UXBCTO: Announcing our next book, "Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art" by Scott McCloud for July 17th

[Kimberley Peter]

Hello fellow UX Book Club regulars and occasionalites,

 

Thanks to those of you who were able to come out last Wednesday night to review See What I Mean: How to Use Comics to Communicate Ideas by Kevin Cheng. It inspired a deeper look at storytelling using the comic form by a master of the craft, Scott McCloud, author of Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (224 pages) and our pick to read through the late spring and early summer with review targeted for July 17th.

Because the lazy days of summer aren't ideal for making tough reading decisions, or we just thought a double-pick was in order this time :-), we opted to establish our late summer book as well: Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing by Adam Greenfield (272 pages). We will review this one around September 25th but expect confirmation of that date once we've covered the McCloud book in July.

 

About Understanding Comics:

This is a rare and exciting work that ingeniously uses comics to examine the medium itself. McCloud (who wrote a comic-book series called Zot! ) conducts a genial, well-researched and funny tour of virtually every historical and perceptual aspect of comics, which he calls "sequential art," that is, art that consists of sequences of words and pictures. Beginning in the 11th century with the Bayeux tapestry, he examines pre-Columbian picture languages and the printing press, presenting a quick survey of the historical development of early sequential pictures into the specialized visual language of comics. But it's McCloud's accessible and quite amusing discussion of realism, abstraction and visual perception that forms the heart of this survey. He dissects the vocabulary of the medium, cheerfully analyzing the psychological power of comics and their central role in our ultra-visual culture. McCloud attempts to place comics within the tradition of serious western art. His black-and-white drawings are a delight, ranging from simplified cartoons to parodies of classic comics and fine art, all the while manifesting every theory and comics trend discussed.

You can read more reviews and purchase the book at Amazon.com (http://amzn.to/13BMPaD) or Amazon.ca (http://amzn.to/17HtqZd).

 

WHEN

Wednesday, July 17th at 6:30 PM

 

WHERE

TBD, but, as always, it will be a central downtown location that will allow us to have a bite, a beverage and some social time in addition to discussing the book.

 

 

Happy reading!

 

Kim and Kaleem

UX Book Club Toronto

 

 

PS, as always, you can find our book lists at Amazon Canada (http://astore.amazon.ca/uxbcto-20) or at Amazon (http://astore.amazon.com/uxbcto09-20)