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Roy Doty's 2010 Christmas card

Mark Frauenfelder at 1:26 pm Thu, Dec 16, 2010

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Xmas-card-2010.gif I am very thankful to have gotten to know Roy Doty, who has been illustrating for Make magazine for the last six years. I first became familiar with Roy's work in the late 1960s, when I saw his pleasing and deceptively simple illustrations in Popular Science magazine.

For many years Roy drew a comic strip called "Wordless Workshop," which featured a pipe smoking suburban dad who wandered around his house and neighborhood observing the minor irritations that his family and neighbors experienced, and then coming up with an elegant solution to those problems that involved making a nifty contraption out of easily obtained materials. Roy is not only a very gifted cartoonist, he's a wonderfully resourceful inventor!

Roy is 88 years old, and he still works full time for a wide variety of publications. He can turn around a drawing in a matter of hours, and I admit I have occasionally taken advantage of his ability to do this.

Every year Roy sends out a Christmas card, and they are always very inventive and delightful. This one, titled "A Holiday Alphabet," features a number of Santa's elves contorting themselves into positions that resemble the letters of the alphabet.

  • Archive of Roy Doty's Christmas cards
  • Incredible Roy Doty Christmas card
  • Roy's Doty's Leap Year card -- Carpe Diem!
  • Happy Birthday Roy Doty!
  • Gnome puzzle from MAKE 11, illustrated by Roy Doty
  • "With the Chemex, even a moron can make good coffee."

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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  • Sekino

    Nice! Inventive and delightful sure sums it up perfectly…

    And I’m crazy about the typeface he did at the bottom.

  • Cowicide

    Great card! I love all the elfort the elf goes to pull off the W.

  • BoydWaters

    I have been an avid fan of Roy Doty’s work since his “SuperFudge” illustrations in the 1970s! His work is wonderful! Thanks Mr. Doty for decades of great work!

  • Anonymous

    He is supposed to leave the “L” out. Noël !!!

  • Drang

    I remember seeing a web page with collection of his Christmas cards…

    Oh yes, it was linked from this page.

    The archive itself is here at Hogan’s Alley.

  • RedShirt77

    Oh gosh, what’s going on in the “N”?

  • Anonymous

    Tell Roy thank you for all those great Wordless Workshops. Dad got Popular Science for the articles, I only read it for the art. Roy’s work was always a model of clear storytelling and great information design. I’m very glad he’s still at it!

    Mark Martel

  • Stefan Jones

    Add my thanks to Mark Martel’s thanks.

    I’d love to still be able to work at age 88 . . . assuming I changed jobs to something I enjoyed doing!

  • irksome

    I suppose it was inevitable but hat “N” is disturbing.

    Not that there’s anything WRONG with hot elf-on-elf love.