When we drew up the inaugural wish list of speakers for OFFSET I knew the first person I wanted to invite was Dave McKean. So it was a great thrill and honour when he said ‘YES’. We have uploaded the video of his presentation which is available for your enjoyment. So…enjoy.

Dave McKean has illustrated many award winning comics and books, including The Big Fat Duck Cookbook (Heston Blumenthal), What’s Welsh For Zen (John Cale), Varjak Paw (SF Said), The Savage (David Almond), Arkham Asylum (Grant Morrison), The Homecoming (Ray Bradbury), Wizard and Glass (Stephen King), The Graveyard Book, Wolves in the Walls, Coraline, Mr. Punch, Signal to Noise and Crazy Hair (all by Neil Gaiman). He also created the incredible covers for the entire award winning Sandman comic series.

Oliver Jeffers makes art. From figurative painting and installation to  illustration and picture-book making, his work has been exhibited and  published in New York, Dublin, London, Sydney, Washington DC, Belfast  and elsewhere. His picture books, including Lost and Found, The Incredible Book Eating  Boy, and most recently, The Great Paper Caper. Oliver was brought up in  Northern Ireland and now lives and works in Brooklyn (hence the mustache!).

Enjoy this talk from OFFSET last year and don’t miss out this year by getting your ticket now!

Mail Me Art: Medium Without a Message is the follow-up to the successful 2008 Mail Me Art: Going Postal. With over 700 new pieces of mail art ‘Medium Without a Message’ is an amazing collection of envelopes and boxes from around the world decorated by some of today’s most talented illustrators and artists. What makes the work special is that every single piece of art was sent through the postal system, exposed and on view as regular mail. At the end of this month all of the work will be on display at the London Mail Me Art exhibition.

From Darren:
How can you help support the project and become part of it? Well… The running costs for the project are currently at around £6000($9120). We’re hoping to recoup most of that by selling the new book and we’re also hoping to make the artists lots of money by selling their work at the exhibition! We’ve just finished the book and we got as many of the mail artists into the book as possible in some way or another! So please help us recoup some of the costs by making a pledge and supporting the project! In return for a pledge we’re sending people copies of the new book. We’ve also got some really cool artwork up for grabs from the likes of Dan May & Jon Burgerman! Please check out the site for more details – http://mailmeart.com/going-postal/pledge/

Summer Edition, the Artists’ Book, Comic and Zine Fair, is returning for 2010 on Saturday 24th July ! Once again, a unique mix of artists book practitioners, independent comic artists and zine-makers from all over Ireland and the UK will be coming to Filmbase, Temple Bar, in the heart of Dublin city to celebrate and showcase their work to the public. Entry is free to the public.

Exhibitor space at the event is open to anyone involved in creating and/or publishing artists books, comics or zines.  You can book table space at this years event here.

Ref: scamp

Here in Europe we get homogenised posters telling us about the latest outings of our favourite and not so hot musical acts. In the States it’s a much different story with a scene growing up around bespoke original gig posters crafted by some of the leading lights including Aesthetic Apparatus, Jason Munn @ The Small Stakes, Daniel Danger, Jay Ryan and basically any artist worth their salt. The scene is so big that they even have special events to buy, sell, trade and celebrate the subculture, the most recognised of which is Flatstock. It’s great then to see there’s a book upcoming, Rock Paper Show, which documents Flatstock, the scene and those making it so vibrant. Available in a standard edition and very special edition boxset with 20 original hand-printed miniprints this is an affordable of getting a sense of the creativity without the long haul to the States.

Children’s Book Ireland have announced details of their CBI Conference :Nurturing the Seed: Prospects and Possibilities for Children’s Books.

Taking place in The National Gallery on May 15th-16th it features a presentation by Spanish Illustrator Elena Odriozola (image above), current UK Children’s Laureate Anthony Browne (image below) as well as Marcus Sedgwick, Nikki Gamble, Sarah Rees Brennan, Jane Mitchell, Natasha Mac a’Bháird, Kieran Mark Crowley, Peter Prendergast, Michael Rosen, Siobhán Parkinson, Tadhg Mac Dhonnagáin and Ireland’s first Children’s Laureate.

For more details and how to purchase tickets visit the CBI website.

Marian Bantjes is a designer and incredibly creative typographer. She has spent the past 15 months working on a book titled I Wonder, and it is being published by Thames & Hudson in the UK in October, and the US imprint by Monacelli is due out September 28, 2010. It was conceived, written, designed and illustrated throughout by her (with a foreword by Stefan Sagmeister), and she says “it is not a monograph.” Go here for a preview and here to pre-order.

The ever informative and enlightening Escape From Illustration Island recently interviewed Stephen Heller. Heller is the former Art Director of NY Times Book Review and author of many, many books on illustration. For a list of his books check out this blog post on EFII and go download the interview podcast (and their back catalog while you are at it.)

The always amazing BLAB! celebrates its 24th anniversary with a retrospective exhibition at the Society of Illustrators gallery in New York. It opened yesterday and runs until May 1st 2010 and has featured work by Chris Ware, Gary Baseman, Sue Coe, Camille Rose Garcia, The Clayton Brothers, Peter Hoey and Maria Hoey, Geoffrey Grahn, Steven Guarnaccia, Jonathon Rosen, Owen Smith, SHAG!, Joe Sorren, Ron English, and Mark Ryden, among others.

Happy Birthday and congrats to editor Monte Beauchamp and sustaining such a high level of content over the years.

Following on from the current (and slightly disappointing) big screen ‘re-imagining’ of Alice in Wonderland, comes a new addition to the canon of adaptations. Only in the case of the ever amazing Camille Rose Garcia’s ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND, it hits all the right notes. The book itself is available from Amazon here and here is a video introduction by the artist on the project.