While putting together this year’s Inspiration Issue, we were faced with two unique and enviable challenges. First, how could we follow up last year’s cover, created by veteran designer Chip Kidd? And second, how could we take advantage of the addition of color—ah, soul-refreshing color—to forty of our interior pages? The answer to both questions lay in the absolutely stunning work of Jim Tierney, an illustrator and designer who, after graduating from Philadelphia’s University of the Arts last year, was quickly hired as a junior designer at Penguin. A day after he finalized the last of his illustrations for this issue, Tierney spoke about the inspiration behind his work.
Tell me about your thinking behind the illustration on the
cover.
I usually have the
toughest time with assignments that are really open and not specific, so when I
got the prompt to do something having to do with inspiration it took me a
little while to kind of get rolling with that…I started thinking about, obviously,
myself—which is all I can really think about in terms of this—What
inspires me? So I came up with a few initial ideas about where I get my
inspiration from, thinking that it might be universal.… And
the cover, I think, works on a couple of different levels. First of all, the
stars and astronomy has inspired people forever. At the beginning people had no
idea what was going on and they made up fabulous stories and Greek myths and
all of this originated in nothing but people drawing lines to connect stars.
And personally I find that amazing…It’s still inspiring and it’s still amazing
now that we know what stars are, and it’s even more fabulous than the myths
that we made up about them. And also it reminds me of being at home, because I
grew up on a farm where you can just look out at the stars for hours over the
cornfields and whatnot. So that really resonated with me.
Was this a unique job for you or did it follow the usual course?
It was unique, because
usually I’ll get a magazine assignment and they have a box for me to fill in,
and they say, “Make a complete image to go in the box—it has to do with
this article.” And it’s usually something specific. But for this, all the ideas
were pretty broad. I had a vague theme to work with, and I didn’t have just one
box to work in. The art would flow around the type, I could do my own titles,
there was a lot of freedom, and I really had a lot of fun with it—more
than I would with something that was more constrictive.
How integral is the
written word, the text, to what you’re doing?
My work is supposed to be
supplemental to the main work, which is the text. And so I have to have a lot
of respect for it. I have to serve the content rather than just do my own thing
and say, “This is my vision, this is my thing.” It takes a lot of the ego out
of it, which might make it easier to do revisions, because I’m not…my ego is
gone. I’m now serving the client. But it’s fun to do illustrations for publications,
because it involves a lot of research—every week I’m doing something
different. This week I’ll do a book on the role of communism; next week I’ll do
a magazine article on the newest technology of nanocomputers, or something like
that. And I love to read, so I guess it’s a convenient way to tie my interests
together.
What do you read for pleasure?
Right now I’m interested
in the work of Calvino and Borges—and this new author whose book I just
read, Terrence Holt. He’s sort of in the same genre as they are. And I love
science books for some reason, so I love reading things by Steven Pinker and
Carl Sagan.
Is there an author whose books you’ve always wanted to
illustrate?
That’s a good question
because it’s not the same as asking who my favorite author is. I would love to
illustrate Calvino’s books. He has a really interesting way of being
existential and still folksy and absurd and surreal, which I think is what my
work comes across as.
Kevin Larimer is the editor of Poets & Writers Magazine.
