Today we have Eisner award-winning comics artist, author, and educator, Nick Sousanis in to talk about his book, Unflattening.

How to explain this strange book? Well, written and drawn entirely as a comic book, Unflattening is an experiment in visual thinking using graphic art to illustrate the ways we construct knowledge. Weaving together diverse ways of seeing drawn from science, philosophy, art, literature, and mythology, the book uses the collage-like capacity of comics to show that perception is always an active process of incorporating and reevaluating different vantage points. Full of graphic innovation, Unflattening is meant to counteract the type of narrow, rigid thinking that Nick calls “flatness.”

The book has received numerous awards and has been translated to many languages. Nick’s work has been featured in The Paris Review, The New York Times, the LA Review of Books, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Publishers Weekly, to name a few.

Nick is also just a great and humble guy who I enjoyed speaking with immensely. So let’s get into it, and I’ll come back with some additional commentary on what to make of this wide-ranging conversation. Enjoy!