Feast is a book I designed for AlterNet in late 2009. It’s a collection of essays about food and farming typical of the great journalism AlterNet is known for. The cover is stock art. I didn’t have the time or budget to commission an original piece, but I’m fond of the style and my clients loved it.

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ELECTRIC LITERATURE No.s 1 & 2, edited by Andy Hunter and Scott Lindenbaum

Electric Literature has been getting a lot of press lately. I wish I could take credit for that, but I just design it. Most of the brilliance of Electric Literature is in its multiple formats—iPhone app, Kindle, eBook, print-on-demand softcover—and the clever marketing direction. Oh, and the world-class contributors of short fiction don’t hurt.
The cover art of No.1 is by Fred Tomaselli and No.2 is by the incomparable Clayton Brothers.

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OPIUM FOR THE MASSES, byJim Hogshire

Another interesting title from Feral House, this one covers the history and uses of the opium poppy and all of the various goodies derived thereof.

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In 2008, I started to art direct and design Artillery magazine, a bimonthly art mag distributed in Los Angeles and New York City. I redesigned the feature well for the first issue, and we’ve been consistently tweaking the magazine each issue. In early 2010, we’ll be introducing a new design and magazine size. Here are some samples from the last year…

Above, cover and spread from the November-December issue of Artillery.

This issue was seen on E!, I forget which show, but they came to the issue launch party to interview Susan Anderson, the photographer whose work appears on the cover.

Cover and spread I created for the Art and depression issue.

Cover art by Jeff Sonhouse.

Cover and feature spread from the first issue I designed.

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I started art directing the new magazine Brain World in early 2009. This is the second issue which got a big redesign to make it more appealing to a wider audience. The first issue was done quickly, and had more of a membership journal feel—which is my nice way of saying bad artwork and too much text. But with positive feedback and national distribution, we are repositioning Brain World as a self-help title for the masses with enough hard science to interest the inquisitive neurologist.

This is the basic, short-article template.

Special section within the magazine.

Check out the magazines and newspapers posts for more of my periodical art direction and design.

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Here I’ve posted some spreads from the last four years. Editors were Andy Hunter, Sorina Diaconescu and Mya Stark. I hope fans of Mean enjoy some of these pages.
Around the same time that Mean was winding down, I started art directing two other magazines, Artillery and BrainWorld, and a literary journal Electric Literature. Posts of those mags can be found in the New Magazines section, and I’ve put a post of Electric Literature in the Books section.

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SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2008

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A lot of great creative in this issue, mostly thanks to Kashy and Mya Stark. If you can find a copy, there’s a fun pictorial featuring Bill Hader that is shot by Kurt Iswarienko and also illustrated by comic artist Sean Phillips. Also, a great photo feature with the legendary Ben Kingsley playing Ian MacKaye of Minor Threat fame for fans of Punk history.

Elizabeth Banks and Seth Rogen story shot by Tony Kaye.

Emma Stone story, photographed by Kurt Iswarienko.

Anna Farris shot by Kurt Iswarienko.

Summer Bishil spread, photographed by Kurt Iswarienko.

Intro spread for Seth MacFarlane story. Photograph by James Gooding.

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SUMMER 2008

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We used metallic silver as a fifth ink throughout this issue with the theme of dreams. Everywhere you see gray, imagine beautiful, shiny silver.

James McAvoy cover & story shot by Kurt Iswarienko.

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Harmony Korine shot by Rachel Korine.

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Dennis Hopper shot by Mr. James Gooding.

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Adam Yauch shot by the awesome Chris Buck.

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—Bill Smith

L.A. Weekly, for those unfamiliar, is a free newsprint alternative tabloid. It’s one of the largest on the continent, in both circulation and page count. I was art director there for eight years, from around 1995 to 2003, working with editorial as well as marketing. It was a fun and frantic place to be, especially around deadline, and I had the pleasure of working with some of the more talented people I’ll probably ever meet.

Here are a bunch of covers and some layouts from the hundreds (maybe thousands) I did over the years. Some of the images are a little rough—newsprint doesn’t hold up too well. Apologies to the artists and photographers I couldn’t recall. I’d be remiss in not crediting Howard Rosenberg, Kathleen Clark and Debra DiPaolo who were the photo editors during these years. The dates are educated guesses. Let the nostalgia begin!

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93/94 – 96 – 97 – 98 – 99 – 00 – 01 – 9/11 – 02 – 03

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C O V E R S

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Left: Liz Phair cover with hand lettering. [1993]
Right: Speaking of Liz Phair… editors Sue Cummings and Judith Lewis had the funny idea of spoofing the Rolling Stone cover of Phair for one of our Music pullouts. Their partner in crime was John Spencer, who mimicked Phair’s sultry pose. As a young designer I always dreamed of working at Rolling Stone… this is the closest I ever came <sigh>. [1994]

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Left: Another annual baseball cover. [1996]
Right: I loved this image, shot by Ted Soqui at the ’96 DNC. Very Wizard of Oz. It carried a subversively negative message about Clinton, the Dems, and the electoral process. [1996]

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Left: We had no good art for our ballot guide issue, so I created a Rube Goldberg illustration of the voting process. It was fun to write the descriptions for each of the steps. All art directors want to be writers, all editors want to be art directors, and all writers want to be homeless. [1996]
Right: Alex Munn created the art for this B-movie poster spoof. [1997]

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I wish I could remember the artists’ names for these two covers. I do remember that they were both terrific collaborators and did an amazing job turning these paintings around in just a few days. Love that weekly pace. [1998]

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Left: Remember Y2K? Illustration by Mike Lee, who is now a designer of beautiful custom furniture. [1998]
Right: Tulsa Kinney was the cover model for this tongue-in-cheek homespun design. Tulsa is now editor and publisher of art magazine Artillery. [1998]

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This is a double cover that we did for the paper’s 20th anniversary. The idea was to take symbols of Los Angeles from 1978 and, when you turn the page to cover 2, compare them with their 1998 equivalents: Coppola to Tarantino, vinyl to CD, coke to caffeine… one of the punchlines was that Vin Scully repeats, unchanged. [1998]

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Left: Cover for Ted Soqui’s photo essay on taxi dancers.
Right: Illustration by Geoffrey Grahn.

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Left: A tin wind-up toy served as my cover model for our semiannual music issue. [1999]
Right: Illustration by Rob Clayton. I’d link directly to the Claytons’ site, but I hate pages that force browser window resizing. You can check it out manually, though, at claytonbrothers.com [1999]

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Left: L7 shot by Debra DiPaolo. L7 trivia: Guitarist/vocalist Donita Sparks used to work in the Weekly‘s production department. [1999]
Right: Anthony Ausgang created this painting for our first annual comics issue. I edited and designed the comics issue for four years. Always looked forward to the art and stories that came from these issues. I have several dozen clean copies of the last two or three in storage, so if you want one or both, send me your address and a few bucks or stamps for postage (they’re heavy) and I’ll send you an issue, I can’t bring myself to recycle them. (Scroll down for more comics issues.) [1999]

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Left: The cover of our annual photo issue shot by Larry Hirshowitz. [2000]
Right: One of dozens of special supplements we created. This one was for the city of West Hollywood. If I’m not mistaken, Slobodan Dimitrov took this photo. [2000]

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Left: Outside of Boardner’s bar in Hollywood – a favorite haunt of the L.A. Weekly staff. [2000]
Right: Goodbye to Freaks and Geeks story. [2000]
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In 2000, Los Angeles hosted the Democratic National Convention. For that week, the Weekly went daily. Each cover was illustrated by the great Robbie Conal. Subjects included: Al Gore, Tipper Gore, California Governor Gray Davis (left) and Joe Lieberman (right). Then-editor-in-chief Sue Horton and the rest of the editorial staff did an amazing job and I couldn’t have gotten through it without former associate art director Jeff Monzel who put his own work on hold to come back and help us out for the week. [2000]

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Left: Margaret Cho posed for this Best of L.A. cover. [2000]
Right: Photo editor Debra DiPaolo snapped this candid shot at a press junket for the film Traffic. If you’ve never been to a junket, it’s like a slow-motion feeding frenzy except sharks don’t ask stupid questions and the only parasites to be found at a feeding frenzy are remoras – vastly preferable to publicists. Coming away with something that doesn’t look like paparazzi garbage can be a challenge. DiPaolo waited for a smoking break, then ditched the flash for natural light to grab this shot. [2000]

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Left: Annual photo issue. This is the first one I edited too. [2001]
Right: This just seemed appropriate. [2001]

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Two of my own illustrations.
Left: Rampart district police scandal. [2001]
Right: California’s energy crisis. This was a very popular cover, getting reprinted in a few design annuals. The Village Voice also purchased the illustration from me to use on their own energy scandal cover. [2001]

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Left: Sopranos creator David Chase gets his throat cut, typographically. [2001]
Right: One of my all-time favorite Weekly covers, art created by Raymond Pettibon. [2001]

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Left: Ted Soqui shot Shaq and Mark Madsen hamming it up. [2001]
Right: An entire issue dedicated to illegal substances. Then-associate art director Dana Collins and I treated the art assignments more like curating an exhibit, resulting in some fantastic visuals. Robbie Conal illustrated the cover. [2001]

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Left: Ted Soqui covers a metal festival. [2001]
Right: I got to edit Max Gerber‘s photo essay and interviews about children with heart defects. Six years later, we’re about to go to press with a hard-bound book of the same subject. [2001]

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Dan Clowes helped me adapt these panels from Ghostworld for our restaurant issue about diner food. Left is the outside cover, and the right is the cover of the pullout.
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Left: A cover I wish I’d never had to design. September 11, 2001 was a Tuesday. We had to go to press that day for our paper that hit the streets on Thursday morning. Much of that week’s issue had to be shelved, including the cover. I wanted to find an image that expressed loss as opposed to anger, not because the anger was wrong, but because by the time our issue came out on Thursday, I thought some of that immediate reaction would have dissipated. Turns out we had enough anger for about half a decade, but I still like this solution. I found the photo and tracked down the photographer that day. He was an amateur photographer who lived across the river from the towers. He’d taken a series of shots out of his window of the skyline. This one was perfect for what I needed. Two minutes in Photoshop and done. I think I also added the cover line before presenting it to the Editor.
A funny note: I received a lot of kind words from readers and staff on that cover. We were all looking for symbols of grief or comfort. But one guy left me a phone message on Thursday morning that made me laugh for the first time in two days. In a voice that was a dead ringer for Jeff Spicoli he said something like: “Hey man, I wanted to tell you how much I really dig the cover. The photo is awesome. But I wanted to tell you that I think I caught a mistake. The towers are missing in the city, but, like, the reflection is still there in the water, and… oh, wait… oh… whoa. I get it. Oh, man. Whoa… Great cover, man.” [2001]
Right: Tony Millionaire illustrates our year-end film issue. I realize this is an odd juxtaposition, or not… [2001]

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Left: The top-10 list issue. It seems like year-end fluff, but these issues were a blast to work on. I had a hell of a time finding 10 birds on a wire, so I cheated. Photoshop, to art directors, is like heroin-coated crack with boobies. I apologize for writing “boobies” but it’s the way I feel. Now this site will show up on porn searches. I apologize for writing “porn”… [2001]
Right: Another fantastic comic issue! Artwork by style-chameleon genius Bob Sikoryak. [2002]

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Left: Max Gerber set up a seamless and lights outside of Amoeba on Sunset and shot record collectors rounded up by his assistant as they came out of the store. Yeah, I know that’s Avedon’s shtick, but we did it at Amoeba. [2002]
Right: Quick Xerox graphic for our music issue. [2002]

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Left: Yes, I know I’m ripping off Tadanori Yokoo. Yes, I know it’s not nearly as good. [2002]
Right: Richard Meltzer does his zombie impression, or makes the universal symbol for breasts. [2002]

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Front cover and supplement cover for a Warhol issue coinciding with a show that came to L.A. The photos were shot by Jim McHugh, originally for TV Guide, I think. [2002]

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Left: Professional/amateur filmmaker issue. I recycled the graphic from a poster I comped way back in college. Sometimes it pays to be a packrat… a lazy, recycling packrat. [2002]
Right: Feature on the music film 24 Hour Party People. Neville Brody-era inspiration. My favorite part about the design of this package was in the layout: Newsprint is annoyingly porous, so to have fun with the pullquotes for this feature titled “Ghosts of Madchester,” I mirrored them on the back of the page so they’d show up faintly, but right-reading in the layouts. It actually worked better than I’d expected, and I’m sure I’ll recycle the idea someday. [2002]

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Left: I love the smell of newsprint in the morning.
Right: My drawing of Robo-Gray, former California governor.

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Left: Photographer Larry Hirshowitz had fun with several film producers for this cover package. I can’t remember his name, but I think our cover subject was one of the producers of American Psycho. [2002]
Right: Comic legend Spain (He’d be embarrassed if you called him a legend to his face.) created this narrative cover for a story about a Central American drug cartel. [2002]

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Left: Another comic issue. This cover was illustrated by Chester Brown. This was my last comics issue as art director. I did another in 2004 as a freelancer with a cover created by Jordan Crane… wish I could find a JPEG of that. But better than a low-res web graphic is the actual issue. And as I mentioned further up the page, I have numerous copies squirreled away. So if you’re a fan, or just curious, send me some dough for postage and I’ll send you a copy. I have the Chester Brown issue, too. [2003]
Right: I think this was my last cover as an L.A. Weekly staff member. The cover package was about body image. Besides directing the cover and layouts, I got to interview cover artist Laura Aquilar, an amazing photographer and gracious person. I can’t find a homepage for Aguilar, but here’s a link to the story. [2003]

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—Bill Smith

These are in no particular order. Hopefully I’ll have some new ones to add soon. Posters are one of the few design jobs that I’ll actually do for below my normal rate. If the subject is really cool, I might even do one for nothing… probably not, but maybe.

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This is a poster that I did for my friend Jimmy Ansourian. He’s a drummer who used to be with Grift and is now with 20 Miles which is the project of John Spencer Blues Explosion guitarist Judah Bauer, none of which is terribly important, but if you get a chance, go hear them…

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I’ve had the genuine pleasure of working for years with artist and political gadfly Robbie Conal. Here’s one of our creations featuring the dream team of John Ashcroft, Tom Ridge and George Dubya.

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This is an in-house poster that I made to announce a special issue of L.A. Weekly.

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Here is the poster that almost made it to press for the ill-fated year of Lollapalooza.

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Another collaboration with Robbie Conal. I can see how this poster might offend some people. The tagline I stole from the famous old RCA slogan. I turned the Gramophone into a dunce cap. This small poster ran in L.A. Weekly.
For the record, I don’t hate Colin Powell. But he did go against his own judgment and experience to become the pitch man for a war that he knew was both foolish and wrong… sorry, this isn’t a political blog…
I really like yellow.

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For four years, I did pro bono work for the North Carolina chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. I did all of the print materials for their MS 150 bikeathon, called Break Loose to the Neuse (the Neuse is a river in NC.)

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Here are a couple of small-run posters I did for Ivanhoe Elementary in Silver Lake. They hold a silent auction with lots of very cool stuff each year as a fund-raiser. If I’m not mistaken, the model in the poster on the left is my friend Pandora pressed against a photocopier. The kids really appreciated her sacrifice.

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Here’s a silly one from Robbie Conal. The actual poster is gigantic. The concept of a mischievous bunny dropping turd bombs on Dick Cheney’s head is totally Robbie’s. The target circles were my reference to Bugs Bunny’s WB rabbit hole, with deadeye Dick playing Elmer Fudd.

If anyone’s interested, here’s an incomplete list of posters that I’ve designed for Robbie:
» Emission Accomplished (2-sided, “Coming” & “Going”)
» Patriot Inaction
» Read My Apocalips
» Tastes Like Chicken + The Other White Meat

I didn’t do the final design on these two, but I art directed the type and I like them enough to take a little bit of credit…

Okay, I’m tired of linking these. Just go to Robbie’s site and browse around, you’ll have fun probably… unless you’re a fan of the Bush administration.

Speaking of posters and the Bush administration, here’s a short review I wrote for L.A. Weekly that discusses the same.

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—Bill Smith

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THE SOURCE

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This CD doesn’t have a jewel case because it was made to go into a sleeve bound into a book – The Source – that I designed. I grabbed the raw graphic from an EP by Ya Ho Wa 13, which is a rock group in said book, and edited to read correctly and fit on the CD face.

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CARL SIGMAN – Songs

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Front
This is a 3-disc set that I created for MajorSongs, which was the label responsible for all of the recordings of the late Carl Sigman. I sampled all of the graphics for the package and discs from old sheet music that I borrowed from the president of MajorSongs, Mike Sigman.

Back

Flip open.

The third panel from the left is the bound-in booklet.

Each disc is a different era from Sigman’s prodigious catalog. The graphics on the discs and in the see-through tray backs correspond to the three periods.

Booklet

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L.A. WEEKLY – Sampler Vol.2

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Front
A music sampler of Los Angeles bands produced by L.A. Weekly.

I used the look of a chocolate sampler guide page for the track listing.

When I shot these candies, I had to go through a couple of boxes. It was fun at first, but I honestly got a bad stomach ache from making the “after” images.

Tray card

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JIMMIE MADDIN – L.A. History Book

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Front
Jimmie Maddin was a legendary Hollywood jazz and blues saxophonist. I got to design this collection for Maddin through our mutual friend, writer and musician John Payne.

Back
Our budget was nil and art minimal, but we stretched Maddin’s old photos to fill the package.

Booklet

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KENT CLARK – Crimebook 1

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Front
Noise artist Kent Clark’s self-produced CD. I hope noise is the correct genre, I’m not too up on this new stuff. It sure as hell wasn’t bluegrass…

Back

Booklet

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VENICE MAKI – Which Way Is Out?

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Front
My endless hallway concept…

Back

This was the first disc produced by indie label WRC. They wanted a house template for discs and cases. (I had created their corporate identity earlier that year.)

Booklet

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L.A. WEEKLY – Found Music

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Front
I liked the idea of using tin musical toys to illustrate this sampler which was filled with DIY indie tracks. I named the collection Found Music to bring it all home. L.A. Weekly‘s marketing department gave away kazoos that year to coincide with the disc and annual music festival.

Tray card

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L.A. WEEKLY – Music Musica Musique Ongaku

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Front
I shot the art for this collection with a Holga, and processed the film and scans in a way that made the images a little older and crappier looking. Not really sure what I was going for here… hot, dirty, urban. Made sense at the time. It was summer, sue me.

Back

The camera’s light leaks and the abrupt end of the negatives broke up the digipak’s panels.

Booklet
The booklet was illustrated with more city shots done with a Polaroid i-Zone mini camera.

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—Bill Smith

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This is a logo that I made in 2009 as part of the identity of Electric Literature, a quarterly literary journal out of NYC. These guys are doing some great work keeping lit alive in every imaginable format. I also design the journals and site for them.

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Here’s a cover I designed for L.A. CityBeat around the end of 2006. More CityBeat stuff below.

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This is one of several brochures I created for the National MS Society, North Carolina Chapter. I think it was on an A3 sheet, the other side is a poster for the event, the MS 150.

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An ad designed for the Humanitarian Law Project to benefit victims of Hurricane Katrina.

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I got to create the prototype and templates for the launch of L.A. CityBeat and ValleyBeat. I’ve done several jobs like this, including OC Weekly, San Diego CityBeat, Studio City Sun (below) and Mean magazine, but L.A. CityBeat has to be one of my favorites. I think I described the aesthetic when we were pitching it as letterpress meets American thrift store. Here are some of the original pages from the printed prototype and editorial templates.

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The most rewarding part of creating the look of a publication is to see how the art directors and designers exploit it. CityBeat’s former art director, Dana Collins – with whom I worked closely to develop the template – did an incredible job bringing it to life each week. And the new art director, Matt Ansoorian, is creating some amazing covers and pages as well.

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I’ve done dozens of invites in the past, mostly for L.A. Weekly. Here’s one for a swing dance party at The Derby in Hollywood.

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Here’s another invite for a literary event. I like this one because there was very little waste. The invite folds around the RSVP card which was made from the cutout corner. Not rocket science, but we usually produced these in less than a couple hours.

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Here’s a printed prototype for a magazine that never made it into production. It was a glossy saddle-bound music magazine being developed by Village Voice Media in Los Angeles.

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I got to design a chocolate bar! It was really just a Hershey bar that a marketing company printed custom wrappers for. We gave out thousands during music events hosted by the newspaper. I named it too!

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I’ve done a few video projects. A title sequence, a low-budget commercial… all very bad, I’m not being modest here. But this is one I really liked. It ran for a month on the jumbo video screen on Sunset in West Hollywood. It was advertising a summer issue of L.A. Weekly. I asked friends and colleagues for old home videos of vacations etc… most came in as VHS transfer of 8 and 16mm film. I edited the best footage together and created three separate clips that would loop with the tagline “Remember Summer?” followed by the Weekly logo. The goal was to insert nostalgic, idyllic imagery into one of the busier and more style-conscious blocks in Hollywood. There’s a lot of bad traffic there, it worked great.

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Another logo/prototype designed for the launch of Studio City Sun.

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After The Village Voice went on its alt-weekly buying spree, it was put on the market by owner, flea collar magnate Leonard Stern. A group of shadowy Dutch investors bought the papers and Village Voice Media was born. I got to create the first corporate identity for VVM.

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Another corporate ID! This one for Southern California hydroponics supplier, BetterGrow Hydro.

Different applications of the logo.

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Letterhead and screen cap of the first web site. They quickly outgrew this site and the code and design was updated by Scott Ford at Twerp.

This is not very exciting, but it’s an example of a color guide for the ID.

Outside of the first store after changing colors, etc…

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A logo named “Besty.”

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Old logo for a restaurant guide.

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Logo for a dating service.

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Logo for Jon Wheat Worldwide. The logo – playing with the owner’s name – is a stylized head of wheat. I know it looks a tiny bit like the old Adidas logo, but I was actually thinking of stylized art nouveau and deco plants. Also was thinking a little bit about Frank Lloyd Wright’s hollyhocks, though I know it looks nothing like that.

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—Bill Smith

A shot of the Hollywood subway station which ran in L.A. Weekly.
It was also chosen for American Photography 17.

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Superman on Hollywood and Highland.

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I did an interview with comic artiste Tony Millionaire, and also shot him in his studio.
We’d killed a six-pack at this point and I’m glad the shots are in focus.

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I shot these pub shots for Melanie and Austin, two great musicians from Nashville.

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The Iliad Bookshop in North Hollywood. Shot for L.A. CityBeat.
I know they’re not that interesting, but The Iliad is a really great bookstore. I ended up spending more money on books than I made from the assignment that day.

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A really cool old tree in South Pasadena that I photographed for L.A. Weekly.

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These are The Willowz. A great punk — or is it post-punk? — band.
CityBeat gave me the original assignment, but the group had a lot of press that year and my shots ended up running in L.A. Times and Mean magazine, too.
I think the lineup has changed since I shot them, but at the time, they were: Alex, Richie, Jessica and Dan.

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This is Jimmy Au. A tailor who specializes in making men 5’8″ and under look quite stylish.
Since I shot this, Au has moved his shop from the Glendale Galleria to Beverly Hills. Quite stylish indeed.

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This is Jon Wheat, an independent music and events producer. I shot this for a special issue of L.A. Weekly using a Lomo Action Sampler. The Action Sampler shoots four sequential frames onto a 35mm negative. I fudged a little by adding two more frames from the next sequence to make a vertical that could fill an entire page. All of the gear on the Lomo site is great. If you’re gonna buy some, though, shop around, you can get the toy cameras cheaper elsewhere.
Speaking of toy cameras, here’s an outtake from the same shoot done with a Holga:

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Former Santa Monica city council candidate Jerry Rubin, shot for CityBeat. Rubin is noted for petitioning to change his name to “Jerry Peace Activist Rubin” in order to avoid confusion with Jerry Rubin of Chicago Seven fame.

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Actor Brian Nahas. Brian’s a really nice guy, that’s just his tough look.

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—Bill Smith

For Mean magazine.

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I mostly illustrate for publications that I’m art directing. Not always, but usually.
If you’re looking for a fantastic illustrator, feel free to email me. I know several and would be glad to put you in touch. I enjoy illustrating, though, so if you see anything here you like, drop a line.

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Director Chris Nolan for Mean.
Kinda hard to see the fine-line stuff on the web. This illustration relied heavily on the publicity photo I used as source, but I like it just the same.

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Here are a couple black & white spots I did for L.A. CityBeat.

For a news story about the nuclear lovefest between the U.S. and DPRK, aka North Korea.

This was the first submission for that same story, but was killed because I made Kim Jong Il look too much like a cartoon stereotype of an Asian guy, which is kind of ironic, because Kim Jong Il actually DOES look like a cartoon stereotype of an Asian guy. Oh well. I saw their point, and liked the new spot better anyway.

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Another spot for L.A. CityBeat. The subject was a news story about a money/oil scandal between California and Texas.

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A quick cut-and-paste for CityBeat. The topic was nightlife.

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Here are some old ones from when I art directed L.A. Weekly.

A cover illustration for a story titled “My Life in Porn”.

The subject of this illustration is a bit too complex to summarize here. This spot accompanied a book review, and it worked perfectly with the plot. You’ll just have to take my word for it.

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This is a cover that I created for the issue of L.A. Weekly that ran immediately after 9/11. I killed it in favor of a photo manipulation which you can see in the L.A. Weekly section.

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Some old Photoshop compositions done for L.A. Weekly.

Two of many composite covers I created for Best of L.A. issues. The subjects on the left were all L.A. Weekly staff members. The subjects on the right are Bob Odinkirk and David Cross.
I’m pretty sure Kathleen Clark photographed the elements for both of these covers.

I did a bunch of these for an article on the fear of earthquakes. The model is my friend Jacques Olivier who patiently let us glue the tiny props to his head. The cracks were created by photographing torn clay and superimposing the shading onto Jacques head in Photoshop. The color image was used as the cover of that issue. Photography by Virginia Lee Hunter.

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Here’s a cut-and-paste that was a quick solution for a political cover back in the ’80s.
You can view more Weekly covers that I designed/art directed here.

—Bill Smith

I’ve written for a handful of publications. Here’s a link to an old website I did with some of my samples: http://designsimple.com/etcetera/

LA Weekly has a database that usually works where you can search by author. Give it a try.

Also, I’ll update this page soon to include some more recently published stories.

—Bill Smith