“Creatives”? Eurgh!!!
Full disclosure: I bought this book by mistake. It’s published by Drawn & Quarterly, so I assumed it would be comics. But instead it’s a book about what it says on the tin, written by a graphical designer that’s unknown to me.
The writing’s OK, though — it’s pretty entertaining and it has drive. But the book makes some rather strange choices, mainly with the illustrations.
It’s about having your illustrations ripped off, so you’d think that it’d be interesting to see those illustrations, right? But I don’t think we even get a single one — instead we get illustrations like the above, that mostly are vaguely related to the text, but aren’t dated. And since the Biesinger talks a bit about his evolution as an artist, it sure would have been interesting to see some examples. Oh, and he also talks about his use of colour, so of course the book is totally in black and white.
I’m guessing all these illustrations are new(ish)? They seem very samey. I mean, “have a distinct graphic expression” or something.
Now, Biesinger doesn’t give the names of any of the people/organisations that have ripped him off — perhaps for good reasons. He doesn’t want to get sued, and he doesn’t want to put people in harm’s way. So that may be a good reason to not use the actual illustrations in dispute — but even when he’s describing his method (in general), it’s like above: He talks about a sketch, and… then he shows a completely different sketch? What? Why? Who? When? *voguing spontaneously*
And finally, the book doesn’t have nine times he was ripped off — he talks about other people being ripped off, too, and that’s just not as entertaining.
But I mean… it’s a kinda OK book?
9 Times My Work Has Been Ripped Off (2025) by Raymond Biesinger (buy new, buy used, 4.65 on Goodreads)