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Herewith the second part of our excerpt from the Highwater oral history. Bostonians, Go check out the show, opening tonight. We pick up with a discussion of the Highwater look and feel.

Highwater Style

Kurt Wolfgang: I felt like things were going kind of a different way, and Tom was really doing them right, not as a businessman, but as far as a publisher and as far as his idea of what a publisher’s job is, which I agree with about 99.999 percent. He put it in really basic terms to me a few years ago [at the Highwater reunion] in Scituate. And I didn’t agree with that statement when he first said it because it seemed too simplistic. He said, “A publisher’s job is to discover and expose and nurture talent.” To me, looking from a capitalist point of view, well, gee, then no one’s going to publish R. Crumb. But he said, “No, someone will always publish those guys. They’re not the good publishers.” To really find things and nurture things, I think Tom’s publishing philosophy probably had less to do with the actual books come out than with making things happen that make those books possible.

I think when a lot of people look at Highwater they think of crazy design and textured paper and rounded corners. That’s all they look at. These are people who probably wouldn’t like that kind of comics anyway. So when you throw all that stuff on I think that they think you’re trying to deceive them. But I think with Tom the beauty of it all has nothing to do with the design of those books, as I said it’s part of a whole, as amazing as it is. The things that him and Jordan did and bounced off each other. I think with those two together, I think that you’re really talking about Highwater. Jordan, at least from a design perspective, is a really big part of that. Him and Tom were bitchy old ladies and trying to prove each other wrong at all times. And wonderful things come out of that. (more…)

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Cover for Chip Kidd's The Art of Charles M. Schulz

Since the issue of Chip Kidd’s book design for The Art of Charles M. Schulz (as well as Kidd’s other books) came up in Tim’s earlier posting, I thought readers be interested in my review of that book, which ran in the National Post on Dec. 1, 2001. Re-reading it, I wish I had said even more about Kidd’s design, which really did shake up our familiar perception of Schulz and started the process whereby people started taking a closer look at the Schulz as a cartoonist.

Here is the review:

The Art of Charles M. Schulz is perhaps the most lavish tribute any cartoonist has ever received. Assembled by Chip Kidd, the most influential designer in contemporary publishing, the images in this thick book have been culled from a variety of sources, including Schulz’s high-school yearbook and his private notebooks.
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