Max Riffner

The Parlor

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Airbrush Kings

Do you remember Career Day in high school? When a bunch of professionals came to talk to you about their careers if you had showed interest in that field? For those of us who wanted to do graphic design, we had a gentlemen that would come in an all denim suit to talk to us about airbrushing. Not grids, or type, or computer advancement; airbrushing.

It gave me great pleasure to read that someone had collected this time period of advertising art into a book, titled Overspray

[via Subtraction]

Good Comic Cover Design: Cat-Eyed Boy

Found this beauty from Christopher Butcher’s site. In general, I don’t read much manga, but a cover like this makes me instantly intrigued. I love the pure cyan and magenta titles. It reminds me of a mix of Chip Kidd and Paul Pope. Well done, Viz Media (the publisher). Butcher has an interview with Viz Media on his blog entry about the book.

Start 2007 Off With Some Fonts

I always love New Year’s Day for the simplest reason (besides football): Comicraft has their annual sale on their fonts. For $20.07 you can pick up some damn good, professional comic book fonts for one day only. I was like a kid in a candy store this morning, literally hopping out of bed and scanning for fonts in my boxers. I picked up Hedge Backwards, Face Front, BiffBamBoom, and the ActionPak, containing Thrills, Spills, and Chills.

I was more excited about Face Front when I got it, but upon further inspection and some simple tests, Hedge Backwards is a hell of a font. I’m sure I’ll find a use for Face Front though. With both of these dialogue fonts, I was looking for some faces that had both upper and lowercases for greater versatility.

The others are just simple sound effect fonts and display (I’m really excited about Spills – and I hate script fonts).

Also, please don’t forget Blambot for good cheap fonts (around $20 usually all year long). I’ve been thinking about picking up 10¢ Comics for awhile. And if you are just starting out, Blambot has a huge library of free fonts that you can use in your independent print and webcomics. I used Digital Strip for Quick Step ; it is by far one of my favorites and it just makes the work look so damn polished.

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