Floating World Comics in Portland recently asked me to whip up a cover design for a book written by Anthony Alvarado, which is based on a series of articles he had penned for Arthur Magazine. I’ve had the pleasure of giving the Arthur articles and the final manuscript a read, and it’s a far more practical guide than you might imagine. In this book, “magic” concerns itself with sorcery by practical means, an intentional disorientation of perception. Mr. Alvarado sums it up thusly:

What I talk about when I talk about magic: I’m not fucking around. This isn’t a joke or a trick. This is real stuff that I think most people are capable of trying out if they would let themselves. Most people, however, don’t. It’s taboo. It’s considered the realm of flakes, hippies, and drug-addled softies by the general scientific paradigm at large. It is considered a waste of time. The good stuff always is…What is magic? It is the fine and subtle art of driving yourself insane! No really, it is just that. It is a con game you play on your own brain. It is the trick of letting yourself go crazy, and I do believe that when it’s done right, the magus treads the same sacred and profane ground where walks the madman. It is, however, possible for the modern magician to enter into that realm and return with knowledge, knowledge and yes, power. I believe this is the same process that for millennia mankind has participated in. It is the journey of the shaman.

The final book is currently in the production phase (we’re looking into silver metallic ink on navy blue uncoated stock for the cover). An announcement will be made here when copies are available for sale. It’s a delightful, charmingly speculative read.

Here’s an invite cover I designed for The Wagner Free Institute of Science’s annual benefit cocktail party (Laura Baird and I teamed up on this project, and it must be said that she did most of the work). We had the pleasure of attending the party, chatting, eating, and drinking amid a huge collection of century-old taxidermy specimens, all of which were displayed in huge glass cases. The building is a  beautifully-preserved nineteenth-century natural history museum, providing free science classes to the public since 1855. There is nothing else quite like it in the United States. Go visit if you can–or better yet, attend the many wonderful lectures held there.