Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Mike Lynch Cartoon in July 2007 Harvard Business Review

I got a letter in the mail from my editor at HBR. They wanted cartoons on long-term planning.

Long-term planning? What's funny about long-term planning?

I remember having a discussion with another cartoonist. He was telling me that he likes it when he get a narrow direction from an editor. My point of view was that I would rather draw up whatever I thought was funny, instead of being given a defined topic. After a while, I saw his point. At least I knew what the editor wanted. However, I did not envy the editor's job of sifting through all those long-range planning cartoons!

I drew a couple of roughs, added in a couple of other cartoons, and that was that.
"I think it's clear to all of us that when assembling this board, we were thinking long-term."

Above is the cartoon that HBR picked. I colored it and you can view it on their cartoons page. I'm in good company with a number of cartoonists that I know: Roy Delgado, P.C. Vey, and Kim Warp. I haven't met Teresa Burns Parkhurst or Chris Wildt, but I admire their work.

2 comments:

  1. I'm a big fan of tight briefs... at least the cartooning kind. It is so much easier to focus, given a small subject. The worst thing to spark good ideas seems to be a blank piece of paper.

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  2. Mike, a business magazine here in the UK recently asked me to draw a cartoon to illustrate an article about socially responsible investing. I read the copy and was drawn to the phrase "long-term investments". My solution was spookily similar to yours ... great minds think alike, and all that!

    You can see it here: http://www.royston.dircon.co.uk/longterm.jpg

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