The Smartest, The Greatest, The Best

The relationship between word and image is one that has interested me since young. I wrote and drew stories, made them into books....oooh, for a long time. In my teenage years, they were typed and painted books, and brought to the neighbourhood photocopy shops to bind. With a computer and learning later how to bind my own books, I could make editions. 

As part of packing up my house, I found a few that were made in the 1990s. 

This book was made in 1993/94, perhaps during the long summer break in the first year of university. There was an earlier version draft with colour, but I decided in the end to keep the covers coloured but the inside pages in B/W.  The cover is this velvet textured paper I found in the "fancy paper" shop at Bras Basah and the pages are printed on "Conqueror" paper. I had laid out the text on Word (maybe then I used the software called "Word Star" or "Word Perfect"....remember those?), printed them out, and drew directly on the pages. You can say my "wabi sabi" approach and acceptance of imperfection came from my growing up years of many things and improvising. 

The Smartest, The Greatest and The Best is about our fear of differences, and the angry un-loving acts that emerge from that fear. Click on the video - I flip through the book fairly slowly for you to read!