Josef Scharl, illus. for 1945 Pantheon publication of Rock Crystal by Aldalbert Stifter.

Reminds me of John Porcellino…

via electronicalrattlebag: darksilenceinsuburbia: yama-bato: ajourneyroundmyskull: woolgathersome

Not many people know that Hef wanted to be a cartoonist growing up, which led to many a great cartoonist getting gigs for Playboy. Jane Sellers, a best-friend of Hef, saved all his old cartoons:

At 16, I knew he was destined to do amazing things, so I saved every scrap of paper he ever sent or gave me

Hef himself:

“ I was most interested in writing and cartooning….I wrote short stories and lots of mysteries and horror stories and did comic books in grade school and high school. I actually started a comic-book autobiography in high school called ‘School Daze,’ about the adventures of my friends and myself. I then began adding clippings and photographs too. It eventually became like a scrapbook.

Link totally SFW, by the way.

Dan Zettwoch’s Puerto Vallarta Sketchbook

You can tell a couple of the fellas are graphic designers…

Previous magic.

The book that changed Michael Beirut’s life:

This book changed my life.

I discovered it in the “Career Resources” section of my high school library in Parma, Ohio, in 1974. I loved art but I wasn’t interested in just making paintings. I wanted to do album covers and movie posters. I had no idea who did this kind of work.

Thanks to Neil Fujita, and no one else, I found out that this aspiration had a name: graphic design. I went to the Parma Regional Library on Snow Road and looked up “graphic design” in the card catalog. There was one book in the stacks: Graphic Design Manual by Armin Hoffman. How Armin Hoffman came to mid-seventies suburban Cleveland I have no idea. I asked my parents to get me a copy of my own for Christmas. They splurged and bought me the wrong book. It was Graphic Design by Milton Glaser. Mr Hoffman and Mr. Glaser have Neil Fujita to thank for the introduction. And so, of course, do I.

It’s funny how when we have those “ah-ha!” moments in our lives, a lot of it has to do with naming.

As a boy from small town Ohio, I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a “designer” until I got out of college, for crying out loud. I had no clue you could put pictures and words together for a living. I knew of no adults that did that kind of thing.

Sometimes you’re on the right track, but you need to know the names for things.

Thanks to Darby for pointing to the comment.

Awesome-looking show at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Pennsylvania

From this vanity fair article on photographer Al Wertheimer, who shadowed Elvis in 1956, the year Elvis-mania hit. Wertheimer on what made Elvis different:

“He dared to move….Singers just did not move onstage in those days. You stood there like Frank Sinatra or Perry Como, and you sang from the waist up. Elvis broke all the rules. He moved his hips. He charged the microphone. He was introducing something that was just not acceptable to grown-ups and the more conservative groups. I have the William Morris guys getting him into a corner, and they’re giving him advice: ‘Now, Elvis, look, you get up there, you sing your song, but don’t move too much.’ Elvis dutifully listened. He wouldn’t argue with them. But once he got onstage he did what he wanted. And it created such a sensation. Not because you could hear him sing—there was too much screaming going on. The kids loved it. And the kids were the ones who bought the 45s.

Via Matt Linderman at 37signals, who says,

Funny to imagine those experts sitting Elvis down and telling him that he’s got to stop moving onstage. Shows you the problem with experts: They’re experts on the past. No one is an expert on the future.