Kevin Cornell

The year is 2020. Summer is giving way to autumn. COVID-19 will have killed a million people by the year’s end, a fifth of them Americans. Unemployment is soaring. Millions have taken to the streets to protest police brutality and its disproportionate effect on Black people. The west coast is engulfed in the fiercest wildfires it’s ever seen. The sky is orange.

In the face of all this, the President of the United States denies… See more →

Fear of a Female President

To understand this reaction, start with what social psychologists call “precarious manhood” theory. The theory posits that while womanhood is typically viewed as natural and permanent, manhood must be “earned and maintained.” Because it is won, it can also be lost. Scholars at the University of South Florida and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign reported that when asked how someone might lose his manhood, college students rattled off social… See more →

The NYPD Is Kicking People Out of Their Homes, Even If They Haven’t Committed a Crime

“It’s an action about a place. It’s not about people,” says the NYPD, as it evicts innocent people from their homes.

The Lives and Lies of a Professional Impostor

“I think he doesn’t know where the lies stop and the truth starts anymore.”

Everyone Hates Martin Shkreli. Everyone Is Missing the Point

Last fall, Derek Lowe, a chemist and… See more →

Remember Kevin’s design vigilante concept? This guy is doing it. Awesome.

Preferable to the story's original form, this graphic adaptation is well-paced and beautifully illustrated (full disclosure: the illustrator is a good friend of mine), both preserving and enhancing Fitzgerald's winking, flowery prose. Kevin Cornell's loose lines and sepia watercolors strike a flexible tone that deftly manages the story's mood swings and evokes the era magnificently. The portraits marking Benjamin's progress in backward aging at the beginning of each chapter are an especially nice touch.

On the Web

• Fray Returns: The beloved site filled with true stories is reborn as a printed quarterly volume!
• Design Doing: A nice roundup and response to recent conversations regarding the relevance of web design within the greater spectrum of design.
• Charts and Graphs of Rap Song Lyrics: The title says it all. Fall-down funny stuff.
• Curriculum Vitae: The long-awaited followup to The Story of Eh, this fantastic new book of comics from Kevin Cornell… See more →

On the Web

• Behind the Scenes of Layer Tennis: Chris Glass details his side of the Layer Tennis match he played with Naz Hamid.
• The Pothole: My first guest contribution to The Superest!
• The Superest: A wonderful new site from Kevin Cornell and Matt Sutter, determined to determine who is the superest of them all.
• Radio Orphan Annie’s Secret Decoder Badges: A brief history of the decoder pins used by Radio Orphan Annie’s Secret Society… See more →

On the Web

• Cassette MP3 Player: If I ever get around to installing Windows, I will so own one of these.
• My Team Vs. Your Team: Sutter Vs. Cornell Vs. Cornell in an epic, illustrated battle of superhero one-upmanship. See another match here.
• Photoshop Layer Tennis: The triumphant return of my favorite Friday afternoon design nerd diversion!
• Pitchfork Gives Music 6.8: An Onion article that is not so farfetched.
• A Brief Message: A new site dedicated… See more →

On the Web

• Siggi Eggertsson: Eye-popping geometric impressionism.
• Isaac Tobin: An outstanding graphic design portfolio. I’m particularly fond of his book covers.
• I Love Typography: A new blog whose title says it all.
• Everyone’s a Design Critic: Stan and I are cooking up a presentation for next year’s SXSW, and we’d love to have your vote.
• Turkey: Kevin Cornell’s submission for a comics contest in Philadelphia’s City Paper. I am of the strong opinion that you… See more →

On the Web

• Talking with Jason Santa Maria: An Event Apart, #04: AIGA interrogates Stan.
• Find 74 Bands: And say goodbye to the rest of your day.
• Pixelworthy Is Looking for an Account Executive: Your chance to work with a great team in Philadelphia.
• AT&T Says Bye-Bye to Saul Bass: Another classic logo bites the dust. And how.
• Design Online: Every issue of Design Magazine, from 1965 through 1974, transcribed and scanned for your reading… See more →

On the Web

• Weychert Gone Wild: Sometimes, you just need to dance. Well, I do, anyway.
• Stan & Rob: Champions of Multimedia Design: Bandy provides an intimate glimpse into the lives of Stan and me.
• Occupied: A Jeffrey Stockbridge photo series documenting interiors of dilapidated Philadelphia residences. Some of these are right around the corner from me.
• Dawn of the Knitted Dead: George Romero’s classic characters rendered in yarn.
• Fire Destroys Wallace and Gromit Warehouse… See more →

I have owned a few web sites in my day, and like anyone who makes their work available to the public, I like to know the whos, how manys, from wheres, and so on, of the people checking out my stuff. Luckily for me and my fellow narcissistic publishers, there are plenty of stats packages out there that can inform us how many hits our sites have gotten, where our visitors are coming from, what… See more →

On the Web

• Guitar Shred Show: Learn the way of the exploding solo and become the shredder you have always dreamed of being!
• Picnic Mtn. Book 1: Thirty-two pages of perplexingly hilarious comics for $5.00.
• Live: Shellac: I have passed up a few opportunities to see Shellac. I am stupid.
• The Bearskinrug Store: Kevin Cornell is now selling prints and posters. Buy now—this stuff is gonna go fast!
• Glyphs: Dave Shea examines the awesome power… See more →

On the Web

• 10 Years of Zeldman: One of the most (deservedly) influential figures in web design celebrates a milestone.
• Even Better Than the Real Thing: Imrov Everywhere opens for U2… as U2.
• Goth, Metalhead Overcome Subcultural Differences to Find Love: “What’s gonna happen at their wedding when Danielle starts playing Sisters of Mercy or some shit like that?”
• Jeff Louella: Relaunches with his personal account of the Browser Wars.
• Week 5: The fifth installment… See more →

Kevin Cornell recently launched Bearskinrug version 4; it is as delicious as might be expected.

Lots of shows lately: The Raveonettes, Luna, Stinking Lizaveta, Mogwai, Andrew W.K. Some scattered moments: Meathead Group A on the TLA floor uses cell phones to call Meathead Group B in the balcony to alert Group B to being given the finger by Group A. “E-A-G-L-E-S!” chants abound. The Troc house lights don’t go up until Luna has played not… See more →

I was going to begin this long-overdue post with a verbose description of the difficulties of keeping a weblog like this: the busier a person is, the less time he has to write, and the larger the pile of experiences to write about becomes. I have opted instead for the succinct description you have just read, which still has not prevented this from being my longest post to date. There’s tons to talk about, and… See more →

So a bunch of stuff happened in the last week.

Puppetmania on Monday turned out to be the best of the animated shorts program at this year’s Philadelphia Film Festival, offering such gems as Jesse Rosensweet’s The Stone of Folly and Patrick Bouchard’s Brainwashers, both of which I missed at Ottawa last fall. On Friday night, the ultra-low budget kung-fu musical Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter entertained me far beyond my low expectations. On Saturday night,… See more →

My friend and Grand Theft Auto 3 provider Kevin Cornell is currently the featured artist on Media Inspiration, where his true southwestern yearnings are revealed. He also squared off against Karen Ingram this afternoon in a rousing match of Photoshop Tennis.