Phonogram is a comic about how music is magic. Literally. There are two volumes now: the first, Rue Britannia, about the death of and nostalgia for Britpop, and, more recently, The Singles Club.

Set in a British nightclub, each single issue of The Singles Club focuses on one person, one experience of the same night, which is both an ordinary night in a club and somehow extraordinary for each of them. Each single issue here is a complete story, based loosely around a song-the "Singles" of the title-and what that song means. Each one is a slightly different capital-M Metaphor for what pop music really does to us. Music affects [...]

Graphic Designer Bob Noorda died two weeks ago in Italy. He was 82, and, as the Times notes, he "helped introduce a Modernist look to advertising posters, corporate logos and, in the 1960s, the entire New York City subway system." When you consider how ubiquitous and helpful the MTA's color-coded Helvetica signage and maps are, not to mention all the knock-off t-shirts sold on St. Marks, and, now, the custom-made signs available for personal use, Noorda goes down with folks like Milton "I Heart NY" Glaser or Louis B. Tiffany-who designed the interlocking "N" and "Y" that would become the Yankee's logo, in 1877, originally as [...]