Keep an eye on The Comics Grid in the next few weeks for the forthcoming article Playing Together: Analyzing Jazz Improvisation to Improve the Multiframe, co-authored by Zach Powers and myself. For this special topics issue of the journal, we look to the works of Sonny Rollins and Joshua Redman to consider how comics page layouts, or the multiframe, might be informed by an understanding of jazz improvisational techniques. While we’re drawing from contemporary scholarly analysis of comics, the intent of this article was not to build a purely theoretical framework, but to propose a mode for analysis that might actually be used by practicing comics artists.
In the meantime, I have a piece on the crowdfunding platform Patreon under review for ARLIS/NA Multimedia and Technology Reviews, and a guest post for the ARLIS/NA Art & Design School Libraries Division blog on the topic of usability/user experience design, design thinking, and art school libraries. More to come!