Summer Reading

This was the cover for the Review for the South China Morning Post on the subject of summer reading.  

It actually started off a lot more complicated than this but the more i parred it back the more I liked it. In the end it's really very simple, but I like that it's bold and yet is still quite soft. The shapes are quite loose but I think it's the colours help with keep it soft .. and for mine they say 'summer'. The white for the hat lightens everything right up. 

An earlier version had more of her body and was symmetrical but i'm glad i went tighter and off centre. Tightening the crop gives more chance for the reflection in her sunnies to be noticed. I rarely like symmetry. Off centre always feels as if there's more going on since the 2nd half of the illo isn't essential a reflection of the first.

Dr Robot

A Health Post cover from a few week's ago for the South China Morning Post. The obvious way to go with this wld be to have a robotic hand holding a scalpel, but I liked the idea of having the stitches as binary code instead .. bit more subtle. The argument against it was that some people might not get it. If I was to come across something that I didn't immediately get, I'd think, "but hang on, someone has published it so it must make sense," and look further. Classic case in point, Gary Larsson. Many times I didn't get Larson at first look but as we all know, with him, there was always a payoff if you put in the time to figure it out.

Health Post also went with my suggested heading, so i was pretty pleased with that too.