I'm an artist being an artist it's the
greatest job there is and I really pity
each and every one of you who has to
spend their days discovering new
galaxies or saving humanity from global
warming but being an artist is also a
daunting job I spent every day from nine
to six doing this I even started a side
career that consists entirely of
complaining about difficulty of the
creative process but today I don't want
to talk about what makes my life
difficult I want to talk about what
makes it easy and that is view and the
fact that you are fluent in a language
that you're probably not even aware of
you're fluent in the language of reading
images deciphering an image like that
takes quite a bit of an intellectual
effort but nobody ever taught you how
this works you just know it
College shopping music what makes a
language powerful is that you can take a
very complex idea and communicate it in
a very simple efficient form these
images represent exactly the same ideas
but when you look for example at the
college head you know that this doesn't
represent the accessory you wear on your
head when you being handed your diploma
but rather the whole idea of college now
what drawings can do is they can not
only communicate images they can even
evoke emotions let's say you get to an
unfamiliar place and you see this you
feel happiness and relief or a slight
sense of unease or maybe downright panic
or blissful peace and quiet but visuals
there of course more than just graphic
icons now if I want to tell the story of
modern-day struggle I would start with
the armrest between two airplane seats
and two sets of elbows fighting and what
I love there's this universal law that
you know you have 30 seconds to fight it
out and once it's yours you get to keep
it for the rest of the flight now
commercial flight is full of these
images if I want to illustrate the idea
of discomfort there's nothing better
than these neck pillows yeah they're
designed to make you more comfortable
except they don't so I never sleep on
airplanes what I do occasionally is I
fall into this sort of painful coma and
when I wake up from that I have the most
terrible taste in my mouth it's it's
it's a taste it's so bad it cannot be
described with words but it can be drawn
the thing is you know I love sleeping
and when I sleep I really prefer to do
it while spooning
I've been spooning on almost a pro level
for close to 20 years but in all this
time I've never figured out what to do
with that bottom arm and the only thing
the only thing that makes sleeping even
more complicated and trying to do it in
an airplane is when you have small
children they show up at your bed at
around 4 a.m. with some bogus excuse if
I had a bad dream and then of course you
feel sorry for them they're your kids so
you let them into your bed and I have to
admit at the beginning they're really
cute and warm and snuggly the minute you
fall back asleep
they inexplicably start rotating we like
to call this the helicopter mode now the
deeper something is etched into your
consciousness the fewer details we need
to have an emotional reaction so why
does an image like this work it works
because we as readers are incredibly
good at filling in the blanks now when
you draw there's this concept of
negative space and the idea is that
instead of drawing the actual object you
draw the space around it so the bowls in
destroying are empty but the black ink
prompts your brain to project food into
a void what we see here is not an owl
flying what we actually see is a pair of
double A batteries standing on a
nonsensical drawing and I animate the
scene by moving my desk lamp up and
balance the image really only exists in
your mind
so how much information do we need to
trigger such an image my goal as an
artist is to use the smallest amount
possible I try to achieve 11
of simplicity where if you were to take
away one more element the whole concept
would just collapse
and it's why my personal favorite tool
as an artist is abstraction I've come up
with the system which I call the
abstract ohmmeter
and this is how it works so you take a
symbol any symbol for example the heart
in the arrow which most of us would read
as a symbol for love and I'm an artist
so I can draw this in any given degree
of realism or abstraction now if I go to
realistic on it it just grosses
everybody out if I go too far on the
other side and do very much strike
nobody has any idea what they're looking
at so I have to find the perfect place
on that scale in this case it's
somewhere in the middle now once we have
reduced an image to a more simple form
all sorts of new connections become
possible and that allows for totally new
angles and story to help
and so what I like to do is I like to
take images from reading remote cultural
areas and bring them together now with
more daring references I I can have more
fun but of course I know that eventually
things become so obscure that I start
losing some of you so as a designer it's
absolutely key to have a good
understanding of the visual and cultural
vocabulary of your audience with this
image here a comment on the Olympics in
Athens I assume that a reader of the New
Yorker would have some rudimentary idea
of Greek art if you don't the image
doesn't work but if you do you might
even appreciate a small detail like the
beer-can pattern here on the bottom of
the buzzes a recurring discussion I have
with with magazine editors who are
usually word people is that their
audience you are much better at making
radical leaps with images than they're
being given credit for and the only
thing I find frustrating is that they
often seem to push me towards a small
set of really tired visual cliche
cliches that are considered safe you
know it's the the businessman climbing
up a ladder and then the ladder moves in
and morphs into a stock market graph and
anything with dollar signs that's always
good if there are editorializing makers
here in the audience I want to give you
a piece of advice every time a drawing
like this is published a baby panda will
die literally
now when no when is a visual tshe good
or bad it's a fine line and it really
depends on the story so in 2011 during
the earthquake and tsunami in Japan I
was thinking for our of a cover and I
went through the classic symbols to
Japanese flag the Great Wave by hokusai
one of the greatest drawings ever and
then the story changed when the
situation at the power plant in
Fukushima got out of hand and I remember
these TV images of the the workers in
hazmat suits just walking through the
site and what struck me was how quiet
and serene it was and so I wanted to
create an image of a silent catastrophe
and that's the image I came up with
thank you
what I want to do is create an aha
moment for you for the reader and
unfortunate that does not mean that I
have an aha moment when I create these
images I never sit at my desk with the
proverbial light bulb going off in my
head what it takes is actually a very
slow unsexy process of minimal design
decisions that then when I'm lucky lead
to a good idea so one day I'm on a train
and I'm trying to decode the graphic
rules for drops on a window and
eventually I realized oh it's the
background blurry upside-down contained
in a sharp image and I thought about
it's really cool and I have absolutely
no idea what to do with them a while
back later I'm back in New York and I
draw this image of being stuck on the
Brooklyn Bridge in in a traffic jam and
really annoying but also kind of poetic
and only later I realized oh I can take
both of these ideas and put them
together in this idea and what I want to
do is not show a realistic scene but
maybe like poetry make you aware did you
already had this image with you but only
now I've unearthed it and made you
realize that you were carrying it with
you all along
but like poetry this is a very delicate
process that is neither efficient nor
scalable I think and maybe the most
important skill for an artist is really
empathy you you need craft and you need
you need creativity thank you do to come
up with an image like that but then you
need to step back and look at what
you've done from the perspective of the
reader I've tried to become a better
artist by becoming a better observer of
images and for that I started an
exercise for myself which I call Sunday
sketching which meant on a Sunday I
would pay take a random object I found
our on the house and try to see if that
object could trigger an idea that had
nothing to do with the original purpose
of that item and usually just means I
blanked for a long while and the only
trick that eventually works is if I open
my mind and run through every image I
have stored up there and see if
something clicks and if it does just add
a few lines of ink to connect this or to
preserve this very short moment of
inspiration and a great lesson there was
that the real magic doesn't happen on
paper it happens in the mind of the
viewer when your expectations and your
knowledge clash with my artistic
intentions your interaction with an
image your ability to read and question
be bothered or bored or inspired by an
image is as important as my artistic
contribution because that's what turns
an artistic statement really into a
creative dialogue and so your skill at
reading images is that only amazing it
is what makes my art possible and for
that I thank you very much
[Applause]