Eric Yahnker tells us about creating that familiar-looking portrait for our latest Printed Pages cover

Make no mistake, we’re proud of every Printed Pages cover that’s emerged from the blood, sweat and tears of It’s Nice That HQ. But to mark the brave new direction our Autumn/Winter 2015 issue took, we needed something with a little zing. Something subversive. Something that, you know, makes you think. Who else do you hit up but the king of conflating pop, politics and punk ideology, Mr Eric Yahnker. Eric has become known for his “stack” images, which line up the features of famous people in a vertical configuration. We naturally wanted in. “The ‘stacks’ started out as just a simple way of testing human identification processing, or facial iconography recognition,” says Eric. “The ability to recognise a celebrity from stacked parts is perhaps one of the only things that truly separates humans from pubic lice.”

Eric says his fascination with popping politics into his practice stems from his early career in print journalism. “I’ve always hinted my work was as much to be read as viewed.  With the death of print journalism, I essentially discovered a loophole where I could become a glorified political cartoonist, satisfy my craving to put pencil to paper, and be a general know-it-all jackass as much as possible,” he says. “When it comes to referencing pop culture in my work, I guess you could simply chalk it up to having grown up in Los Angeles.  Hollywood bullshit is my natural habitat!”