About This Site

What the Hell Is This?

Mark’s Very Large National Lampoon Site is an unauthorized guide to what I consider the best years of National Lampoon magazine—roughly 1970-1975. You won’t find much here about the movies, later years of the magazine (it ceased publication in 1999), or its current incarnation (although there is some of that, too). It is also a tribute to the talented writers and artists who put the magazine together in those early years. This site has no connection or affiliation with National Lampoon, Inc.

I began working on this site in 1996 as a hands-on way to learn web design. I chose National Lampoon since, at the time, there was nothing about it on the Web. More importantly, it happened to be a topic which permanently occupied a large and otherwise useless portion of my brain. It has since gotten completely out of hand to become the award-winning, fan-pleasing resource it is today.

As for me, I am a former magazine art director and graphic designer, but since 2005 I’ve been almost exclusively designing typefaces and developing fonts). As an art director and designer, I was heavily influenced by National Lampoon during my formative years. It wasn’t my only influence, but it was a big one. This site is a hobby for me. If you want to see what I do when I’m not wasting my time here, check out www.marksimonson.com. I also have an “art” site (www.marksimonson.art) where I post caricatures and other stuff.

Why Does This Site Look So Boring?

It’s very common on the Web to make pages that are very busy and full of “eye candy”—spinning logos, animated buttons, faux 3-D effects, and so on. Instead, I’ve chosen to emulate the clean, straightforward look and feel of the National Lampoon itself in hopes of recreating to some degree its early ’70s milieu. I have the tools at my disposal to create a virtual Photoshop plug-in theme park online, but it would be wrong. [Note: I originally wrote this in 1997. If you remember what the web looked like back then, you have my sympathies.—MS]

Toolbox

I’ve worked on this site with various tools over the years, starting with PageMill back in 1997, then DreamWeaver, then parts of it in Movable Type (a blogging engine) with parts hand-coded in BBEdit. As of February 2017, I’ve switched to WordPress. Graphics were created mostly in Adobe PhotoShop and Adobe Illustrator. Internet/FTP support from Panic Software’s Transmit.

I was never happy with the look of the site after I switched to WordPress. But at the time, adapting my old design into a WordPress theme was just too daunting. However, in January 2024, I finally decided to learn how to build a custom WordPress theme, which I did, basing it on my original site design. The classic Mark’s Very Large design is back, even better than before—it’s even “responsive,” so it should look and work great on mobile devices.

Contact

If you have any questions or comments, you may send them to me at marksimonson@mac.com.

Some Helpful Hints for Navigating This Site

I have tried to keep things simple navigation-wise, but if you’re having trouble finding your way around, here are some tips:

• Use the navigation links across the top for news and other information. The links down the right side to go various listings pages. These links appear on every page for your convenience. For mobile devices, I’ve added a “mobile-friendly menu” at the top of the page, since the “links down the right side” get pushed to the bottom of the page on mobile devices. (If I knew more about designing in WordPress, I would do better. But I have better things to do with my time, so it’s the best I could do.)
• If you still can’t find what you’re looking for, use the handy Search box near to top of the right column, or at the bottom of the page on mobile devices.

Original material (excluding quoted material) © 1997-2024 Mark Simonson.
Mark's Very Large National Lampoon Site is not affiliated with National Lampoon or National Lampoon Inc.
Click here for the real thing.