Art direction by Kelly Doe

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At this point, it’s difficult to feel anything but pity for the creative forces behind the Spider-Man musical. My relative ambivalence towards Bono, U2 and musicals aside, wrangling a struggling creative endeavor with so many working parts, with so much money already spent, while under near constant public scrutiny looks like a  perfectly awful experience. Solving problems of any kind is an often ugly-looking, graceless process by virtue of the fact that failure is an essential component needed to help discover the thing that does actually, truly work. Having the privacy to indulge in those failures is just as essential if, unlike Bono, you’re an ordinary human being for whom concentration requires effort.

The Spider-Man musical has had no such luxury as of late. Since the poorly reviewed previews have begun, they’ve had the added task of doing public damage control to combat the already negative perceptions of their show which hasn’t yet properly opened. The latest maneuver of which was dismissing Julie Taymor, their original, hand-picked director, in order to publicly demonstrate that steps are being taken to refine and improve the show.

Writing for the NYT Week In Review this weekend, Patrick Healy links Taymor’s firing with other openly political gestures such as the firing of a campaign manager in mid-presidential campaign as both John Kerry and Hillary Clinton did during their failed presidential bids in 2004 and 2008. I worked with Kelly Doe on the illustration accompanying the article.

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Unlike the beleaguered musical, I had the luxuries of working on this image in relative peace, in my home, in the dead of night without interruption or anyone tapping me on the shoulder to tell me what they thought of my preliminary sketches. This was key as the final image was arrived at after all kinds of failure photographing buttons at night without decent light and grasping blindly for visual cues for an article which, at that point, had not yet been fully written. Not only that, but it had to happen quickly, so I only had to live with the hovering specter of failure for about 24 hours. All of the other trials (and errors) are below.

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“The Constitution…no longer corresponds to “reality.” Congress has assumed a secondary role to the executive, and the Supreme Court is “a marginal player.” In all “constitutional showdowns,”…the powers that make and judge law have to defer to the power that administers the law.”

Going by the review, the book’s principal conceit is that all three branches of government are equal—it’s just that the executive branch is more equal than the other two, and that may be OK. Harvey Mansfield, the reviewer, doesn’t argue the point, but he does argue the foundation of the thesis. The illustration was done post haste for the Book Review (which also boasted a gorgeous cover by Monika Aichele). Art direction by Nicholas Blechman.

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Kudos to Christopher Sergio and Catherine Casalino for distributing this petition to preserve the AIGA’s 50 Books/50 Covers competition, which was only recently, unceremoniously discontinued. Publishing is unarguably going through more than a few simultaneous growing pains right now, but sacrificing the inspired ideas and visual narratives that come out of designing books and book covers isn’t one of them. Signing it requires less than a minute.

UPDATE: Saved! That was quick. The petition scored over a thousand signatures in less than a week. Hot damn.

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Art direction by Alexandra Zsigmond

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The vocal end of the Times’ readership comments on whether or not judges should be permitted to engage in pet political causes. Thank you AZ!

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Art direction: Kim Maxwell Vu

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A true rarity for me–a portrait assignment(!) of Ronald Reagan(!)–for the Washington Post’s Style section above. This ran on the front of the section in conjunction with reviews of three separate documentaries being broadcast about Reagan on 100th anniversary of his birth.

There were two distinct added bonuses that came along with this assignment:

1. Despite it ultimately amounting to a killed sketch, this nevertheless did present me with a chance to take another crack at a straight, no-frills pencil drawing. Having vowed as recently as New Year’s Day to do a little more of that kind of thing this year, it seemed wrong to not indulge the opportunity. So there you go:

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2. I do love a chance to wedge the illustration into and around the copy whenever it can be done and Kim Vu was a game co-conspirator.

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Art Direction: Patricia Hwang

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This illustration for Bloomberg Business Week came together quickly after the story that Patricia Hwang and I had been working on prior to this was killed. The large oil drop is attached to a piece reporting how small, independent drilling companies are being bought up by larger oil corporations in the wake of the Gulf oil spill.

The story which we had been working on previously (which, naturally, I’m now keenly interested in reading), examines how the announcement of Goldman Sachs’ new finance reporting guidelines amount to little else than a shuffling of numbers just complex enough to present the impression of work. It’s obviously a weighty accusation, so it’s entirely possible that tabling the story while conducting further extensive reporting might have been why it was pulled. Details of the sketches I submitted are below.

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Much to my surprise, January 2011 began with a full-tilt sprint of still-in-the-works work. So, in the wake of what has been a Pamplona styled onslaught of ongoing work and activity, I’m running contrary to the content ravenous, must-post-first 24 hour news cycle by posting my own completed, belated tidbits at the end of the month, rather than the beginning. These are they:

1. SI 53 (above)
The series of illustrations I produced for the Times last January on the psychology of terrorism had the honor of being part of the Society of Illustrators Sequential & Uncommissioned show this January. Chairman Edel Rodriguez, executive director Anelle Miller and the entire crew at the Society hung and presented a beautiful group show which showcases a formidable range of styles and talent and I would encourage any and all who are interested to check it out in the next two (2) remaining days before it comes down in anticipation of what is sure to be their next great show for Book and Editorial pieces.

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2. YESTERDAY’S NEWS (Cont’d)

Art direction by Alexandra Zsigmond.

I (slowly) completed what was perhaps my most challenging assignment for the Times’ Letters section in recent memory. The Letters were in response to a Week In Review piece about Justice Scalia and the particulars of Constitutional originalists. Coming up with a spot-sized image that is devoid of snark which also somehow encapsulates the suggestion of Constitutional originalism is difficult enough on its own merits. Having to follow Paul Sahre, who had already spectacularly tackled the concept not once, but twice in the original article was an altogether separate challenge. This solution, for better or for worse, was not arrived at with ease.

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3. MAH, I MADE IT TAH HAHVAHD!
I’ve recently been working with art director Betsy Robichaud at the Harvard Business Review doing spots for their Interaction section in which their writers respond to their readers’ responses to their original pieces. A sampling of the conversations revolve around what follows:

— How emotional reasoning can sometimes trump a high IQ

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— On developing ‘disruptive’ work and business skills—skills which don’t come naturally, but substantially support an individual’s innate talents

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— How office-sponsored health and fitness programs improve productivity:

(killed sketch)

(killed sketch)

(Approved Final)

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— Forecasting 2011′s developments in social networking

(killed sketch)

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Art direction: Aviva Michaelov

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Unless the advent of time travel reveals itself to us in our present time in the next few hours, the final New York Times’ Letters illustration for 2010 is above—and it concerns an issue that’s been brewing enough for the past few years to safely count on it percolating in 2011. On the state level, many of them (Illinois especially) are running on deficits between overdue payments while sponsoring tax cuts. The letters written in response to the Christmas Day editorial are all roundly angry and understandably so.

As our manic, stymieing, never-once-boring-not-even-for-a-second year of 2010 collapses in on itself like a dying star, a crazy thought: maybe 2011 is a good time to resume paying actual taxes?

Provided that those who have them now remain fortunate enough to continue having jobs?

Happy 2011! (I hope)!

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The above piece ran in the Book Review with Alex Berenson’s essay on the CIA over Thanksgiving while I was in absentia in Southeast Asia. The essay discusses several memoirs written by past CIA agents which dish with uniformly unflattering remarks about the agency’s bureaucratic policies and resource-squandering. The principal complaint points to a colossal waste of money as well as ‘fetishizing the rituals of tradecraft’ instead of taking actual risk in the interest of gathering useful, productive intelligence. After reading over the essay twice, visualizing this became a matter of red tape or bust. Mercifully, the Times agreed with the approach.

As an aside, it was no small satisfaction to find a copy of the paper close to a full week after its publication while staggering jetlagged beyond reproach through the Hong Kong airport while waiting for our connecting flight back to New York. As signals of homecoming go, in lieu of a working teleportation device, I was very happy to settle for the newspaper instead.

Art direction: Nicholas Blechman.

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It’s difficult to overstate the amount of design talent involved in the 30 Days / 30 Covers component of National Novel Writing Month this year, (the full list of participating designers is here), so there was no small bit of honor and slackening of the jaw when I was invited to take part. Despite having navigated any number of rush assignments in the past, this felt to me like an intimidating project—largely on account of having to show my own results alongside the results of the outsized talent featured on that list.

Therefore, after a 24 hour scramble, including an impromptu visit to the florist, my submission for Chasia Eidson’s The Impersonal Business of Death was posted along with her manuscript’s essential plot points over the weekend. Mucho thanks to Chasia for providing me with such a juicy premise to pick apart and to John Gall for putting me in the game.

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GOOD “Work”

GOOD “Play”

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As guest art director for GOOD Magazine’s upcoming ‘WORK’ issue, the gleefully profane, indefatigable Jennifer Daniel rounded up the Pencil Factory‘s illustration titans for the magazine’s opening graphic statement for a two-page collaborative drawing and then invited me to crash the party. Here’s the complete cast of contributors (besides myself):

Kim Bost

Josh Cochran

Gilbert Ford

Jessica Hische

Caroline Hwang

Grady McFerrin

Ted McGrath

Alex Eben Meyer

Chris Silas Neal

Leif Parsons

Rachel Salomon

Joel Speasmaker

Neil Swaab

Jillian Tamaki

and Sam Weber

This being an issue devoted to the minutiae of work, Jennifer wanted to go after a broader suggestion of how work and play are terminally linked to each other. To do this, she provided us two very basic spreads: one of an office and the other of a playground. The only direction we received was to populate the office landscape with ‘play’ based images and draw elements of ‘work’ for the playground.

From there, each illustrator had a day to work on both spreads before passing them on to the next person. The process for these pieces proved very liberating as they didn’t fail or succeed by any one person’s contribution. You can see much larger versions of the final drawings over this-a-way.

There’s a better, stronger word other than ‘flattered’ to suggest how I regard such an invitation to collaborate with such a crew but I haven’t landed on it yet. What’s more, the central concept was/is particularly close to my heart when taking into account the front and back covers of my (outdated) portfolio:

Thank you, madam Daniel.

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I recently wrapped up working with art director Patricia Kim on a feature illustration for Bloomberg Business Week which looks at a new breed of startup that builds applications which crunch and interpret data (read: comments) on Facebook, Twitter and the remaining social networking ilk to better inform corporations how their products are faring in the marketplace. The success of such applications is contingent on speed as well as the ability to parse sarcastic speech (which, as it turns out, is a little tricky).

The breakdown of the varying degrees to which these applications work is naturally tech heavy, so behaving as true contrarians, Patricia and I decided upon collaging antique machinery and old engravings to depict a distinctly of-the-moment process of parsing ones and zeroes and profiteering.

I was grateful to get this assignment when I did, as I was (and to some degree still am), playing over so many great moments from what is quite possibly the only movie that ever need broach the subject of social networking.

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