Richard Yeend, a London-based cartoonist, newspaper and typeface designer, was an editorial cartoonist for The Guardian and Sunday Times from 1969–1974. In 1974 he moved to the U.S. and worked for The Boston Herald American and The New York Times, where we briefly worked in concert. In 1987 he joined the International Herald Tribune in Paris, and in 1998 moved to Die Welt in Berlin.
His visual journalism and commentary continued unabated. In 1999 he became art director of The Wall Street Journal Europe, contributing caricatures and stipple headcuts. He has designed 22 typeface families for Monotype and Linotype. His satirical graphic novels The King’s Irish: A Celtic Tiger Earns His Stripes and Tex Twitter Meets the Cherokee were published by Markosia.
He’s currently in the process of creating The Yankee Emperor and His Kangaroo Courtier, an engaging Brits’-eye view of America’s current political folly. “The Australian star of this comic book has been a major influence on U.S., British and Australian politics,” Yeend notes. “His papers have encouraged wars and his TV channel disputed climate change and COVID-19. Both he and his American acolyte are natural-born cartoon characters, masters of deceit, had Scottish mothers and are due for a dose of reality.” This is part one of four that will be published in this space as they are completed. In the end we’ll have a 60-page comic, just in time for 2024’s electoral circus.