Another illustration for the New York Times, this one on the subject of “Invented Languages” of which, it turns out, only Esperanto and Klingon (!) are actually in use (on planet earth). My original piece referred to the name of “my” language - “Profilicon” - but this was wisely omitted (as was another “joke ending” I had sketched). In any event, here’s a pretty radical Klingon site I checked out for inspiration (the “Klingon Language Institute”), and here’s the NYT Book Review article itself (the second half is more entertaining than the first). Klingon appears to be quite a cynical (even brutal) toungue. For example, “Nugneh” - “Hello” - literally means “What do you want?”. Compare this to “Niyawen”, Cherokee for “Hello”, which means “Thank you for being.” JIYAJBE!*

*Klingon for “I don’t understand!”

Since I’ve made literally hundreds of real trailers, I guess it makes sense that they asked me to make a fake one. Actually, it wasn’t even a trailer, it was an illustration for an article in The New York Times Book Review. Click here to see it in its original context.

The article explores the booming world of literary web-promotion, which I have to admit, I didn’t know much about. Turns out, big money is spent on websites and trailers promoting books of all kinds. And despite the snarky tone of the illustration, props are indeed due to the peeps toiling in this booming meta-industry. It’s a worthy cause and, as the article mentions, much talent is to be found there.

Speaking of meta-industries, this is not my first intervention in the world of Book Review multi-media illustration. Below is another one from September accompanying a hilarious article by Jack Handey (of Saturday Night Live fame). I have referred to my illustration work before in this blog and I have hundreds more in my filing cabinet if you ever wanna see ‘em!