Washington Post | Chris Gash

Posts Tagged ‘Washington Post’

September 2nd, 2010

Back to it

I spent August taking long weekends and keeping my workload light. I haven’t been updating the blog as regularly as I should. Ah, summer. But, September is here. It’s time for some self-promotion…better hop to it.

Here are the past four weeks of the NYTimes business travel spots – Flight attendants as refs in the war over carry-on bin space, business travel bouncing back, flight attendants give their perspective on air travel:

Last week I was supposed to have a sub but no one got that memo. In a pinch, I did one sketch with my daughter’s crayon while having breakfast in a Philadelphia hotel (and sent a photo from my phone) – the long-awaited 787 is coming:

Spot for a Remodeling article titled “Have I Got a Guy for You”, about giving rewards for referrals:

Two weeks of Science Times – the emotions of animals and science confirms the best way to pour your champagne:

For The Washington Post, how to be a great manager:

Half-page and a spot for Women’s Health on whether or not you need a financial therapist:

Not my usual thing but the art director requested this style based on this illustration I did for The Washington Post.

More to come next week!

August 3rd, 2010

Catching up…

June and July have been super busy so I’ll be playing catch-up with posting assignments for the next couple of weeks. First, this one for the NYTimes was about the transition from high school to college freshmen. I tried something a little different here and I was pretty happy with how it turned out. Unfortunately, the production people at the NYT got a little overzealous with the saturation so the version running online is way off…that drives me crazy:

I got the news that after nearly 8 years, the illustrated Jobs column at the Washington Post will be replaced with an advertorial. Here is what will be one of the last Jobs illustrations, about whether or not you should disclose your pregnancy during the interview process:

The past 2 weeks of Road spots for the NYTimes – travelers’ concerns about radiation from the new body imaging machines and how frequent flier award points are becoming increasingly worthless:

Science this week was about how an elastic band changes shape as it rolls more quickly (tough one):

This was an interesting call from Smart Money – basically they were going to buy a piece of my stock, which looked more or less the same as this, but then realized the generic sampling of classified jobs I originally used wasn’t appropriate for a business magazine. So I changed the text in the job descriptions, and updated the rest of the drawing a little and dashed it off:

Finally a quarter-page for Seattle Monthly about the insanity of bank overdraft fees and the public’s poor money management skills, resulting in the $35 latte:

There are a few new items on TipTopGash as well, and more coming soon!

June 14th, 2010

New Work Roundup Part 1

I always think that if I’m not posting regularly it gives the impression that I have nothing new to show, but in fact the opposite is true. It’s been hopping lately and there’s just not enough time to get to everything, and updating the blog and the galleries had to wait. Here is a quick roundup of a few recent spots and quarters, with more on the way, as well as some news about a year-long book project that’s nearly finished, a couple of proposals I’m still waiting to hear back on and a link to my new sketchblog.

Since the beginning of the year, I’ve done a spot about once a month for The Weekly Standard. They are funny, apolitical one-offs for the front of the book. This one was about a guy who travels with tons of nicotine lozenges due to their spotty availability overseas (he has learned to ask for them in 12 different languages or something like that):

This was the Jobs section cover art for The Washington Post about how to get work without experience:

As I mentioned in many earlier posts, I do a spot every Tuesday for Biz Day in the NYTimes. This one was about the number of unclaimed miles in the frequent flyer system:

And this was another Washington Post Jobs cover about a manager who gets treated like a junior employee by an older colleague:

April 4th, 2010

Washington Post Jobs covers

A quick look over the regular assignments I do – Science Times, the Road column in the NYTimes Biz Day, The Washington Post Jobs section cover – will show a variation in style from time to time. But that’s the trick isn’t it, who wants to do (or see) the same thing every week? I try to keep things interesting, for me and for the art director and hopefully for the readers. I think the sensibility holds it all together.

For the Jobs cover 3 weeks ago, the story was about how much control over your job search should one prospective employer have. The Q came from a job-hunter who was spending time waiting to hear back from companies with whom he had a good interview. Here are the sketches I sent:

The art director decided on the marionette image. And so I finished it as I do most things, line art with color:

But I wasn’t totally happy with it. So I took the drawing, and tried something different – distressed, flat-colored shapes instead of lines, and I liked that much more, but I sent both so as not to surprise them. Happily, they liked the second version better and here is how it ran:

Last week’s Jobs column was about integrating a new hire into a small company. I tried a few things in the sketches but I knew right away that I wanted to do this one – it was fun and graphic and had the same weathered feel as the marionette image. I got lucky again, and they agreed.

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.

February 21st, 2010

Wall Street – 2, Washington -1

Here are a few spots from the past month, two for The Wall Street Journal, one for The Washington Post. This first one was for the WSJ Europe Edition, about space junk. I thought I was finished when I got here…

…but it felt pretty blah. So I added some space whoosh, then a little spot color and…done.

This one was about the outlook for the bond bubble. I sent both of these and the full color version ran.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have a regular assignment for The Washington Post’s Sunday Jobs cover. The illustration is paired with a job market Q&A feature called How to Deal. This Q was from a young woman seeking advice on how to tell prospective employers that she left her last job to follow her boyfriend to a new city for grad school. I definitely had fun with this one – nothing too cerebral, just mixing and matching romance cliches with office imagery. I sent these five sketches feeling pretty darn good about all of them:

And here is the final:

This isn’t my usual thing, but it just seemed so right for the story, and the art director and editor were all in agreement. This style of comic imagery is perfect for satire – there is so much melodrama built into them already and everyone gets that, it’s automatic, instant.

February 2nd, 2010

The past few weeks…

…have been pretty hectic, with school starting up and the getting used to being out of the office for the better part of three weekdays. I’ve been doing my illustration assignments at even more ungodly hours than usual and feeling like I’m on the losing team in a long game of catch-up. Here are a few small jobs from the past couple of very long weeks:

A little over a year ago I did a job where the editors knew exactly what they wanted – a man looking through a telescope with the constellations making different tech gadgets – cell phones, laptops, and so on. Since then, I have changed those constellations countless times, just for laughs, but finally, I really liked one and for my own amusement, I redid the entire image.

Last week’s On the Road column in the NYTimes was about face to face business meetings versus emails, texts, Skype, etc. The column featured an interview with a lawyer who prefers always to meet in person, despite the expense.

Read the rest of this entry »

January 4th, 2010

Jobs job

I’ve had the pleasure to work with Dennis Brack at The Washington Post for years. He gave me my first assignment for the Post in 2001 and since then we have worked nearly every other week on a column called How to Deal that responds to letters on career issues. The most recent was about a woman who worked in a small office with a boss whose inflammatory political and social rhetoric was becoming an issue. The employee disagreed strongly with the arguments but felt that she had to respond very cautiously. Here are the sketches that didn’t make the cut:

And here is the final:

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Posts Tagged ‘Washington Post’