Smog Design contacted me to illustrate a wine label for wine importers The Grateful Palate. After submitting a sketch for the Grenache label, the client remarked: “This looks great. Can you just make it a little weirder?” A client after my own heart!

As a teenager I studied French and literature, and loved Arthur Rimbaud’s poems. I was pleased with a recent book jacket assignment: a fictitious biography of the man. The author bases his text on the true facts of the prodigy poet’s life. Structurally the book hops around, beginning after his death, moving back and forth in time. As I read,...

The client, The Grateful Palate was so pleased with the appearance of Mister GG Grenache they commissioned another label right away. After much two versions with cowboys packing their 44s and looking too macho for a Riesling, the client proposed using Katharine Ross’s character in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as a point of inspiration. Bingo.

This article was about starting the day with healthy food. For an earlier version, I found an image of a 1940s cereal that was strands of grain. The editor wondered why the cereal “looked like spaghetti.” I was having trouble finding the right image in my old magazines… and then had the brainstorm to simply pour fresh dry cereal onto...

Imagine my elation when given a book jacket assignment for one of my favorite authors, working with my all-time favorite art director, the marvelous Carol Carson at Alfred A Knopf. The watery background was created from my own photos of the whirlpool water in the Niagara Gorge below the Falls, with that distinctive greenish tinge. I massaged the water...