JPEG is known as a “lossy” image compression format. It keeps photo files small by cleverly discarding some of the less-needed visual information. After a photo has undergone JPEG compression, you can’t get the missing information back by sharpening what’s left. If you try, you get a noisy mess of odd-coloured halos around everything. There is a loss of information.

Cartoonist and film director Dave Strider, in his quest for a deliberately, artfully crappy visual style, hit upon these sharp JPEG artifacts and obsessively adopted them. Not content to make them a constant signature of his works on screen, he also devised ways to bring them to real life. He once took credit for vandalizing Hollywood’s famous sign, rearranging the letters and wreathing them in his mischievous JPEG stardust. The effect was arrestingly ugly, just like his comic strip.