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Once I first met Kevin Cornell within the early 2000s, he was using his illustration expertise primarily to attract caricatures of his fellow designers at a small Philadelphia design studio. Even in that tough, dashed-off state, his work floored me. It was as if Charles Addams and my favourite Mad Journal illustrators from the Sixties had blended their DNA to spawn the right artist.
Kevin would deny that label, however artist he’s. For there’s a imaginative and prescient in his thoughts, a manner of seeing the world, that’s not like anybody else’s—and he has the reward to make you see it too, and to please, encourage, and problem you with what he makes you see.
Kevin was a part of a small group of younger designers and artists who had just lately accomplished school and had been starting to ascertain careers. Others from that group included Rob Weychert, Matt Sutter, and Jason Santa Maria. They might all go on to do effective issues in our trade.
It was Jason who introduced Kevin on as home illustrator through the A Listing Aside 4.0 model overhaul in 2005, and Kevin has labored his unusual magic for us ever since. When you’re an ALA reader, you understand how he interprets the summary net design ideas of our articles into concrete, witty, and continuously absurd conditions. Above all, he’s a storyteller—if pretentious designers and entrepreneurs haven’t sucked all of the which means out of that phrase.
For almost 10 years, Kevin has taken our well-vetted, sensible, continuously technical net design and improvement items, and elevated them to the standing of basic New Yorker articles. Tomorrow he publishes his final new illustrations with us. There’ll by no means be one other like him. And for no matter good it does him, Kevin Cornell has my timeless thanks, love, and gratitude.
