You know there are books you want to read, but you also know you need to hit them at the right moment. One of those books for me is 9 Times My Work Has Been Ripped Off from Drawn & Quarterly. I had seen Raymond Biesinger’s work before, but I never fully realized the sheer scope of what he’s built over the years.
Somewhere in all of this is the perfect irony: a graphic novel publisher releases a book about a graphic designer getting ripped off, and the thing is packed with mostly words instead of giant, flashy graphics. Then halfway through, you suddenly realize… wait a minute, that’s called a book. Who knew.
Biesinger is one of those creators whose style feels instantly recognizable once you lock into it. Montréal-based, self-taught, relentlessly prolific, he has spent more than two decades producing over 1,200 commercial and editorial projects across four continents. His work sits in this fascinating space between minimalism and maximalism. Clean vector lines collide with rough vintage textures, old-world imperfections, and carefully researched historical detail. He once described his process as “a collage that doesn’t look like a collage,” using scanned real-world shapes and textures like an endlessly forgiving Xerox machine mixed with glue and scissors. That description alone feels like art school, punk rock, and obsessive archival history all mashed together.
His illustrations have appeared in heavyweights like The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, Time, and Monocle, but what really caught my attention was how much of his work functions as visual preservation. Holding a degree in history, Biesinger approaches illustration almost like an archivist. His national bestselling book, 305 Lost Buildings of Canada, documents architectural landmarks erased by demolition or fire. It turns memory into something tangible again.
Then there’s the other side of him—the fighter.
9 Times My Work Has Been Ripped Off is not just a collection of horror stories about plagiarism and bad clients. It sounds more like a survival guide for modern creatives trying to navigate a system stacked against them. The book reportedly breaks down his personal battles with stolen work, exploitative contracts, delayed payments, and corporations that assume independent artists will simply give up because legal action is too expensive. Writers like Cory Doctorow have praised it as a practical blueprint for creators trying to protect themselves in industries that often run on imbalance and intimidation.
What makes Biesinger especially interesting right now is his stance on AI. While a lot of artists understandably speak about generative AI with outright existential dread, Biesinger takes a different angle. He argues that much of the current AI frenzy feels like a speculative economic bubble driven more by hype than actual creative capability. His perspective is surprisingly pragmatic. He is not romanticizing art. He is talking about leverage, copyright, labor value, and survival.
His argument is essentially this: human creators still possess something AI fundamentally lacks. Legal personhood. Ownership. Accountability. Negotiation power. A machine cannot truly own copyright in the same way a human creator can, and smart clients still need human beings who can solve problems, adapt ideas, interpret culture, and stand behind the work. That gives independent artists an advantage that many people overlook in the panic.
At the same time, he is not naïve about the risks. He actively teaches artists how to protect themselves, including building visual vocabularies rooted in real-world source materials that are harder for datasets to mimic cleanly. That combination of realism and resistance feels refreshing. He is not screaming that the sky is falling. He is teaching people how to survive the storm.
Ironically, one of the quirks readers point out about the book is that, because it is presented entirely in black and white, and because the plagiarists remain anonymous for legal reasons, you never fully get those dramatic side-by-side comparisons you secretly want to see. In another universe, that could have turned into an art-world true crime book. Instead, Biesinger keeps the focus on the mechanics of creative survival rather than public shaming.
And honestly, that may be the bigger lesson here.
A lot of books about creativity try to inspire you. This one sounds like it wants to prepare you.
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