Casey and the Technicolor Dream Sweater

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Rainbow Boy, lol—Looking spiffy on my bright red bicycle, wearing bright red sneakers, starchy dark denim jeans, a rainbow-colored sweater, and a navy blue beret—from France, of course. My grandmother knit that sweater for me. I remember she told me I could pick out whatever color wool I wanted for the upcoming sweater—even a rainbow variegated version—as long as I didn't tell anyone I knew she was going to make it for me. She wanted it to be perfect and I think it was a win-win situation. I would have loved anything made by her, but a sweater with every color in it was perfect! At about eight years old in this photo, in front of Art's closed store with Spring's first crocuses coming up behind me, I was styling!

"The Art of Urban Cycling"

One of my favorite book covers I've designed, in part because I created this very colorful collage with photos from a great friend of mine, in addition to those supplied by the author. I also really like my typography, the tone and design fully supporting the text and the interior design. I really dislike it when a book cover is designed by someone and the interior is designed by someone else because it's harder to coordinate a total "look," but that is the way most books are produced. With my long career and "reputation," I have usually been able to design the entire book, and I like to think my books are better for it.

M Y  B O O K   D E S I G N S — "The Art of Urban Cycling," ©2004, is one of the last books I designed working full-time for GPP, the Globe Pequot Press. The text is, as the title implies, all about how to safely pilot your bike through crowded city streets. The interior is black and white in this paperback book, but I was determined to make the design very eye-catching anyway. I decided on a graffiti-theme early on, and had my friend (and loyal blog lurker, lol) Meghan, who works in Manhattan, spend a few lunch hours walking around the lower East Side shooting photos for me. I incorporated them into collages and along with author-supplied photographs, charts and graphs, produced a compelling looking, and reading, book. It was a critical success, if, unfortunately  not so much in sales. I call this the "Arrested Development" school of success: The critics loved it but it was ultimately cancelled, lol.

Each chapter opened with a 2-page spread and collage of photos relating to the chapter's contents. I should have re-read this chapter prior to my bike accident this summer, the effects of which I'm still dealing with.

"Regular" interior pages carried subheads and drop caps in this style, and I created several stand-alone full page collages to facilitate page flow. Yes, I found a way to create a car-collage in this bicycling book! 

• The Amazon link to The Art of Urban Cycling, including many rave reader reviews. Two years after this first edition, and after I left the company to go freelance and to work on my personal art, the cover was redesigned to better fit in with the series, but it lost its uniqueness if you ask me. I'm linking to my original edition. lol.

Old Bike, Vintage Stickers, New Art

My circa 1985 Fuji racing bike, with its circa 1990-ish stickers for ACT-UP, sporting both Silence = Death and Action = Life, outside today with some of new cardboards. I must have plastered five hundred locations with these two stickers back in the day.

Not to be outdone, my lightweight, aluminum Schwinn mountain bike always has a group of Veteran's "Poppies" on its handlebars. This bike was a Thrift store purchase, and came already equipped with an orange Virginia Tech sticker on the frame (infamous college shooting site), along with an ID beginning with BJ. A little Wry with that Irony? 

Never saw a Vet in front of a store that I didn't give them a buck if I had it. Even if I only had one. It's interesting, to me, that you almost never see a veteran of WW2 anymore, and rarely the Korean Conflict. Most seem to be from the Vietnam War. Time is certainly moving on. I feel it rushing by.

The long view of the new cardboards outside today for some fresh air. These are done as far as the first layer goes, so I'm going to put them aside for a couple of weeks to cure totally before the next step.