This spot for The Weekly Standard was for an article about the aggravating phone calls to a religious think tank. You can read more about this assignment in the blog. Thanks for looking!
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March 28th, 2010
The Weekly Standard
March 28th, 2010
Lots o’ spots-o
Work has been busy lately, I have to say, spots, covers, all the stuff in between, it’s been pretty good. Here are a few spots from the past couple of weeks, with more to come shortly…
I’m sure I have mentioned how much I like Philip Chalk at The Weekly Standard, great guy, funny and a pleasure to work for. Like all the jobs I’ve done for them, this was for the Casual page, an apolitical offering each month from the editors. I never saw the story on this one, Philip just said they needed a guy at his desk who looked pained by stupid phone calls, and there had to be a bible in there somewhere (I know, I know, we don’t like to be told what to draw, but like any weekly magazine, things move pretty fast over there and sometimes when a narrative solution is best, there’s nothing wrong with an art director who knows what he wants).
This was a small spot for The Wall Street Journal about municipal bonds.
I am rolling the Science Times regular into this post, just for this week. The column was about scientists who have determined how to eliminate turbulence inside pipelines.
This assignment for Bob Mansfield at Forbes was one of those rare gems. It was for a marketing story about Proctor and Gamble’s new line of men’s grooming products for maintaining…you know, down there. Now, Bob has a bone-dry sense of humor and so naturally I figured he was kidding, particularly when he said the tagline for the products was “Trimming the bushes makes the tree look bigger”. I don’t regularly read Forbes, or Hustler, but still I was pretty sure they were very different magazines. So, how does one illustrate that? Well, for starters, not like this:
Just a little more delicately, like so:
I still can’t figure out why this one got shot down…
March 16th, 2010
Follow-up regular
Last week’s Road column in the NYTimes was about people paying more for the exit row seats and the FAA’s concerns about those passengers’ ability to perform the emergency duties of that seat. The column inspired a large reader response (and consequently a follow-up column) about the flying public’s similar concerns, and their calls for better screening of exit row passengers. I have only once or twice in seven plus years done a ‘follow-up’ spot for the column, but here is this week’s illustration (last week’s companion spot is in the previous post).
March 15th, 2010
Last week’s regulars
In previous posts, I have written about my two ongoing assignments for the NYTimes. Here are last week’s installments:
On the Road was about fliers who pay extra for the exit row seat, and FAA concerns that the emergency duties of the exit row can be performed by those passengers.
Science was about how iguanas listen to the distress calls of a certain bird (with whom they share a common predator) as a warning of danger.
March 15th, 2010
Washington Post cover
Quick spots are one thing, quick covers are another. I got the call to do this about 36 hours before it was due. Now sure, to the seasoned editorial illustrator, 36 hours sounds easy like Sunday morning, but here’s the breakdown: I get the call on Monday night, I am on campus most of the day Tuesday, and it’s due Wednesday by noon, so even by our standards, that could be a squeaker if there’s any hiccups in the process.
The article in a nutshell (ha!) was about what happens to your credit score when you’re not paying attention to it. These are the two that didn’t make the cut:
I actually thought the moth-eaten credit score was the one – it seemed perfect for this idea that you ignore your score for years until you need it to get a house, then you find out it’s lower than you thought. And the angle here was that it’s changed because of the credit card companies’ policies, and so it was important to show that there was no fault on the part of card user.
But they went with the shell game, which makes sense – three numbers, three shells, and a whole lot of switcheroo going on. And for finishing on time, this sketch was very quick to finish and we made it with some time to spare.
March 5th, 2010
This week’s regulars
In previous posts I have written about my two ongoing assignments for the NYTimes, here are this week’s installments:
On the Road was this week was about all the flights canceled in February due to severe weather.
Science was about how yeast fermentation in the Dungwort flower causes it to heat up a few degrees.
