Forecast

by Nicholas Blechman (Editor)

Conspiracy theories, pending Ice Ages, potential revolutions, viral epidemics, and other doomsday prophecies: whereveryou look—from the cover of Time magazine to the weird weather outside your window—the message seems universal: the Earth our children inherit will certainly be nothing like the one we currently inhabit. UN reports and newspaper articles are illustrated with dry charts and graphs predicting technological, economic, and ecological transformations that are already dramatically altering the way we live. Forecast revisualizes these abstractions about everything from our environ-ment to our waistlines, from the stock market to the Middle East through the eyes of cartoonists and graphic designers who have made comics with a conscience: Ward Sutton imagines a nation divided into a red and a blue zone; Paula Scher maps out the Northern Hemisphere of 2100; Elizabeth Amon interviews New Yorker journalist Elizabeth Kolbert on global warming; and Tom Tomorrow looks back on the legacy of Bush-Cheney. Ultimately, Forecast is an optimistic book: using humor, it encourages all of us to take responsibility for predictions of the future and to take action to affect change. Forecast is the latest installment of Nozone. Featured in the Cooper Hewitt's Design Triennial, Nozone is a decade-old political graphic design and comics zine, editedaround a theme.

Genres: Graphic Novels

168 pages, Paperback

First published August 4, 2008

About the author

Nicholas Blechman is an internationally recognized illustrator, designer, and art director. His award-winning illustrations have appeared in GQ, Travel + Leisure, Wired, and the New Yorker. He is currently the art director of the New York Times Book Review.

Reviews

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun, if very left leaning and bleak, interpretation of the future by some of our best graphic artists. Certainly makes you stop and contemplate what can be done to stave off this doomsday scenario.

[Casey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not really a book to read cover-to-cover but rather one to flip open to a random page, study the contents, and then put it back for another time. Definitely interesting, eye-gripping and odd. Super liberal, take it with a grain of salt.

[Marisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating meditation on what the future holds for the human race. Not only is it informative, but the illustrations and designs are such a creative way to communicate with the reader.