Matt Buck's Hack Cartoons

Why blog when you can draw?

At first I did the writing thing - in words - because it was somewhere I got to control how what I said was displayed. As a creative person who tends to think in pictures rather than in words - this was important because I don't feel completely confident with letters and words. Letters in code and combination are pesky and elusive things which explains I think why politicians and lawyers love them so.

The blog also has the fringe benefit of being a nice way to advertise my wares without having to use a middleman.


Hack Cartoons Vitruvian Pig - or, the proportions of the artist
This seems to have become more important because of some real world changes to the business world in which I work. This is, or was, print journalism. This industry is going through a period of massive change, or steep decline and death (depending upon who you speak to:-/ Anyone living through one of these periods will tell you how challenging these times can be. Just ask journalists at one of my old papers - The Daily Express.

The economy of Britain supports under a 1,000 professional cartoonists at my best guesstimate. These are resourceful creatures who manage to feed and clothe themselves and their families entirely through their skill at drawing and writing. This number will, in all probability, decline in line with the print industry, if decline it is to be.

The difficulties of the task facing contemporary British-based print cartoonists can be contrasted by the story of Ronald Searle, arguably one of the greatest artists this country has ever produced. A man so pestered in our culture for his advertising work and the successful characters he invented at St Trinians school, that he eventually felt the need to move to France permanently, where he still lives and works aged 88. Nowadays he has a non-pigeonholed freedom to draw about what he pleases, mainly for Le Monde newspaper.

No one can stop economic changes I am noting when they are driven by financial forces far beyond the resistance of any one individual. All we can do as professional image makers is to adapt and make sure we are as visible as we can be.

Some of my colleagues and I have been busy setting up something called The Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation - which is, in advert-speak, exactly what it says on the tin. I like to daydream that Searle might approve.

At present, I edit its diary called the Bloghorn along with Royston Robertson who is busy making a name for himself as a gag cartoonist of note. Our members include many of Britain's finest cartoon talents, (here follows name-droppping) we can boast Ken Pyne, Pete Dredge and Martin Honeysett (all regulars from Private Eye), sages like John Jensen (who's forgotten more about how to communicate in words and pictures than most of us will ever know) and top editorial names like Martin Rowson, Morten Morland, Andy Davey and Dave Gaskill. There are many more cartoonists and artists (too many to list here) and I advise a visit if you have the leisure time, or are in need of a good professional piece of visual communication and the distinct and unusual skills which allows them to be made.

The Bloghorn

Many of us will be performing our tricks at the forthcoming Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival (April 18-20th) - much has been written about it on Bloghorn, if you can get there, come down and see what all this fuss is about.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

The book Flat earth news on the struggle for the soul of newspaper reporting has been getting a lot of media attention in the last month. This is unsurprising in itself as there is absolutely nothing media professionals like better than discussing themselves. The author Nick Davies raises some very smelly issues about what has happened to newspapers during the time I have worked in them. And his line about PR providing a 'solution' to the problem of volume news provision while journalists have been fighting chronic underfunding of editorial teams, certainly rings true to me. There's a review of the book from the London Review of Books here.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

Found by Alex Hilton at Recess Monkey and circulated by Liberal Conspiracy - among others.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

From Nick Davies via Lloyd Shepherd and the UKPG. I am indulging in pure churnalism here, but this bit is worth it because the original source, is original.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

"The rise of blogging and opinion outside of the mainstream has caused newspapers a problem, because quite often these blogs are more interesting than the editorials in the newspapers."
Former editor of the Sunday Times, Andrew Neill to the House of Lords Communications Committee. Quote via Journalism.co.uk

More cheerfully, The Independent newspaper has relaunched, at long last, its website, In doing so, it has finally recognised the genius of its regular editorial cartoonist, Dave Brown. He has a proper cartoon gallery full of marvellous stuff, right at the top of opinion. The joke for December the 24th is a particular treat.
23rd January 2008

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

In the spirit of the marvellous hypertext video, which you can find below, comes this. Hat-tip to Mindy McAdams but the creative kudos belongs to Michael Wesch.

26th October 2007

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

This is excellent news. Hello again Ian.
23rd October 2007
Matt Buck’s animated drawings

This is old news, but still good news. A hat-tip to Mr Quittner, wherever you are today...
25th October 2007

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

The problems with making jokes post below, touches on another interesting post from Virtual Economics in which Seamus McCauley talks about the increasing fusion between factual and opinion-based news coverage. This is very interesting to someone like me because essentially it's what visual satirists do; try to reveal truths, or opinions, through analogy, visual symbolism and jokes.

Seamus uses a lovely phrase in his piece - the genuine value of satirical news reporting - and goes on to talk about how one of the major problems that today's conventional journalists are finding, is that the predominant industry business models no longer support what it is, journalists do. In this context he argues, the value of satire, goes up.

'The gap between news and news satire gets ever smaller, and it seems our understanding of current affairs is all the richer for it.'

Sincere hat-tip to Mr McCauley

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

This picture of a journalism college class from the University of Missouri is sort of wonderful and sort of terrifying, all at the same time. It's certainly a testament to the power of effective brand marketing. A hat-tip to the Silicon Valley Sleuth.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

I never feel like I need an excuse to watch this fantastic piece of visual story-telling again...kudos to the director, Professor Wesch

A hat-tip to Roy Greenslade

Anybody who makes editorial or commercial content knows innovation is hard to do.

It's time-consuming, usually unpaid and even when complete as a product, is often still difficult to bring to market.

But of course, it is also essential to the economic and creative survival of the people making it.

Neil McIntosh explains the paradox and its importance nicely here by examining a couple of high-profile attempts at innovation from the world of journalism.

The contrast between Neil's stories about two institutional views of innovation and my own experience as a sole practitioner might make a whole new series of posts...but maybe not today...

A link lifted from Mindy McAdams, but it's so good, I had to do it. Marvel at the work of Yann Arthus-Bertrand

Here is a brief and slightly belated, visual report on a very interesting evening at the Telegraph Media Group. It was a meeting arranged by members of the old media, who are very interested in the opportunities presented by the new. Kudos to all who arranged and attended, I thoroughly enjoyed it. The changes to the industry and the way it has operated are going to be huge.

The gag above owes much to the great British cartoonist Larry - Terence Parkes - who had a wonderful and extremely long-running series of visual jokes based on the statues made by Auguste Rodin. Sadly, Larry died a few years back, but there will be a pint or two sunk in memory of this brilliant craftsman at the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival at which I'll be appearing later this week.

Your weekly guide to all that's new and interesting in how to tell the news.

Ian Reeves

This one's got a lovely clip toards the end about an American cartooning colleague of mine, Kevin Kallaugher or Kal.

In traditional fashion, after hard service for the Baltimore Sun, Kevin's job became surplus to editorial requirements. He responded in the best (fingers up) fashion, by going off and doing something altogether more interesting. Watch the video Ian has put together to find out what.

An unmissable pub crawl with Karl Marx (hat tip to Mark Crail)

Also, don't miss celebrity political blogger Guido Fawkes and his unwise foray into the world of the mainstream media and Newsnight. His film was good - and asked some sensible questions, but the decision to do an interview with Paxo and Mike White from the Guardian ... ouch!

The unmissable journalist pioneer Mr Reeves has No4 online.

Reeves

This one is showing distinct signs of boosted production values - although the slick graphic sign off lacks the traditional face-to-face bon mots of numbers 1 to 3. Please bring them back Ian!

Anyone working in journalism who wants to think about what the new media means and how to do it, would do well to watch this short film.

How to

Hat tips to Richard Hernandez and Mindy McAdams