By Mark Kaufman
I cover the waterfront. I’m back on the news beat, here's a recent illustration for the Portland Mercury. 

By Mark Kaufman
I forgot to mention in a previous post on being a finalist in the AdCritic.com Future on Paper showcase, that my piece also appears in Creativity Magazine, which is hitting the desks of art directors and creative departments this week. The cover this month features everyone’s favorite caveman. Can't rightly have a series called Future on Paper without seeing it in print now can you.

By Mark Kaufman

By Mark Kaufman
Lots of attendees at the AIGA Seattle Into the Woods conference have started uploading images to the Flickr. Go here and see what transpired. I'll be writing about some of what went on. Here’s a shirt I made in a letterpress workshop.

By Mark Kaufman
I am very pleased to announce that I’m a finalist on the adcritic.com Future on Paper showcase. I'm in some very fine company indeed. Some amazing illustrators and photographers from around the globe. Do check it out, you can click to see a larger version of my vision of the future in all it's glory as well as my thinking behind this piece.

By Mark Kaufman
What’s with adults schlepping backpacks everywhere? A check of the contents of an adult American male and an American teenager reveals that somebody has some growing up to do:

By Mark Kaufman
Here’s a new illustration I did for The Seattle Symphony Young People’s Concert Series. Yes, I can do cute when I want to. It’s not just politics and creepiness around here. Although my wife thinks that the bear looks high as a kite. I guess I can't help myself even though that wasn't my intention I swear.

By Mark Kaufman
A couple of posts back I  bloviated on my love for magazines. Much like the internets where you can find something amazing everyday in the fields of design, illustration, architecture, (not to mention videos of morons risking life and limb for their 15 seconds of fame) being old skool I still find amazing things via magazines. Thanks to picking up Guilt and Pleasure Magazine, I now know about the designers and illustrators at Nove Studio. Wonderfully smart, witty, and highly engaging design and illustration from the Toronto based duo of Anne and Marco Cibola. Color me jealous. I absolutely love their work. On the left, is a detail from a beautiful chart for the aforementioned magazine and on the right side is an illustration to be used on a messenger bag. Similar to what you’ll find at their site, a seemingly clear delineation of design and illustration, but on closer inspection the crossover of the two disciplines, design/illustration, illustration/design is what makes the work so beautiful to behold.

By Mark Kaufman
Book clubs are everywhere. Sure I read books, and newspapers, and blogs, and annual reports, the backs of cereal boxes but the thing I love the most, the thing that I am almost never without are magazines. And yes, I read them for the articles, but I  must admit, design, illustration and photography play big parts in my purchases. this week I picked up Good, The New  Republic, Foreign Policy, Guilt & Pleasure and Four Four Two. Long live magazines. What are your favorite magazines?

By Mark Kaufman
Johnny Hart the cartoonist, creator of B.C and the Wizard of Id has died. Much has been said in the past and in his obits about his ultra christian, anti-semitic, anti- muslim cartoon and viewpoint. Quite frankly I don't give a shit. It's a free country, if he wanted to write garbage that makes morons laugh, that was his right. Because I am militant about my right to say otherwise. My problem was always that both comics were terribly unfunny, uninteresting and seemingly in a creative rut for many, many years. And now there is word that the family members that have been producing the strips will continue to do so using an “extensive computer archive of drawings to work with”. Well, garbage in, garbage out. My question is this, do the family members that will keep churning out this bunkum have the same small minded attitudes about religion and race and the same god-awful old jokes?

By Mark Kaufman
Here is a a detail of new project that Vivitiv designed for the Technology Alliance. It is for the Technology Alliance’s annual luncheon, which this year features a keynote conversation with Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft and Ed Lazowska, professor and Gates Chair of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. A great organization, and a great client. This is always one of the top events of the year for those in the technology, public policy, venture capital and education fields. We are proud of our long association with this organization and this event. I hope that this Q+A design and illustration comes across in this small format, we think it is an interesting interpretation of the freewheeling conversation that will take place between Steve, Ed, and the attendees.

By Mark Kaufman
Here is a fine example of not only seeing things differently, but rendering them in vastly different styles. Much like the Famous Artists School ads which ask you to draw the clown or the pirate, every artist should have a different vision of how to draw something. On the left is my interpretation of musician, designer and artist Aaron Edge. On the right is a his self portrait. Same subject, two totally different drawings. While I am certainly proud of mine, I love Mr. Edge’s. Simple, spare, yet a great deal of impact. Which brings to mind the follwing quote by the late, great Chuck Jones: “The whole essence of good drawing - and of good thinking, perhaps - is to work a subject down to the simplest form possible and still have it believable for what it is meant to be.”

By Mark Kaufman

By Mark Kaufman
Another installment of “Hey I found this in my basement”. I was rooting around down in the basement last night and came across this piece that I did probably a decade ago for late lamented Seattle music newspaper The Rocket. It was for a piece about some Cuban musician, I must say I don’t remember the gentleman’s name. But what I find interesting whenever I am going through old files, whether that’s in the basement, in my flat files, or on my computer, I can find something of value. Whether the work is crap, or I am proud of it. This piece falls somewhere in the middle, but I can see the development of the line that I use in this illustration. It is not fully formed as the line I use today, but this seems to be the genesis of that line. It's nice to look back, but nicer yet to keep moving forward.