My start as the Prospect’s new art director last February was not the smoothest in my 30-year publishing career, due perhaps partially to a quite different production process than the ones I had been used to, but also going into lockdown with the rest of the staff midway through my very first issue—OK, that and the associated existential dread.
Still, despite the challenges of 2020, like my colleagues, I am taking a few minutes to look at some of my favorite Prospect projects that came out of what is still a difficult year. As the magazine’s designer (and sometime illustrator) my list will look a bit different than my colleagues’, who can point to articles they have written (well, I have one, but it doesn’t make my list of featured projects). Rather, in my case, the projects are all visual, with the majority dependent on the creative work of others.
So, if I’m not a writer, what do I do? Well, in addition to a little illustration, an editorial designer is someone who turns something that likely reads much better, but looks no different than a typical stack of term papers, into something that looks and functions like a magazine.
“United Colors of the Apocalypse”
In my other life, I’m a professor of graphic design, so I’m friendly with quite a few other academics in design and the arts. David Bieloh, a longtime friend on the faculty at Central Washington University, had been posting photos of distressingly tinted photos of West Coast skies to social media when I pitched his project to our editor. Once published, the project caught a lot of eyes, including the New Yorker’s.
“The Trump Show, the Comic Book”
Rich Ragsdale, whom I met through an art-interested Facebook group, had been posting the shenanigans of the Trump campaign’s attempt to overturn the election as the comic book art it truly deserved to be seen as. Another Prospect natural, I thought.
“The Lucrative Afterlife of a Trump Official”
For me, anyway, one of the most gratifying parts of my job is getting to work with great illustrators. Every new magazine job means finding a few new ones and, sadly, saying goodbye (at least temporarily) to some old ones who just don’t fit the graphic personality of where you’ve landed. Fortunately, Steve Brodner fits neither of these categories. I have worked with him for at least 25 years at at least four or five magazines and newspapers, always with great results (Steve had also drawn for the Prospect before). I also especially enjoy a meaty headline that lets me do something visual with the typography—in this case, a ghostly “Afterlife.”
“Social Distancing”
This is another, I thought, particularly pleasing example of art and typography working together, which they can do in print in ways that usually can’t be replicated on a magazine’s CMS website. I love the illustration by Ryan Inzana (his first time working with both me and the Prospect); and the type, for its part, seems almost as uneasy with itself as the chilling scene it’s paired with. The headline is broken apart by as much room as possible, and even the drop cap is keeping the recommended six feet away from its affiliated column.
We Can’t Breathe
It was hard to pick a favorite cover for the year. I thought we had several outstanding ones, but our managing editor insisted that this be one of my categories, so if I have to, I’ll go with the powerful simplicity of David Plunkert’s take on George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter moment.
“Industrial Revolutionaries”
Finally, I should probably choose at least one of my own illustrations, since I keep insisting I make them. I am generally my illustrator of last resort, but also my least expensive one (we are a nonprofit), so I have made a lot of them this year, most for web-only pieces, in styles ranging from painterly to cartoony to explanative. But I will pick the series of collages I did for “Industrial Revolutionaries” as my favorites for the year—well, with the possible exception of the one addressing Andrew Johnson and his policies.
