"Making A Budget For Tough Economic Times"...
It's a cartoon about being in an accountant's office... you were expecting something visually spectacular?
Monday, March 30, 2009
Fighting Words: 3/30/09 Cartoon...
"Making A Budget For Tough Economic Times"...
It's a cartoon about being in an accountant's office... you were expecting something visually spectacular?
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Fighting Words News: Graphic / Web Design Page...
I finally have a separate page up on my website for my graphic & web design work... go look! It includes a website I did recently for a local cafe:
I've got two more website jobs currently in the works, and a couple more lined up after that. While my skills may not be quite as polished as a big-time professional web designer working for a firm, I'm getting better. Also, I think there's something to be said for having an artist's touch on a web design project. If you're interested in hiring me, shoot me an email at nomind (at) fightingwordscomics (dot) com.
I've got two more website jobs currently in the works, and a couple more lined up after that. While my skills may not be quite as polished as a big-time professional web designer working for a firm, I'm getting better. Also, I think there's something to be said for having an artist's touch on a web design project. If you're interested in hiring me, shoot me an email at nomind (at) fightingwordscomics (dot) com.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Newspaper Blues
Sad day. The Seattle P-I was a fixture of my childhood, as my dad was a photographer there for nearly 20 years. When I was a kid, a few times I was allowed to sit and watch David Horsey and Steve Greenberg work at their desks, which were adjacent to the photographers' area. I went to Ingraham High School, just as Horsey did, and drew cartoons for the school newspaper. My dad's salary at the P-I would eventually put me through college at the University of Washington.
More than sad though, I am pissed off. There's something that's been bothering me for a long time, which was brought up again by this article in the NYT the other day and its accompanying graphic. I've written longer analyses on the plight of newspapers before, but if you'll permit me, I'd like to indulge in a little angry, superficial, Republican-style ranting about my surface impressions on a complex issue, the finer details of which I have little understanding. I am not an economist. I won't pretend that I have an alternative business model that will definitely work for newspapers, and that they are fools for ignoring this obvious course of action.
However, my read of the landscape tells me that this entire predicament for newspapers basically boils down to the existence of one website... CraigsList. The biggest killer for newspapers throughout this crisis seems to have been the drying up of their classified advertising dollars because of CraigsList. And thus, here's my rant: how in the hell can one little piddling website bring an entire vital industry like this to its knees?! How could newspapers not have a plan for this in their business models? The NYT article has the beginnings of an additional explanation -- that the huge newspaper chains took on too much debt "in a spree of buying other newspapers from 2005 to 2007, just before the bottom dropped out of the business" -- but that still doesn't explain to me the across-the-board tanking that you see in the Times' graphic. Not all failing newspapers are owned by greedy conglomerates.
How could newspapers have allowed this to happen to them?
This is not rhetorical... someone smarter than me please help me out with this...
More than sad though, I am pissed off. There's something that's been bothering me for a long time, which was brought up again by this article in the NYT the other day and its accompanying graphic. I've written longer analyses on the plight of newspapers before, but if you'll permit me, I'd like to indulge in a little angry, superficial, Republican-style ranting about my surface impressions on a complex issue, the finer details of which I have little understanding. I am not an economist. I won't pretend that I have an alternative business model that will definitely work for newspapers, and that they are fools for ignoring this obvious course of action.
However, my read of the landscape tells me that this entire predicament for newspapers basically boils down to the existence of one website... CraigsList. The biggest killer for newspapers throughout this crisis seems to have been the drying up of their classified advertising dollars because of CraigsList. And thus, here's my rant: how in the hell can one little piddling website bring an entire vital industry like this to its knees?! How could newspapers not have a plan for this in their business models? The NYT article has the beginnings of an additional explanation -- that the huge newspaper chains took on too much debt "in a spree of buying other newspapers from 2005 to 2007, just before the bottom dropped out of the business" -- but that still doesn't explain to me the across-the-board tanking that you see in the Times' graphic. Not all failing newspapers are owned by greedy conglomerates.
How could newspapers have allowed this to happen to them?
This is not rhetorical... someone smarter than me please help me out with this...
Monday, March 16, 2009
Fighting Words: 3/16/09 Cartoon...
"Yuppanzees #2"...
Sorry about the "Classic" Fighting Words this week, folks... as I've been complaining about frequently, I'm having to spend quite a bit of time on website design projects to pay the bills. As a result, the cartooning hours suffer, since the cartoons don't pay for jack right now. So, you might expect a few more "Classics" from me this year than in years past...
OR
...as always, you can drop a line to your local alternative newsweekly and respectfully suggest that, instead of cutting out all their best content in these tough times, they should spend a little money on even more hard-hitting alternative political comic strips such as, oh I don't know, this one I like called Fighting Words!
Anybody who wanted to do that would be totally freaking awesome in my book...
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Fighting Words: 3/9/09 Cartoon...
"The Wall Street Media's Faces of the New Great Depression"...
I'm doing a website job right now for a photographer, so I've got photojournalism on the brain...
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Great cartoon business idea
Doing image research for this week's 'toon, I came across this. This guy takes monsters and other characters in kids' drawings, and develops them into full paintings.
Monday, March 02, 2009
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