The first version of Super Punch was pages torn out of National Geographic and Sports Illustrated and taped to my bedroom wall. Soon, I graduated to collecting baseball cards. Like everyone else my age, I was excited to acquire Chris Sabo and Gregg Jeffries rookie cards. But what I really liked was cards with funny or striking imagery - - the oddities. Below are a few I still have.
Eventually, I started creating my own art books, filling journals with magazine and newspaper clippings. I read everything from Road & Track to EGM to Oprah to Maxim - - anything people were willing to part with. My favorite days of the year were when ID's and Print's year-end design reviews came out.
Below are a few pages from my journals, chosen simply because those were the pages the books would stay open to while I snapped photos:
Pretty much just my blog in book form, right?
I started writing Super Punch shortly after my second son was born, partly for fun, partly in the hopes of making money, and mostly because it was one of the few things I could do in my spare time. Back then, my free time was when my boys were napping, or falling asleep. I couldn't watch television, because the noise would have woken them in the next room (and I don't really like television, anyway). And I couldn't play video games or read, because those activities require periods of unbroken concentration, and it's tough to concentrate when every ten minutes someone is crying or wants to use the bathroom or both.
So, I websurfed and blogged - - something I could do in extremely short bits of time. Check out how short my posts used to be. As my boys have gotten older, I increasingly enjoy larger chunks of free time (although most of my posts are still drafted at breakneck speed). And I've tried to use that time to experiment more with my site, by hosting art contests, writing the Super Punch interview, and organizing a very special project that I'll announce in my next post.
So, thanks for sharing my hobby. And an extra thanks to anyone who has ever clicked on an ad or bought something through an affiliate link.
I think you're going to enjoy the project I'm about to announce.
