Although the color palette in the original is very limited, it is utilized as an integral part of the storytelling. To get the same effect with halftones meant needing to be able to easily differentiate between the different tones while also making sure the tones aren't awfully distracting and are 100% print-friendly.

Been working on another comix gig in addition of course to THE SOLAR GRID (will it ever end?). And actually, there was yet another short comix thing I worked on a little while back. It's called MOUTHFAIL, currently being serialized on my substack.

Actually now that I think of it, this year really has been the year of comix for me. Usually my time is taken up by projects of a very different nature, and I have to literally carve out little nooks of time to do comix, but this year... it's been mostly comix so far. Not entirely, but mostly.

#journal #work #comix