Day Jobs of the Poets

This comic is factual, but it requires a couple clarifications: Wallace Stevens was an executive at an insurance company, not your average insurance salesman. And there's no evidence that Emily Dickinson liked cats, but her sister Lavinia was cat-obsessed. So Emily must have been forced to cat-sit occasionally.

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A Cartoon for Earth Day

Happy Earth Day! Enjoy your supercontinental breakfast.

Tie Chi

How to Make Write

This drawing appears alongside a NYT Opinionator Draft essay by Henry Hitchings about the use of nominalization in writing. One type of nominalization is the appropriation of verbs as nouns, leading to attention-grabbing (and annoyance-inducing) phrases like the ones found in this comic. You can also see the illustration and article in print in the March 31 NYT Sunday Review. Thanks to AD Matt Dorfman for the gig!

Creative Blocks

Disclaimer

One of the most difficult questions to answer is "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

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Genius Is...

I drew this comic for Red Lemon Club, a great site of advice and inspiration for creative professionals. Thanks to illustrator and creative blogger Alex Mathers for the gig! Be sure to check out his other site, Ape on the Moon, for interviews and portfolios from a vast array of illustrators.

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Performance-Enhancing Drugs for Writers

I don't advocate drug use - unless it leads to great works of literature.

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What Is Love?

The hardest part of writing about love is choosing just one metaphor.

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The Elephants of Typography

I drew this comic after spending some quality time with The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst. It was a engaging and thoughtful book on a subject that can seem frighteningly esoteric to non-designers. Still, no book exists that cannot be improved with elephants.

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Double Majors

This comic appears in the 2/3 NY Times Education Life section.

The Great Coffee Spill

Treacherous Slopes

The Nature of Ambition

Minimalism is Simple

The panels in this comic were adapted from paintings by Ellsworth Kelly and Sol LeWitt. There are many great blogs with advice on how to live a minimalist lifestyle. I think none are as helpful as absorbing the simple beauty of minimalist art.

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