J.D. King is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

 best known for his commercial art

Commercial art

Commercial art is historically a subsector of creative services, referring to art created for commercial purposes, primarily advertising. The term has become increasingly anachronistic in favor of more contemporary terms such as graphic design and advertising art.Commercial art traditionally...

 illustrations for companies including Absolut Vodka

Absolut Vodka

Absolut Vodka is a brand of vodka, produced near Åhus, Skåne, in southern Sweden. Since July 2008 the company has been owned by the French firm Pernod Ricard who bought V&S Group from the Swedish government....

, Atlantic Records

Atlantic Records

Atlantic Records is an American record label best known for its many recordings of rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and jazz...

, Condé Nast Publications

Condé Nast Publications

Condé Nast, a division of Advance Publications, is a magazine publisher. In the U.S., it produces 18 consumer magazines, including Architectural Digest, Bon Appétit, GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Vogue, as well as four business-to-business publications, 27 websites, and more than 50 apps...

, Sony

Sony

, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....

, and others.

Biography

J.D. King began his career in the late 1970s with contributions to underground press

Underground press

The underground press were the independently published and distributed underground papers associated with the counterculture of the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and other western nations....

 magazines such as Stop!, Weirdo

Weirdo

Weirdo was a magazine-sized comics anthology created by Robert Crumb and published by Last Gasp from 1981 to 1993.Weirdo served as a "low art" counterpoint to its contemporary highbrow RAW...

, and Comical Funnies.

King's illustrations have appeared in The Boston Globe

The Boston Globe

The Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993...

, The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

, The Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....

and The Washington Post

The Washington Post

The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...

. In addition to book illustration (Martin McIntosh's Beatsville), he has contributed to numerous magazines, including Adweek

Adweek

Adweek is a weekly American advertising trade publication that was first published in 1978....

, Rethinking Schools, Bicycling

Bicycling (magazine)

Bicycling is a cycling magazine published by Rodale, Inc. in Emmaus, Pennsylvania. It features bikes, bike gear, equipment reviews, training plans, bike maintenance how-tos, and more for cyclists of all levels.-Origin:...

, BusinessWeek

BusinessWeek

Bloomberg Businessweek, commonly and formerly known as BusinessWeek, is a weekly business magazine published by Bloomberg L.P. It is currently headquartered in New York City.- History :...

, Entertainment Weekly

Entertainment Weekly

Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...

, Fortune

Fortune (magazine)

Fortune is a global business magazine published by Time Inc. Founded by Henry Luce in 1930, the publishing business, consisting of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated, grew to become Time Warner. In turn, AOL grew as it acquired Time Warner in 2000 when Time Warner was the world's largest...

, Kiplinger's, MacWorld

Macworld

Macworld is a web site and monthly computer magazine dedicated to Apple Macintosh products. It is published by Mac Publishing, which is headquartered in San Francisco, California...

, New York

New York (magazine)

New York is a weekly magazine principally concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite than that magazine, and established itself as a cradle of New...

, The New Yorker

The New Yorker

The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

, Newsweek

Newsweek

Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...

, The Progressive

The Progressive

The Progressive is an American monthly magazine of politics, culture and progressivism with a pronounced liberal perspective on some issues. Known for its pacifism, it has strongly opposed military interventions, such as the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The magazine also devotes much coverage...

and Time

Time (magazine)

Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

. Beastniks, a comic strip inspired by beatniks, ran in Drawn & Quarterly and Twist during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

J.J. Sedelmaier Productions animated King's eccentric cartoon characters for a Nick@Nite promotional film, and Curious Pictures

Curious Pictures

Curious Pictures is an American animation studio and multi-media company set in New York City and Santa Monica that creates and produces television programs, commercials, animation and videogames for audiences worldwide....

 also animated King's creations for a U.S. Cellular

U.S. Cellular

United States Cellular Corporation, d.b.a. U.S. Cellular , owns and operates the sixth largest wireless telecommunications network in the United States, behind Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile USA, and Metro PCS. , they serve about 6.1 million customers in 126 markets in...

 phone commercial.

His artwork has been displayed in awards annuals, including American Illustration, Communication Arts and the annual of the Society of Publication Designers. He authored the Foreword for The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora

Jim Flora

James "Jim" Flora , best known for his distinctive and idiosyncratic album cover art for RCA Victor and Columbia Records during the 1940s and 1950s, was also a prolific commercial illustrator from the 1940s to the 1970s and the author/illustrator of 17 popular children's books...

(Fantagraphics Books

Fantagraphics Books

Fantagraphics Books is an American publisher of alternative comics, classic comic strip anthologies, magazines, graphic novels, and the adult-oriented Eros Comix imprint...

, 2007).

King is also a guitarist. His band, J.D. King and the Coachmen, recorded Ten Compositions: New Frontiers in Free Rock and American Mercury.

External links

• Drawger: J.D. King (official blog)