Art direction by Nicholas Blechman
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Two for the Times were done this past week. The first (above) for the Book Review is an illustration paired with a critical account of the new tome about the history of Goldman Sachs and how they have miraculously, (or more accurately), suspiciously survived and emerged still resilient through the current economic crisis.

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Art direction by Aviva Michaelov

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This second one was done for an op/ed calling upon Obama to honor members of the military and government who have stood up to policies permitting torture. The authors posit that since Donald Rumsfeld and George Tenet, having both tacitly approved of enhanced interrogation techniques, have both been awarded honors by the previous president and that Obama should stand to honor the opposing voices. Aviva provided me the rare luxury of sending me the article a short while before midnight the evening before the illustration was due, so I had all night to pull my hair out trying to figure out how to solve the problem. The extra time, in this case, truly was a gift.

Also, for those who are deathly curious: ‘Lux Veritatis’ = ‘Light of Truth.’
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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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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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What began decades ago as a cadre of liberals who questioned the economic policies entwined with LBJ’s Great Society are today not much more than Republicans who constantly auger for expanded arms programs and military intervention, whatever the circumstance. At least that’s how a Neoconservative is presently defined in the review for the appropriately titled Neoconservatism: The Biography of a Movement by Justin Vaïsse in the NYT Book Review this week.

The original pitch for this illustration was to experiment with portraits, (not unlike what was arrived at for this piece), but when photos didn’t materialize in as timely a manner as we’d hoped, we sought out a more typographic approach and landed on the above image.

The other directions that I was playing with in the early stages leaned way too much on the author and reviewer’s present, hawkish impression of neoconservatives and didn’t make any suggestion of the movement’s origin which, all things being equal, wouldn’t have been as complete a representation of the piece as the image that was chosen. In retrospect, I’m relieved that these other ones were not considered:

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Fair and balanced art direction by Nicholas Blechman.

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I swear up and down that I have other clients besides the Times—they only require that I work faster, is all.

This one above was done for this week’s essay in the Book Review, written by the BR’s very own editor, Sam Tanenhaus. In his essay, Sam revisits The Radical Center, a book published in 2001. The book is one part policy proposals for the ten-fresh decade, while the other half explores a growing batch of mainstream voters who are strongly disenfranchised with both Republicans and Democrats. The book had the comparatively small misfortune to be published right after 9/11, when many of the book’s ideas were rendered either inaccurate or just flat-out insignificant in the wake of bigger concerns. Nearly a full decade later, Tanenhaus suggests that while the policy section of the book may still be a wash, that the authors’ vision of voter discontent was right on the money:

“The Radical Center raises the possibility that a book can be at once behind and ahead of its time, mistaken in some of its prescriptions…but true in its assessment of the costs of a dysfunctional civil society.”

Read onward!

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Art direction by the fair & balanced Nicholas Blechman. I’d post the additional sketches we were considering for the final, but some of those guys are going to get used for something down the line. This I vow.

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When I was handed this assignment, Nicholas Blechman’s brief was explicit in handling this as a portrait illustration which showcased the (justifiably) outrageous tabloid heights that John Edwards’ Olympic-level career suicide had reached in full public view in connection with Andrew Young’s newly published book. In this task, I failed entirely in the first round of sketches, so it’s to Mr. Blechman’s credit that he gave me a second chance and a little extra time to take a second crack at it and give me a moment to arrive at the above piece which ended up running.

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The extremely loose, unfinished, axed comps which didn’t make the cut are below. They all touch upon the mechanics of the scandal, but they don’t possess the tabloidesque exclamation that was needed to help contextualize the article. I will absolutely use one or some of these ideas for something else down the line if a subject more fitting for their tones ever come my way.

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ROUND #2 – REJECTS:

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The above piece for the NYT Book Review accompanies reviews of two, count ‘em, two newly published annotated U.S. constitutions. Adam Liptak, who reviewed both books, forewarns all interested parties that while both interpretations have their interests and illuminations, that reading books built around footnotes is still an unwieldy reading experience. Perhaps to remedy this, The Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights will be the very first documents we hyperlink to death in whatever shape our future e-book manifests itself.

I was mere moments away from sending Nicholas Blechman my comps for this when the wife, surveying my work, mentioned something to me about microscopes. I switched gears and mocked up a comp of what would become the chosen piece above to include with my other comps. I’m very thankful that Jill sometimes thinks about microscopes, because in retrospect, my other ideas might not have been cutting the mustard.

Alternate comps below:

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Art direction: Nicholas Blechman

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This piece for the July 4th Book Review accompanies Tom Vanderbilt’s reviews of two accounts of the current mortgage crisis—one a first-person, memoir-styled retrospective of one such mortgage undoing, the other a more procedural view of the specific actions between the government and the lax real estate business practices that collided to create such an unprecedented state of bankruptcy and foreclosure. Tom’s take on both books is here.

Also of interest in the Book Review this weekend art-wise is a full-tilt insane cover illustration by Henning Wagenbreth about crystal meth that the web simply cannot do justice to. Those who are interested should make a point to seek it out in printed form.

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In terms of our nation’s recent military history, Horse Soldiers by Doug Stanton is wild, loud and bizarrely funny, but it’s tempered with a fairly damning coda. In terms of making an image for it in the Times’ Book Review, it’s an embarrassment of riches in the idea department.

The book plays as part historical document, part action movie. In reviewing it, Bruce Barcott even compares much of the drama and action to Clive Cussler. The whole story would have probably played out more heroically if not for the bruising reality that the early successes that these soldiers had in the early stages of the war in Afghanistan gave Donald Rumsfeld the bright idea to sell the war in Iraq as an operation that could be done with minimal troops and minimal bloodshed. It is still unconfirmed as to whether or not Rumsfeld has yet learned how to pronounce the word ‘oopsie.’

The book chronicles the small rag-tag groups of special ops C.I.A. agents who teamed up with Afghani freedom fighters to attack the Taliban in Afghanistan during the months immediately following 9/11. Given the urgency and suddenness of the mission, the C.I.A. ops didn’t have too much time to prepare for their journey, so they grabbed whatever gear they had laying around (like REI tents and low rent GPS devices) and headed for the mountains. Upon forging such an unlikely alliance with the Afghani fighters in such a rush, there was one small wrinkle that hadn’t been explained to the Americans until they were already suiting up for a firefight in the mountains of Afghanistan—“nobody told the Special Forces guys about the horses.”

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The Afghani fighters traveled and fought almost exclusively on horseback, while the American Special Forces had little experience of the kind. This was reconciled with a blunt, impromptu crash course on steering, advancing and disciplining one’s horse. It happened quickly. Their united offensives were launched promptly afterward. One tactical attack after another, their sweat and vigilance contributed significantly to the U.S.’ early victories against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Standing in contrast to the more life-threatening particulars of paratrooping into the Middle East, learning how to ride a horse and battling an unseen enemy in caves, building an illustration that attempts to capture such an experience was downright pleasant, even if you include all the willful procrastination, self-loathing, heavy sighs and staring at one’s feet that often accompanies the assembly of comps. Nicholas Blechman, once again, graciously allowed me to run wild stylistically for the initial ideas and for the first time in a long, long while, we had enough interesting things to work with such that picking an out-and-out favorite between the two of us required a genuinely critical process of elimination. Below are the ones that we cut:

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***REAL Bullets(!)

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I held a personal soft spot for the horse composed entirely of spent ammunition (as did the wife) as well as the re-interpretation of the flag of Afghanistan with the horseshoe and bullet, but ultimately, the freakish horse/comic hybrid seemed to come closest to seizing on the wild polarities of historical documentary and chest-beating testosterone fest that both the article and book jump between. Thusly, it was decided.

Many thanks to both Mr. Blechman for letting me go insane and also to the Westside Rifle and Pistol Range on West 20th St., who were incredibly generous and helpful in providing spent ammunition shells for a comp that went ultimately unused.

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The U.S. of A. may still carry the biggest megaphone with regards to influencing policy across foreign nations worldwide, but that’s not to say that the volume of said megaphone should always be turned up to 11. Historian Michael Beschloss critiques Leslie Gelb’s foreign policy tome Power Rules (mostly favorably) in this week’s Book Review in the Times and even goes so far to suggest it as possible nighttime reading for Mr. President.

I made the picture above with art direction by Nicholas Blechman.

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This piece for the Book Review concerns two books that argue that liberalism extends beyond supporting exclusively leftist policies and reminds the reader of its broader objectives. Says author Alan Wolfe: “As many people as possible should have as much say as is feasible over the direction their lives will take”.

Not wanting to include any of my own politics in the illustration for fear of making it look like a big chest-beating drum circle, I went for a straight-ahead literal (not liberal) approach to the material. I twisted the U.S. flag 90˚ on its side to reveal its inherent ‘L’ shape in the stripes and then I ‘liberated’ the stars. Nicholas Blechman, who from past experience has demonstrated that he is not shy about letting the image physically inhabit the text, took it even further and allowed the stars to float freely into the article. Liberals and conservatives alike who would appreciate the merits of a good visual pun might both regard such a layout as “totally badass” and they’d both be right.

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