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Artist Demonstrates The Difficulty Of Depicting Modern Technology Via Cartooning

The power of cartooning stems from its ability to distill visual information until it becomes almost purely iconic — all killer, no filler, essentially. But what happens when the icons themselves change? How do cartoonists respond to evolving visual language? As pointed out by artist Tom Pappalardo, when it comes to a lot of modern technology, keeping up can be a challenge. In his humorous blog post titled “Cartooning vs. Technology: How Steve Jobs Ruined Comics,” Pappalardo not only provides a few examples of how smartphones, tablets, flat screen TVs and other technological advancements can crowd narratives and challenge cartoony depictions, but also how skilled cartoonists might counter these increasingly cumbersome issues in their work.

From Pappalardo’s blog:

In many ways, technology-especially consumer-driven technology-has been striving for the same thing as cartoonists for years now. Simpler, smaller, more streamlined. Minimalist. Removing as much of the object as possible, leaving only the key components (in technology’s case, the interface, the screen). Steve Jobs led the way for elegant and simple device design, and it’s a beautiful thing. But a cartoonist might reach a point where representing something in a super-simplified style when the object itself is already super-simplified becomes increasingly difficult.