Above is a quick comic I did for N+1′s #ows gazette, Occupy! It’s edited by my friend Astra, and she asked me to do a comic, about pretty much anything. Life here in New York as the Occupy madness gets bigger and badder is surreal; suddenly, idealistic rhetoric is plastered on telephones and on the front of tabloids. It’s a heady time, and I tried to reflect that.

You can see a bigger one here.

My most recent #OWS poster, completed on Black Friday. I found that somehow appropriate.

Download the full here.

]]> http://joealterio.com/2011/11/second-ows-poster/feed/ 0 http://joealterio.com/2011/08/1009/ http://joealterio.com/2011/08/1009/#comments Thu, 04 Aug 2011 16:22:08 +0000 Joe http://joealterio.com/?p=1009

I’m really pleased to officially release the final art for the EFF teeshirt I’ve been working on for their DEFCON offering this year. Check out the glow in the dark action here. From their press release:

Say hello to EFF’s second, limited-edition, DEF CON membership t-shirt! Only 340 premium-level donors who attend this year’s DEF CON 19 in Las Vegas will be able to get these new “ENCRYPTION SAVES” shirts, specially designed by Joe Alterio of the creative charity Robots & Monsters.

The folks down at EFF are not only templars for the righteous in my opinion, but they’re really, really nice folks, to boot. I’m so happy I got to do this for them. If you’re at DEFCON, pick up the teeshirt; and if you’re not, watch this space, I’ll be auctioning a few teeshirts from this site, get ‘em while they’re very hot!

UPDATE! Boinged! And Laughing Squid called me a ‘charity demigod’. Oh, you!

I had the great fortune of being interviewed by Benjamen Walker for his WFMU show, “Too Much Information”, about my Cablegate Comix project at HiLoBrow. Benjamen is an incredible interviewer and mind, and I was really honored to be invited on. I’m mostly on point, though I do say “Chechnya” when I mean “Dagestan”. Drat.

My part starts at 13:40, but the whole show is terrific: I share the sir with the likes of Daniel Ellsburg, Evgeny Morozov, and others. Wow!

Listen here!

Click the poster for full size options via Flickr.

Back in November 2009, I was contacted by a friend who wanted to know if I was interested in helping create a few posters for the Institute of Physics in the UK. The problem – one that the US shares – was that the hard sciences in general and physics in particular were seeing declining interest in the population of school children. Part of the problem, it was postulated, was that UK kids were not exposed to the interesting side of what physics is at a young enough age; by the time physics becomes a school course option, most kids have already relegated physics to the ‘boring’ category, and go on to pursue their degree in macrame interpretive dance. But even as an artist, I can say, this is not so! Physics is without a doubt one of the most far-thinking, philosophical fields out there; I’ve been a dilettante about the subject in general for years, and while I can’t claim to speak about it with anything approaching coherence, the fact that I could do anything for The Cause made me kinda pumped, something akin to what the Ghost Army must have felt when landing in France. (Was that too arrogant?)

Click the poster for full size options via Flickr.

Additionally, I had the great fortune to be able to work with Rich Seymour for the initial conception part of the project, which was great fun, and was inspiring to say the least. Meeting someone who has made a career for themselves by brooking no infringement on their creative vision and ideas, and sticking to their guns, even when it meant losing a job – that’s a kind of hard-assery that you can’t buy, you can just learn by spending years figuring out you’re the smartest mother-effer in the room.

Click the poster for full size options via Flickr.

As per Rich’s idea, we waded into some of the more far-out printing processes, ending up with two photo-luminescent posters, and one printed with thermal inks, that reveal ink underneath when one applies heat, with your hand or a flame-thrower or whatever. The design implications, challenges, and opportunities brought about using their rather esoteric printing techniques were eye-opening for me, and terrific fun.

The posters will be placed in classrooms all across the UK. In a few months, the impressional young eyes of UK youth will all be transfixed by this weirdness, which I feel pretty good about. I’m still in talks with the IOP people, trying to convince them to set up a purchase option for these posters, because I think a lot of nerds might be into these, but we’ll see. Don’t forget to click through the posters to see them full-size, via Flickr options.

Robots + Monsters is open again, and we once again got Boinged! Thanks so much for all your love, BBers!

This is the ticket for the Election Night celebration hosted by the Obama campaign tonight. If nothing else,you gotta the guy for his design team. I mean, god DAMN that is beautiful.

The good people at io9 were kind enough to not only mention that Robots + Monsters has reopened, but they’ve also linked to some of my concept art for the possible upcoming R+M book. Totally cool. Thanks, geeks!

(Click to enlarge)

Above is a last minute poster I did for my friend Scott, in support of a benefit show for the Tia Foundation. Knowing that I’m a total sucker for good causes, he knew I’d jump at the chance, the rat bastard. I ended up only having a small amount of time to do it in, so the above is actually a bit of recycling on my part; a few different pieces from sketch books, brought together in Photoshop and then layed out in InDesign. I’m pleased with the result. Reduce, reuse, redesign, my brothers and sisters.

Thanks to Ken from GeekDad!