Forecast:
Nozone X
Nicholas Blechman

Praise for Empire: Nozone IX:

"Outside the mainstream...smart and rebellious art and design is flourishing. One brilliant example is Nozone's new book Empire...a cross between a zine and a political pamphlet, Empire is an imaginative response to our imperial moment....Nozone's artistic crew follows in the grand and often subversive tradition of using illustrations, photographs, cartoons, and design to skewer the mighty and expose the good, the bad, and the ugly."—Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation

"Consider it a perfect palate cleanser for a night of Fox News."—WIRED

Conspiracy theories, pending Ice Ages, potential revolutions, viral epidemics, and other doomsday prophecies: wherever you look—from the cover of Time magazine to the weird weather outside your window—the message seems universal: the Earth our children inherit will certainly be nothing like the one we currently inhabit. UN reports and newspaper articles are illustrated with dry charts and graphs predicting technological, economic, and ecological transformations that are already dramatically altering the way we live. Forecast revisualizes these abstractions about everything from our environment to our waistlines, from the stock market to the Middle East through the eyes of cartoonists and graphic designers who have made comics with a conscience: Ward Sutton imagines a nation divided into a red and a blue zone; Paula Scher maps out the Northern Hemisphere of 2100; Elizabeth Amon interviews New Yorker journalist Elizabeth Kolbert on global warming; and Tom Tomorrow looks back on the legacy of Bush-Cheney. Ultimately, Forecast is an optimistic book: using humor, it encourages all of us to take responsibility for predictions of the future and to take action to affect change. Forecast is the latest installment of Nozone. Featured in the Cooper Hewitt's Design Triennial, Nozone is a decade-old political graphic design and comics zine, edited around a theme.


Nicholas Blechman is principal of Knickerbocker Design in New York City and art director of the New York Times Book Review. He is the editor of Empire and co-author of Evil, both published by Princeton Architectural Press. Blechman is publisher of the award-winning political underground magazine Nozone.
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Editorial Reviews

Book By Its Cover :
"In light of all the political madness (Go Obama!) and nearly disastrous storms, this book seems very appropriate. Its a collaboration of artists ideas of the future. Through charts, graphs, maps, illustrations, interviews and comics, designers predict or comment on others predictions about what the world might become hundreds of years from now. I love Julia Hoffmans Lets Get Carbon-ated questionaire where you receive points based on your answers that ultimately let you know the magnitude of your carbon footprint." (September 2, 2008)

Art Moco:
"Forecast, edited by Nicholas Blechman, is the latest edition of Nozone, a smart graphic design and comics 'zine from Princeton Architectural Press. It is the type of publication one picks up, seduced by the cover design and the feel of the stock, only to find the subject matter a lot more serious than expected. Global warming is the theme of this tenth issue of nozone, a forecast in words and pictures of the environment and socio-political changes we can expect over our lifetime and into the next. It is a mix of graphic novel and wake-up call to the mess our world is in; a great format for reading on the bus to get much more of a jolt than a mere cup of coffee can provide." (September 7, 2008)

The Morning News:
"Forecast is the latest in Nicholas Blechmans Nozone series. Its a bit like an issue of The Economist, but authored by some of todays best cartoonists and graphic designers. As listed by Blechmans PR sheet: Ward Sutton imagines a nation divided into a red and a blue zone; Paula Scher maps out the Northern Hemisphere of 2100; Elizabeth Amon interviews New Yorker journalist Elizabeth Kolbert on global warming; and Tom Tomorrow looks back on the legacy of Bush-Cheney. So its still a zine, but rather a grown-up one." — Rosecrans Baldwin (August 18, 2008)

How:
"This zine revisualizes everything from our environment to our waistlines through the eyes of cartoonists and designers who have made comics with a conscience." (December 2008)

Englewood Review of Books:
"In the long tradition of books making predictions for the future, comes Nozone X: Forecast, a collection of mostly doom and gloom scenarios by graphic artists, cartoonists, and illustrators." — Brent Aldrich (September 5, 2008)

Bookgasm:
"If you want to see some of the coolest graphic design of 2008, pick up FORECAST: NOZONE X. If you want to be sent into a spiral of deep depression, also pick up FORECAST: NOZONE X. Two birds, one stone. Part magazine, art book, comic and political polemic, the Nicholas Blechman-edited duotone journal makes sharp points about global warming, carbon footprints, foreign oil and a litany of other hot-button issues via charts, illustrations, cartoons and whatnot. The contributors are quite skilled in crafting cool visuals, but geez, is this subject matter bleak! Decidedly leftist, it struck me as dealing in the kind of fear-mongering that the right is often accused of (and with damned good reason). Even if you agree that the country is screwed up (and its hard not to, given all the evidence), this overplays the doom and gloom and looks awesome while doing it." (August 28, 2008)

HOW:
"This zine revisualzes everything from our enviroment to our waistlines through the eyes of cartoonists and designers who have made comics with a conscience." (Monday, December 01, 2008)

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