Cartoonist Al Jaffe talks with Plazm’s OnCreativity about integrity, creative problem solving, and hanging stuff on the fridge.

At 96 years old, Mad Magazine’s Al Jaffee is the oldest working cartoonist. He even has the certificate from Guinness World Records to prove it.

He’s written and illustrated over 500 Mad Fold-in‘s – the magazine’s trademark feature, which he is most famous for. He still makes them by hand. After sixty years, he remains a regular contributor to Mad. In a 2010 interview, Jaffee said, “Serious people my age are dead.”

About ten years ago Al did a T-shirt for Plazm Thread, the limited edition T-shirt project we did with BuyOlympia. He is working on new special stamp for The Portland Stamp Company, more to be revealed next year. We enjoyed visiting his Manhattan studio to learn about creativity from a master.

His social commentary remains pointed and potent. Below is a fold-in he did this summer on the benefits of TrumpCare.

With the “OnCreativity” series, Plazm explores the nature of creativity and how it works via informal interviews with designers, artists, musicians, animators, and educators. Like creativity itself, their differing points of view inspire, provoke, confuse, and delight.

#1: E*Rock (November 09)
#2: Mad Magazine’s Mr. Al Jaffee (for realz – January 10)

Subscribe now and receive both these shirts and four others including the current gem by Ed Fella. Peruse and purchase here: www.plazmthread.com

**

About the artists:
E*Rock has teamed with Plazm on many projects in the past and we are honored to have his contribution to Thread slated for November. E*Rock is a multi-disciplinary artist and electronic musician based in Portland, Oregon who runs the record labels Audio Dregs and Fryk Beat and produces animated music videos with the Wyld File crew. Most often though his work finds itself home on various forms of music driven media such on the covers of numerous CDs, LPs, DVDs, concert posters, magazine covers and also his contributions to music videos and animation have appeared on MTV2 and The Museum of Modern Art in Paris. He has also toured the USA, Japan and Europe with a combination of his video art and electronic music.

His artwork has appeared in exhibits across the world from Hanna in Tokyo, LIttle Cakes in NYC, Impakt in Utrecht/Netherlands, Nu in Athens, CCA in Glasgow, Trudi in Los Angeles, Paris, Oaxaca, Chicago, Seattle, and Portland. His drawings and designs have appeared in books such as Radical Album Cover Art, This is a Magazine compendium and Dot Dot Dash; and featured in magazines like Res, Plazm, The Fader, Afterhours.

**

Al Jaffee is a true legend! He is one of Mad Magazine’s cartoonists and has been drawing comics professionally dating back to the 1940s including titles for Timely and Atlas Comics. Jaffee is best known for his work on Mad Magazine’s “Fold-Ins,” which he came up with as a one-off idea. It is an amazing page that has an entirely different meaning once folded across itself. In addition to producing over 400 of those for Mad, Jaffee has worked as writer/artist on many other features including “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions.” Al still creates all the fold-ins by hand. A great profile appeared in the New York Times a short while back and is totally worth checking out.