Two weeks in the past, Debbie Millman and I co-hosted the month-to-month PRINT E-book Membership on Zoom. The occasion featured a vigorous and galvanizing chat with Christoph Niemann about his just lately self-published wordless Thought Diary. I’ve recognized Niemann since he started his New York illustration profession, when Paula Scher commanded I meet him (contemporary from artwork faculty in Stuttgart, Germany, and internships with Paul Davis and Pentagram). Whereas I’ve since labored with him on editorial and e book initiatives, I had lengthy been in awe of—however not envious of—his singular capacity to fill area with imaginatively, humorously and satirically accessible concepts (or idears as he calls them in his rolling German accent). However envy hit me in abundance as I used to be listening to him discuss conceiving concepts, expressing concepts and nurturing them over Zoom.
Niemann is a conceptual superhero, capable of smash meteoric issues with a single picture, simplify complicated ideas with a easy metaphor and face up to literal editors together with his superior visible profundity and wit. He’s any artwork director’s secret weapon. He by no means misses his goal with at the least one megaton concept—however he nonetheless routinely sketches a number of others to be secure. With Niemann solely a cellphone name, fax or e-mail away—whether or not he’s in Brooklyn or Berlin—there is no such thing as a likelihood of being at sea, drowning in symbolic tropes and illustration clichés. The key to his superpowers is, above all, shock.
Niemann produces scores of surprises with out breaking a sweat or pencil level. By no means content material to cloak himself in a single technique or type, he employs many—typically suddenly. He makes the artwork director’s job a veritable vacation. Simply give him a topic, and off he goes to his bat cave solely to return, in what at all times appears to be (and sometimes is) minutes (an hour if he’s in the midst of one other job), with concepts that the typical mortal wouldn’t—couldn’t—have imagined.
This will likely sound like hyperbolic fanboy exuberance, however I exaggerate not (nicely, not solely). I used to be reminded of this prowess in the course of the E-book Membership when he confirmed considered one of his favourite concepts—one of many many he did for me, which is among the many 5 greatest I’ve ever commissioned out of hundreds from different nice artists. However sufficient superlatives! Simply take a look at what I imply:
Anybody with their eyes open and synapses firing can see that this easy, unadorned picture is a few popularly held incontrovertible perception—proper or flawed, left and proper—within the sanctity of the 2nd Modification guaranteeing a citizen’s proper to bear arms. But it nonetheless goes additional as a important commentary about this broadly held perception being far more than a vital constitutional proper; it argues that these rights are so existentially inextricable to Individuals that weapons have advanced past legislation and ethos into biology and pathology, certainly the very construction of the nation’s anatomical self. There have been hundreds of editorial pictures commenting, critiquing, protesting and supporting gun rights. Each time there’s a mass taking pictures, the litany of clichés is rolled out of the cartoon arsenal. Some are intelligent, others are brutal, most are didactic. However none brings the elemental subject residence as clearly, cleverly and daringly as this. For the time being it was introduced everybody who noticed the tough sketch understood that the problem couldn’t be expressed in a extra daring or acerbic method.
Niemann’s Thought Diary is a wellspring of intelligence, humor, play and the essence of ideation. This picture exhibits how a strong concept is invaluable. It additionally underscores an necessary lesson: Good concepts are helpful, nice concepts are invaluable and super-powered concepts are invincible.
