Hugh MacLeod
Cartoons drawn on the back of business cards
I'm a cartoonist.
I sell limited-edition prints.
I wrote a book.
I'm CEO of Stormhoek USA, which markets South African wine in the States.
I also draw private commissions.
Prints |
Opening | Current |
|---|---|---|
Bluetrain |
$900 | |
We Need to Talk |
$650 | |
Portfolio #2 |
$300 | |
NY NY |
$275 |
November 20, 2009
[Backstory: About Hugh. E-mail Hugh. Twitter. Limited Edition Prints. Cartoon Archive. Newsletter. Book. Interview. Essential Reading: “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About ‘Cube Grenades’ But Were Afraid To Ask.”]
[Backstory: About Hugh. E-mail Hugh. Twitter. Limited Edition Prints. Cartoon Archive. Newsletter. Book. Interview. Essential Reading: “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About ‘Cube Grenades’ But Were Afraid To Ask.”]
[Backstory: About Hugh. E-mail Hugh. Twitter. Limited Edition Prints. Cartoon Archive. Newsletter. Book. Interview. Essential Reading: “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About ‘Cube Grenades’ But Were Afraid To Ask.”]
[Backstory: About Hugh. E-mail Hugh. Twitter. Limited Edition Prints. Cartoon Archive. Newsletter. Book. Interview. Essential Reading: “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About ‘Cube Grenades’ But Were Afraid To Ask.”]
[Backstory: About Hugh. E-mail Hugh. Twitter. Limited Edition Prints. Cartoon Archive. Newsletter. Book. Interview. Essential Reading: “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About ‘Cube Grenades’ But Were Afraid To Ask.”]
[Backstory: About Hugh. E-mail Hugh. Twitter. Limited Edition Prints. Cartoon Archive. Newsletter. Book. Interview. Essential Reading: “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About ‘Cube Grenades’ But Were Afraid To Ask.”]
[Backstory: About Hugh. E-mail Hugh. Twitter. Limited Edition Prints. Cartoon Archive. Newsletter. Book. Interview. Essential Reading: “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About ‘Cube Grenades’ But Were Afraid To Ask.”]
[Backstory: About Hugh. E-mail Hugh. Twitter. Limited Edition Prints. Cartoon Archive. Newsletter. Book. Interview. Essential Reading: “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About ‘Cube Grenades’ But Were Afraid To Ask.”]
[Backstory: About Hugh. E-mail Hugh. Twitter. Limited Edition Prints. Cartoon Archive. Newsletter. Book. Interview. Essential Reading: “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About ‘Cube Grenades’ But Were Afraid To Ask.”]
[Backstory: About Hugh. E-mail Hugh. Twitter. Limited Edition Prints. Cartoon Archive. Newsletter. Book. Interview. Essential Reading: “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About ‘Cube Grenades’ But Were Afraid To Ask.”]
[Backstory: About Hugh. E-mail Hugh. Twitter. Limited Edition Prints. Cartoon Archive. Newsletter. Book. Interview. Essential Reading: “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About ‘Cube Grenades’ But Were Afraid To Ask.”]
[Backstory: About Hugh. E-mail Hugh. Twitter. Limited Edition Prints. Cartoon Archive. Newsletter. Book. Interview. Essential Reading: “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About ‘Cube Grenades’ But Were Afraid To Ask.”]
November 15, 2009
[Updated version of a 2007 cartoon.]
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November 14, 2009
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November 9, 2009
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[Backstory: About Hugh. E-mail Hugh. Twitter. Limited Edition Prints. Cartoon Archive. Newsletter. Book. Interview. Essential Reading: “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About ‘Cube Grenades’ But Were Afraid To Ask.”]
November 8, 2009
I drew this cartoon this morning, while thinking about a conversation I had a couple of years ago:
I was on the phone to an old friend of mine, a guy in his late forties, who was born and bred in Michigan, and is living there now. He was telling me about his uncle, who, about four decades ago, got his highschool sweetheart pregnant. So instead of going off to college, he found himself with a new wife, a child on the way, and an assembly-line job at General Motors. But even though this situation clipped his wings considerably, he still ended up having a nice life in the end, with a home, a big yard, two cars, a steady paycheck, weekends fishing or hunting deer, and vacations in Hawaii every year or so. “The days where a blue collar guy like my uncle could have a nice life without doing much,” my friend said, “those days are gone. Gone forever.”
And in the back of my mind, I’m thinking the same is starting to happen to white collar guys more and more, as well. But it’s not quite out in the open yet. Society’s not quite ready to have that conversation.
I also heard a statistic a couple of weeks ago that there are at least thirty million children in China currently taking piano lessons. Thirty. Million.
We live in interesting times…
[Update: ]“Thousandists”: My long-time Spanish blog buddy, Nia left an interesting comment below:
That conversation about white-collar jobs is four years old in Spain.
This is the short version: The people who were in their 20-30s in the 1970s saw that a University degree made a big difference in your job and salary. They made their kids (anyone born 1970 – 1985) study, and that young generation believed for a while that we could do the same trick as our parents. Get a degree. The job will follow.
We now have a word for people of my generation with a handful of degrees: mileuristas. Thousandists. As in, someone who makes around 1,000 euros a month. There’s so many of us, no one’s willing to pay us more than a (barely) living wage.
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November 7, 2009
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November 6, 2009
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November 5, 2009
I drew this one in early 1998, during my first months of living in Manhattan.
I liked all those intense, late-night random conversations with all sorts of equally random Manhattan people– especially at first– but of course, after a while they all start to sound the same.
This is the kind of drawing one does sitting on a New York barstool, when one is not liking one’s day job nearly well enough. That was my situation at the time, anyway.
If today I met my younger self from back then, I’d say to him, “You’re just paying your dues, Kiddo. Frickin’ get over yourself…”
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[Cartoon inspired by my friend, Mark Earls aka @herdmeister…]
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November 4, 2009
Like I said in IGNORE EVERYBODY, “When your dream become reality, they are no longer your dreams.” This drawing is all about that…
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November 2, 2009
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November 1, 2009
[“Untitled 091101″. Ink on business card. Drawn earlier today.]
It’s been an interesting couple of weeks at gapingvoid Central. Sometime during September, I started drawing in earnest again, back in my original, no-frills ink on “Back of Business Cards” format. We’re talking 2 – 3 hundred of them in the last month.
I felt the need to get back to my roots– back to something simpler, back in touch with the “Utterly Basic” sensibility I had when I was living in New York– no other reason.
Plan to be seeing more of these efforts posted online soon. Very exciting!
I’m just so happy right now. I feel new again. Seriously.
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October 26, 2009
[Update:] Afterthought by Mark Earls:
But the important thing — and the really revolutionary stuff at play here — is that this kind of (Internet) technology destroys many of the cultural, economic and politic brakes on our fundamentally social nature.
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October 18, 2009
There’s been plenty of art made on the subject of business and capitalism, as this recent article in The Economist will attest.
Though as I was drawing this catoon earlier this morning I got thinking, the subject of The Entrepreneur? Far less coverage.
That might have to change. I might have to be the one to change it. Just sayin’…
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October 4, 2009
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[Backstory: About Hugh. E-mail Hugh. Work with Hugh. Twitter. Cartoon Archive. Newsletter. Book. Interview One. Interview Two. EVIL PLANS. Limited Edition Prints. Essential Reading: “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About ‘Cube Grenades’ But Were Afraid To Ask.”]
September 18, 2009
Backstory: About Hugh. E-mail Hugh. Twitter. Newsletter. Book. Interview One. Interview Two. EVIL PLANS. Limited Edition Prints. Private Commissions. Cube Grenades.]
I sent the above cartoon in high-rez format to everybody who subscribes to my CDF Newsletter. So they can put it on their desktop, print it out as a “Cube Grenade” etc. etc.
I had this idea of making certain high-rez cartoons “CDF-only”. A way of me saying “Thanks” for their support etc.
I’m not really publishing new high-rez cartoons on the blog these day. For now, you’ll need to sign up to the newsletter for that. Though, who knows, I may change my mind back again. It’s all a work in progress…
[Backstory: About Hugh. E-mail Hugh. Twitter. Newsletter. Book. Interview One. Interview Two. EVIL PLANS. Limited Edition Prints. Private Commissions. Cube Grenades.]
August 21, 2009
[“Advertising Moleskine”. 5“x7”. Framed. Click on image to enlarge etc.]
[Unframed. Click on image to enlarge etc.]
Just shipped this off in the mail today– a commissioned, framed Moleskine drawing.
Dave Whittle, an advertising executive down in Australia, commissioned me to draw him a Moleskine, based on an old cartoon print-out of mine, that he had hanging on his office wall.
A Cube Grenade. Exactly.
I sold my first Moleskine to a collector in Paris. This one is going to somebody in the South Pacific. I love the way the Internet gives relatively small operations like my own a global reach. Thanks, Dave!.
[gapingvoid commissions…] [More Moleskines for sale on the gallery page here.]
August 18, 2009
[When I was in New York last year, I drew the above cartoon for my lovely friend, Kate. She kindly just sent me the photo. Thanks, Kate! P.S. Yes, if you knew Kate personally, then you’d know how well this cartoon applies to her. Rock on.]
August 16, 2009
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August 12, 2009
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August 5, 2009
[A print idea for #evilplans. Click on image to enlarge etc.]
EUREKA! I had my EVIL PLANS road trip idea, but it was lacking the social object it needed to really work.
Sure, driving around Texas with a video camera and an idea about “Dream Big” was all very well, but it needed something to work as a totem for the Stormhoek wine.
IDEA: Hand-painted wine bottles.
I’ve drawn on Stormhoek wine bottles before, using painting sticks. They looked kinda cool. While I travel around Texas, I’ll be making them to hand out to people who went to all the trouble to support this enterprise. See image above to get a rough idea what it might look like…
This is exciting. The road trip idea is suddenly A LOT More interesting, all of a sudden. Rock on.
[Update: Just added this blog post to EVIL PLANS.]
August 3, 2009
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July 27, 2009
From the “Social Marker” blog post:
When I visit San Francisco I am always surprised how often the name of my friend, Robert Scoble comes up in random conversation, unprompted by myself. Why is that? Why is he so well known? Is his blog REALLY that good? Is he REALLY that smart and interesting?
Well, I could give a whole stack of reasons to explain why I think Robert’s success is well-deserved. But one major reason that his blog’s traffic is so high, and his name so well-known, is that his personal brand has somehow managed to become a Social Marker inside the Silicon Valley ecosystem. The same could also be said for Mike Arrington, Loic Le Meur or Mark Zuckerberg. Dropping their names into random conversations allows people to quickly and efficiently contextualize themselves.
[Thanks to @scobleizer and @arrington etc.]
[Backstory: About Hugh. Twitter. Newsletter. Book. Interview One. Interview Two. Limited Edition Prints. Private Commissions. Cube Grenades.“EVIL PLANS”.]
July 22, 2009
[Backstory: About Hugh. Twitter. Newsletter. Book. Interview One. Interview Two. Limited Edition Prints. Private Commissions. Cube Grenades.“EVIL PLANS”.]
[Backstory: About Hugh. Twitter. Newsletter. Book. Interview One. Interview Two. Limited Edition Prints. Private Commissions. Cube Grenades.“EVIL PLANS”.]
July 7, 2009
[Backstory: About Hugh. Twitter. Newsletter. Book. Interview One. Interview Two. Limited Edition Prints. Private Commissions. Cube Grenades.“EVIL PLANS”.]
[Backstory: About Hugh. Twitter. Newsletter. Book. Interview One. Interview Two. Limited Edition Prints. Private Commissions. Cube Grenades.“EVIL PLANS”.]
[Backstory: About Hugh. Twitter. Newsletter. Book. Interview One. Interview Two. Limited Edition Prints. Private Commissions. Cube Grenades.“EVIL PLANS”.]
July 6, 2009
[Backstory: About Hugh. Twitter. Newsletter. Book. Interview One. Interview Two. Limited Edition Prints. Private Commissions. Cube Grenades.“EVIL PLANS”.]
[Backstory: About Hugh. Twitter. Newsletter. Book. Interview One. Interview Two. Limited Edition Prints. Private Commissions. Cube Grenades.“EVIL PLANS”.]
[Backstory: About Hugh. Twitter. Newsletter. Book. Interview One. Interview Two. Limited Edition Prints. Private Commissions. Cube Grenades.“EVIL PLANS”.]
[Backstory: About Hugh. Twitter. Newsletter. Book. Interview One. Interview Two. Limited Edition Prints. Private Commissions. Cube Grenades.“EVIL PLANS”.]
[Backstory: About Hugh. Twitter. Newsletter. Book. Interview One. Interview Two. Limited Edition Prints. Private Commissions. Cube Grenades.“EVIL PLANS”.]
