Pens Are My Friends (book review)

October 7th, 2008

It's lovely to come home and find something nice waiting for you, isn't it? A nice cup of freshly brewed tea is lovely (nicer with biscuits, but not so common). So is a nice piece of ginger cake with lemon icing. A smiley lady is nice too. I got all three today (which was lovely), but what made it lovelier was a copy of Jon Burgerman's retrospective book of his illustrations, Pens Are My Friends.

There are two types of people in the world. Not men or ladies, Republicans (boo) or Democrats (hooray), Marmite lovers and Marmite haters. No sir. There are people who know about Jon Burgerman and his work and people who don't.

I honestly can't claim to have been the former for very long and when I stopped being the latter after being introduced to him/it by my friend Simon Collison, I didn't really get it. But as almost exactly every month (more or less), I spend a day or so hot-desking at Erskine Design where Jon shares the space, over the months my appreciation of his work grew into admiration.

I could waffle on all poncy like and fashion myself as an art critic? I could compare Jon Burgerman's work to Guernica and describe him as an existential descendent of Picasso and a rightful inheritor of the crown of the cubist tradition. But I won't. From what little I know, Jon Burgerman just loves to draw. A lot. Pens really are his friends.

Which leads me back to this book, Pens Are My Friends, a 300 page retrospective monograph covering the last seven(ish) years of Jon Burgerman's work, beautifully printed and packaged by IdN. As it says on the back cover.

For the first time ever Jon Burgerman's commercial, personal and collaborative works are collected together in one lavish publication. Included amongst the many projects are toys, clothing, exhibitions, murals, sketchbooks and a sick bag.

Having come late to Jon's work I was interested to see how it has developed over the last seven years and am fascinated by how well it scales from the backs of envelopes and napkins to his large murals. What impresses me most is his dedication to detail, brilliantly demonstrated by the 500 original, hand-drawn character doodles that were included with his previous book Hello Duudle - The Duudeville Tales.

Pens Are My Friends is indeed a beautiful book and it includes a lovely dust-jacket poster, sketchbook and a DVD packed with animated goodies, documentary stuff and things to beautify your computer.

Pens Are My Friends is superb. If I were Jon I would be extremely proud of Pens Are My Friends but even though I'm not him I'm extremely proud to have it sitting proudly on the corner of my desk. You should buy it too.

Available from:

Plus a few more and of course from Jon himself.

Written by Andy Clarke .