It's your boyfriend George.
George Stroumboulopoulis, host of CBC's The Hour

Always excited upon receiving mail, I quickly perused the 2010 Applied Arts Illustration and Photography Annual yesterday, after tearing it out of its packaging. That was about the high point though, as things went downhill from there. In summary, the entire issue was a big disappointment for me.

First, there is barely any illustration in the annual. 15 mere spreads. Compared to previous years, a ghost of its former self. This issue is much heavier on the photography, which I don't mind, except I never would have ordered it, much less paid $25 for it. And even worse, there aren't even any articles in this issue. That's pretty sad.

To compound the problem, the illustration included is not all that exciting. Nothing jumps out as being really solid or innovative. A handful of the usual talent, along with a pile of stuff that mostly just reminds me of stock illustration.

What really got me was the presentation. All of the art is presented in dull small boxes, despite the switch over to some kind of grotesque large format vertical magazine. If you go through the trouble to make a magazine an awkward, unusual size, then it should probably be for a reason. And as my final complaint...the magazine was redesigned to feature CMYK printer registration colours. A graphic arts magazine using the CMYK...now that's not too cliche and overused