My latest art brochures are ready for download (I also had them printed)!

Oliver’s Year is actually more of a magazine highlighting some of my goings-on from 2011, while the two other smaller-size brochures are showing some of my work in whimsical style and in mixed-media collage style.

Click on an image to access the PDF file. Grab’em while they’re hot! >MORE BROCHURES

TOP: Oliver’s Year 2012
BELOW: Whimsical Artwork from 2011/12
BOTTOM: Mixed-Media Artwork from 2011/12

Why can large bonuses make CEOs less productive? How can confusing directions actually help us? Why is revenge so important to us? Why is there such a big difference between what we think will make us happy and what really makes us happy?

In Predictably Irrational, social scientist Dan Ariely revealed the multiple biases that lead us into making unwise decisions. Now, in The Upside of Irrationality, he exposes the surprising negative and positive effects irrationality can have on our lives. Focusing on our behaviors at work and in relationships, he offers new insights and eye-opening truths about what really motivates us on the job, how one unwise action can become a long-term habit, how we learn to love the ones we’re with, and more.

An illustration of mine was used for the cover of the German paperback edition (Wer denken will, muss fühlen – Die heimliche Macht der Unvernunft, Knaur Verlag). It shows a little guy carrying a sun balloon. >MORE

The topic was “jump-start your story,” and this is what I have come up with for the cover of The Writer magazine – a hang glider consisting of manuscript leaves which are starting to float through the air.

In On the Money: The Economy in Cartoons, fans can revel in over 350 of The New Yorker’s best cartoons on the theme of money, culled from the past 80+ years.

I designed the hand lettering for the German edition for selected cartoons that needed their headlines, captions, and bylines to be translated directly on the embedded images (The New Yorker: Die besten Wirtschaftscartoons 1925–2009).

While it felt a little awkward to be editing the works of fellow cartoonists, I attempted to replicate the various lettering styles used for the original versions, trying hard to make this look as generic and seamless as possible.

The collection is edited by The New Yorker’s cartoon editor, Robert Mankoff, and includes an introduction by Malcolm Gladwell, best-selling author of The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers. >MORE

Clockwise from top left: Wonderful cartoons from greats like Jon Agee, Sidney Harris, Richard Decker, Roz Chast, Lee Lorenz (and Roz Chast again). (Copyright of the original cartoons (c) The New Yorker and the respective artists.)

These are a few of the images I made for Psychologie Heute to illustrate the topic of will power.

This is an artwork I created on the the topic of information technology. The idea was to have a monumental “IT,” set in an idyllic landscape, which is maintained by lots of little people.

Some of the people are looking at plans, replacing chunks of the monument, painting parts of the monument, rewiring plugs in its side, adding “whistles and bows” to suggest new software, calculating costs, placing orders on the phone, thinking far ahead, etc.

Check out this illo that I made on mind control for Psychologie Heute. It shows a bunch of people that are interconnected through head wires.

This a book out of the ordinary. On 80 pages, the author gives an unsparing and heartbreaking account of his illness of terminal cancer, his fading strength over time, and, eventually, his willingness to accept the fact that he will soon die.

Wolfgang Bergmann was a psychologist and family scientist who died in May of 2011 at the age of 67 after a year-long battle with bone cancer. In his lifetime, he headed the Institute for Child Psychology and Learning Therapy in Hanover, and he also authored nonfiction books with much success.

Shortly before his death, the author asked the publisher to find an artist who could come up with Japanese-style images to be used inside the book, or log rather.

This called for non-figurative drawings, brushed with Indian ink. This was the first time that I created abstract illustrations for a book, and also one of the rare occasions where I would actually work with real ink and paper, as opposed to the digital world that I usually work in these days.

Needless to say, I was a little reluctant, and also intimidated by the emotional topic that was offered to my by the publisher shortly after Wolfgang Bergmann passed away. I ended up creating a variety of thick brush stroke images that were scattered in the book where deemed suitable.

For the jacket cover of the small book published by Kösel (Random House), I chose a dark linen coating, and a small sheet of paper attached to the linen that contained the title. >MORE

Here’s another wine illustration that I created for Süddeutsche Zeitung last weekend.

I have created my first tableware design for Ritzenhoff – a coffee mug in the My Darling series.

Ritzenhoff is a leading producer of tableware and glassware in Germany, turning around over 30 million items a year. I first crossed their path back in the early Nineties when they brought designers’ collections on the market, and artists like James Rizzi and Philippe Petit-Roulet supplied unique designs for beverage products.

Today, some 300 designers from across the globe are contributing for Ritzenhoff. Needless to say, I am truly happy to have my own mug with the company now.

My design shows the faces of a man and a woman, intertwined in a pretty complex setup using bright colors, and suggesting love, summer, travel, food, nature, and fun. The cylinder-shaped packaging design shows the man’s torso as he is floating. >MORE

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This is my latest artwork for today’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper for an article on wine. It shows a woman holding a glass of wine that has a a thermometer sticking out to measure the temperature amidst a Tuscany landscape setting  and assembled wine accessories.

These are some of the illustrations I created for today’s Süddeutsche Zeitung special on natural heating resources. I went for mixed-media collages for this one. >MORE

TOP: Geothermal Heat
BELOW: Natural Gas Balloons
BOTTOM: Heat from Air

Here’s my latest piece for today’s Welt am Sonntag Sunday newspaper, illustrating the two worlds that people living alone vs. people  engaged in a relationship find themselves in. (I managed to incorporate my mom and my grandma into this image, which is always a treat.)

This mixed-media artwork was created for an article on mobbing that was published in today’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper from Berlin. It shows a young woman in the center who finds herself getting ostracized and mocked by her peers.

The world population will reach a whopping 7 billion in October, experts say. I have created this image for a feature on this topic for Welt am Sonntag (Axel Springer Publishers) for their economy section . It shows the Very Crowed Globe full of people, along with a bunch of skyscrapers and landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids, and the Taj Mahal.