by Jeff Lewonczyk | December 3, 2019

As if New York didn’t have enough eye candy, last month offered yet another spectacle for lovers of bright colors, bold shapes and caffeinated conversation: the Pictoplasma NYC conference. Now in its 8th year, this U.S. offshoot of Berlin’s sprawling annual Pictoplasma Festival is ostensibly a showcase for practitioners of character design, but its in-depth talks, presentations and screenings […]

by Jeff Lewonczyk | January 2, 2019

In “Frankly Mr. Shankly,” the Smiths’ 1986 ode to ditching your day job, Morrissey croons his resignation to his eponymous boss. His snarky-sincere delivery is amusing as always, but for me, the kicker is this pair of lines near the end: “Oh, I didn’t realise that you wrote poetry/I didn’t realise you wrote such bloody […]

by Jeff Lewonczyk | September 7, 2016

The most valuable creative experience I’ve ever had might be the time I needed to make someone fly. As a longtime playwright and theater director, I’ve had to tackle all sorts of self-imposed artistic challenges, generally with little to no budget. Every show that I’ve worked on has contained “that scene” – the one that […]

by Jeff Lewonczyk | April 26, 2016

I was a terrible employee at my first job – but for all the right reasons. I was 17, and my favorite place on earth was the public library. In retrospect, assigning me to shelve recently returned books deep in the stacks was like hiring the proverbial kid to watch the proverbial candy store – […]

by Jeff Lewonczyk | June 12, 2015

Mythical monsters have always held a place of pride in popular culture – in recent years, vampires, mermaids, dragons, ogres, unicorns and Sasquatch have all had their moment in the spotlight. But one creature that you don’t hear much about is the chimera. Despite its impeccable pedigree – the earliest reference appears in Homer’s Iliad […]

by Jeff Lewonczyk | April 28, 2015

Ever since I’ve been old enough to hold a book, I’ve been crazy for comics. To this day, few things provide me with more pleasure than the combination of pictures and words, telling stories together in ways that neither can do on their own. As PR, marketing and journalism become increasingly visual disciplines, it makes […]