$4 a gallon gas... Yes!

This was for a BusinessWeek package on why cheap oil is bad for America.

Art direction by Ronald Plyman.

If only we could have had sustained $4 dollar gas awhile ago, we could be so much farther along the path of getting off oil and instead of being second place in the boom of green tech, America would be leading it.

But then we might have not "won" the cold war, since the huge and sustained drop in oil prices in the 80's and 90's had alot more to do with the demise of the Soviet Union than is realized.

Anyway here's to dreaming we can do it!

partial spread

quarter page


the roughs.

Georgia On My Mind

I got to draw for Mikhail Gorbachev's OpEd on Georgia in the NYTimes last week, titled "Russia Never Wanted a War", which was a real treat and for the first time work for the new OpEd AD Leanne Shapton.

Mr. Gorbachev's piece was a good non-western point of view, if you can ingnore his brief kiss-up to Medvedev, but hey if I was living in Moscow surrounded by the FSB, well you can bet I would too.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/20/opinion/20gorbachev.html?ref=opinion

the preliminary drawing

the roughs.


A few days before TIME had warmed me up on the subject of Georgia, which helped. For a Power's article on Putin's Pride a key reason to the invasion.
Art director was Patricia Hwang.

Progressive Cover

Got the opportunity to illustrate the cover of this months Progressive.
Subject was about teaching to the test aspect of No Child Left Behind an educational reform here in the States.
the rough ideas
It doesn't get much better that getting to spoof a government logo...


The cover, design and art direction by Nick Jehlen.

Here's some other covers I've done for them over the years,
the tank with coffin tracks got into PRINT's regional design annual.

Zimbabwe for TIME

For a regular Samantha Powers column I draw for TIME, this week it was about how the international community (read the West) shouldn't invade Zimbabwe to get rid of Mugabe.

the roughs

preliminary drawing

The Green Wall of China

For a cover article on China's increasing interest in green energy.

AD was Wai Lam.

I had to stack the turbines tighter than they would normally be, so they would read as a wall.

I really love the subject of green energy, so I had alot of fun concepting this one.

In the roughs I wanted some China specific ones and some more general ones, since this was for a chinese readership so it wasn't mandatory that it read China as well.

But I'm glad Wai picked the more china specific wall one, because it fit well.

Here's the piece on the cover.
I wish I could read Chinese.
(I'm trying to learn it)

TIME magazine

For this weeks TIME Samantha Powers article about the history of U.S. Presidents negotiating with dictators, communists, etc. etc.

AD was Patricia Hwang.

Interesting point from the article

"In an effort to scuttle the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty in Congress, the Conservative Caucus took out a newspaper advertisement likening Reagan's position to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's dealings with Hitler."

Apparently Reagan was a appeaser too for talking to the evil empire.

I wanted it to be somewhat general but I did use scrap of Ahmadinejad and Obama as reference




Sometimes, like in this case, the article isn't written and only have a line or two to go on.
So I usually try to give a ton of different ideas to cover the myriad of directions the article might end up taking.

Since I'm on the subject of TIME,
here's the piece that ran the week or 2 before for the Samantha Powers column, this time it was on a commencement speech she gave. Talking about how young (an old) people can customize their media so much, that one can never get surprised and led off in a different direction.

I was glad Patricia choose that idea, because although it wasn't my first choice, it ended up being a better piece with a much broader application.

It's funny whenever I go back and look at old sets of roughs after a some time being away from them, it's so obvious which one is the best and it was 9 times out of 10 it's the one the AD picked. That's why it's nice to have a good set of second eyes not so enmeshed in the problem.

Disney

For a Businessweek article about Disney forming a new venture capital fund.
Art director was Don Besom.

the roughs, my favorite was the acorn obviously, second favorite the pig.