For The Record, Kids Today Are Growing Up Too Fast

Here's a recent, quick-turnaround job for my old friends at The Record.

The story looks at girls reaching puberty earlier than ever before, some as young as eight- or nine-years-of-age. No one is entirely sure what has caused this shift in development. There is believed to be a link between obesity. Others suspect it might be from the hormones injected into livestock that eventually enters the food chain.

There are short- and long-term problems associated with maturing physically too soon. These girls are at often the targets of bullying (She's different, let's all make fun of her!) and misplaced expectations from their peers and teachers (Why isn't she acting as mature as she looks?). They also have a higher risk of cancer later in life.

The full story can be read here.

A thank you goes out to AME/Graphics and Design Jerry Luciani and Deputy Graphics Editor R.L. Rebach for thinking of me for this project.

Running For A Cure

This fall I will be participating in the New York City Marathon as a member of Team In Training. I'm hoping to run under 3 hours, a little over a year after being diagnosed with Chronic Myelogenus Leukemia.

All of us on Team In Training are raising funds to help stop leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin lymphoma and myeloma from taking more lives. We need your support to cross the ultimate finish line - a cure.

This Thursday, August 19, my wife and I will be hosting a happy-hour, fundraising event.

Please join us from 6-9 p.m. at Affair on Eighth, 35 West 8th Street (between Sixth Ave. and MacDougal St.) New York, NY. $40 gets you unlimited happy hour specials and helps make a difference in the fight against blood cancers.

Lion in the Sun

A few months ago, I created a Brooklyn Bridge themed invitation for my wedding. I'm pleased to announce that image is now available for your invitations and stationary at Lion in the Sun.

Lion in the Sun is a full service paperie located in Park Slope, Brooklyn specializing in unique custom invitations for every occasion. They have a terrific selection on Brooklyn-centric and New York-themed designs. They have a wonderful staff that helps turn out some sophisticated and well-designed products.

Check them out if you find yourself in Brooklyn and/or are in need of invitations.

Picking a Winner

Here's a recent spot illo I worked on for Barron's. (Full disclosure: I work there as a graphic designer in the art department.) The art ran with a story ranking the best (and worst) stock brokers over the previous 6 months, 1-year, 3-years and 5-years. In other words, which firms have done the best job picking winners. Art director was Diane Sipprelle.

This was an initial sketch that focused more on a happy and unhappy bettor. Here the decision was made to focus on just the horses.

Two more options, they went with the latter.

The New Mrs. Tomac

It's been a while since my last update and with good reason. I got married. Since the wedding and honeymoon, I've been fairly busy with new work, some of which I'll be showing off here in the near future.

Photo by the awesome Erica Lyn.

Buy Art, Support a Great Cause

On September 22, 2009 I was diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia.

Nine months later, I'm feeling a lot better. So much so that I'm planning running the New York City Marathon this fall to help raise money for Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and their relentless pursuit of a cure for blood cancers.

To help meet my fundraising goals, I will be donating 100% of my profits from my imagekind shop to this worthy cause until November 7.

You get art for your wall, the world gets closer to a cure for leukemia and lymphoma. I can't think of a better combination.

Visit johnwtomac.imagekind.com buy art and know that a sizable portion of your purchase price will go to charity.

If you don't have enough room on your walls for art you can support my efforts at beatcancer.johnwtomac.com

And if you see something here or here that's not for sale, contact me and I'll make it available, as long as I have the rights to do so.

New to Chico? There's an app for that

This week, the class of 2014 will begin showing up at California State University at Chico for freshman orientation. The Chico News & Review has put together a special edition for the occasion. It is filled with useful information for those new to the area.

I was contacted by art director Tina Flynn to illustrate the cover. For this project, she wanted to show a smartphone screen with Chico-centric apps. The challenge was figuring out how to fit a narrow device in a more square-shaped space.

I played around with a few variations.
Phone with glow around it.
Phone flying forward.
Phone on the ground. I envisioned a glow emenating from the screen lighting up the nameplate.

Ultimately, the decision was made to go with a device that had similar proportions to the page.

At this stage the editors were still a bit undecided on some of the apps, since the wider proportion gave them a chance to create a few more.

Eventually we figured out all 12 and the app icons were reused on the inside with a feature highlighting things to do in Chico.