2007 in Review: Great Ideas that Weren't

In honor of the new year, I went digging through my archives over the last year and found some of my favorite rough ideas and drawings that never made it to print. Sometimes this can be frustrating, but sacrificing your favorite ideas in service of clarity is part of the business. Being a professional means solving the problem, no matter the circumstances. I really enjoy collaborating with art directors and despite my occasional belly-aching, my work is better for it.

John Smith and Pocahontas - The New Yorker
This was in honor of the 400th anniversary of Jamestown. These are a few of the other compositions from my initial sketch phase. The final art as it ran below.






The Fall of America & The Fall of Rome - Esquire
An article comparing current American culture to the pre-fall Roman Empire? Ben Hur reference coming right up. We ended up going with my second idea involving a centurion in a tank (below). But, the article was killed and it never ran.





Excessive Luxury Condos - Wired
On the west side of Manhattan, a new high-rise condo was built with a clearly superfluous car elevator... called in suite parking. This was my first take, with apologies to Bruce McCall.




The Gen-X Obsession with Quirkiness - The Atlantic Monthly
My generation loves all that is quirky, not outright goofy, but quirky. Embodied in the NPR radio show "This American Life." These are two sketches that didn't run. (The final drawing that ran was an Ira Glass portrait.) But I loved that image of the old guy in the lawn chair staring at the tombstone. I was able to reuse most of it for a Christianity Today book review about the new phenomenon of dying slowly in America.