Today is the book birthday of Backseat ABSee, my new book with Chronicle.
This book was the first one I did in Adobe Illustrator, and it sparked a completely new style for me. It helps me create bold shapes, high contrast, stylized characters and vector graphics that can be scaled up and down without losing detail. I am also trying hard these days to forget everything I’ve learned in art school. Especially the bits about anatomy. This in an effort to make characters that are simplified and stylized.
So I guess along with the book, a new style was born. As inspiration, I have been looking at the work of Saul Bass. He was an American graphic designer best known for his masterful film title sequences. He is an expert at paring shapes down to their essence.
Check this sequence out for It’s a Mad Mad Mad World:
His children’s book Henri’s walk to Paris has some beautiful imagery. Look! Look!
Here are other graphics he created that just make my head spin:
Makes me think illustrators spend the first half of their lives learning how to draw, and the second half unlearning it. Gotta go!
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