I chat with Scott McCloud

Some readers of peterme.com will know I’ve long had an obsession with Scott McCloud’s work. 15 years ago, I read Understanding Comics, and it was a bolt of lightning in my intellectual development. About 10 years ago, I had the fortune of meeting Scott, and maintaining a friendship with him.

(here’s a scary picture of the two of us in 1999. Scary because I look like a serial killer.
)

Since we’ve been hosting events at Adaptive Path, I’ve wanted to have Scott speak at them, but it never seemed to work out, either logistically or thematically. Well, that changes next year. For UX Week 2009, our theme involves “looking laterally,” and bringing in people who influence us from fields outside design, and Scott is on board.

To mark this, Scott and I recorded a telephone conversation where topics spanned influences, Edward Tufte, the rise of visual expression in every day life, crafting the Google Chrome comic, micropayments, and the basics UX designers should know about crafting comics. You can download the conversation as an MP3, or, soon, find it on Adaptive Path’s podcast stream (RSS, iTunes)

It’s worth noting that Adaptive Path is having a huge end-of-the-year promotion for all of its 2009 events. Sign up by December 31st, and use the promotional code FOPM (“Friends of Peter Merholz”) for huge savings.