John Alcorn, Part 2!

I promised a second post on illustrator John Alcorn, so tonight's the night when I can post a whole bunch of images while I watch the debate.

While looking into Alcorn's work, as described in my previous post, I found out about two books he illustrated, Books, written by Murray McCain, and The Fireside Book of Children's Songs, collected and edited by Marie Winn.

While both are meant for children, they're completely different. Books is a small, thin book full of jokes, both verbal and visual, whether illustrated or typographic.

 

The drawing style in this book uses a fine ink line.

 

The typography calls back to 19th century wood types.

 

It's interesting to me that no one is credited for the design of the book, so I assume that Alcorn is the designer. 

 

I love this lion and king.

 

A very fun typographic composition.

The last illustration is about goats.

The Fireside Book, in contrast to Books, is an oversized volume and fairly thick. There's a bit of Alcorn on almost every page, though he seems less involved in the design. These images have a hefty, Art Noveau line, pretty different from the fine, scratchy line of Books.

The cover is my least favorite part of the book. I don't care for the type treatment and I really don't like the color scheme (red, gold, and blue-gray), which has nothing in common with the colors used inside (pink, orange, and duller gold). I have no idea what they were thinking about that lack of coherence.

But on the book's 190 pages, there are so many great illustrations I had trouble deciding what not to include, so here we go. These aren't in any particular order.

 

That Adam and Eve, by the way.

 

The crooked house.

 

Wow, that was a lot more fun than a debate, wasn't it? (But Biden is doing really well, in my opinion.)