In the New York City subway system, advertisements emblazon everything from station walls to the roofs of train cars. The surreptitious scrawls of clever--and not-so-clever--culture jammers that deface the polished images of starlets and media darlings are nearly as ubiquitous as these advertisements. In New York Dick, Galen Smith displays the result of his years spent spelunking in the subway system. What he has observed and documented is one very specific trope, the addition of a penis to posters advertising everything from the latest Hollywood blockbuster to a public service announcement. This sleek book details the original ads and how they have been embellished. Crassly humorous, New York Dick provides a glimpse of the work of those who re-appropriate corporate communications in a very specific manner.
Galen Smith is a graphic designer living and working in New York City. In his twenty years as a designer and visual communicator he has created logos and branding systems, CD and LP packaging, posters, books, and a wide variety of graphic ephemera. For the past 10 years he has focused exclusively on book design. His work has been featured in American Corporate Identity, ID magazine, AM New York, and the New York Book Show.
Galen is a graduate of Portfolio Center in Atlanta, Georgia, and a former faculty member at Parsons School of Design. For the past three years his weekends have been spent documenting poster defacements in the New York City subway system.